Whales Hover(ed)

Milwaukee is the subject of many of the social-activist poems collected in Jeff Poniewaz’s latest chapbook. Poniewaz (Polish for “because” and somehow aptly so) addresses the environment, public art and the squandering of public trust and money, which has diminished the means to maintain community treasures such as the county parks. Poniewaz, who will teach an off-campus course called “Literature of Ecological Vision” for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the spring semester, writes poetry that is dense with allusions to headlines and motivated by the spirit of ecological awareness above all else. In this, Poniewaz was a local pioneer. He was green when the color was reserved in popular culture for Kermit the Frog. A slightly different, limited edition of Whales Hover(ed) was issued last spring by Centennial Press.