Book Review by Roy Peak

DAY ONE OF PEAK WEEK AT SACRED CHICKENS!

Frequent Contributor Roy Peak has a lot to offer this week starting with a review of THE LOW WIRE by John Obermeyer.




​The Low Wire: Meditations on Loss and Creative Restoration
Jon Obermeyer
Fugitive Poets Press
2016
 
 
The Low Wire: Meditations on Loss and Creative Restoration by Jon Obermeyer is a hundred words that are part memoir, part self help book, part treatise on depression recovery. You’d think that a read such as this, which tends to jump around nearly as much as Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, would feel disjointed or meandering but that’s not at all the case. Obermeyer threads the needle of these assorted essays like an expert seamstress, sewing it all up into a perfect fitting garment. Simply told, slipping easily into poetic verse, then back into parable, even a smattering of a blues song, then into a series of earth shattering memoirs: The horrifying details and aftermath of a stroke at 57, the loss of a business due to the domino effect of the tragedy of 9/11, divorce, multiple evictions, staying with friends and family when he had nowhere else to go. Yet, Obermeyer’s tales of woe—serious as they are—lightly spring off the page in a manner that’s near impossible to put down. Seriously, I devoured these pages in one short evening, taking a break from Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative, thinking I would simply be reading the first few pages to get a feel for it, but instead being engulfed completely in Obermeyer’s world. At times it feels as personal as peeking into someone’s diary entries, but there’s no scandal, no closets to be cleaned, just a terrific insight into another person’s thought processes, their hopes, fears, and dreams. Next up, I’m looking forward to tackling some of Obermeyer’s works of short fiction as he’s already gotten me hooked into these glimpses of his world and way of thinking.
 

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Roy Peak has played electric bass in more bands than he cares to remember for more years than he can remember. He wrote the theme song for the Utica, New York radio show "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn" on WPNR-FM. His solo debut album, All Is Well, has been called "Loud, cacophonous, and beautiful by a truly unique artist." His short fiction has been published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and he writes music reviews for the King Tut Vintage Album Museum of Jacksonville.  Roy writes music reviews for the Rocking Magpie among others.

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