Pumpkin Chucking

Stephen Scaer¿s Pumpkin Chucking is a harvest of wit and enlightenment, gleaned from everyday situations. Scaer shows impressive formal dexterity, and inventive use of nonce and received forms—sonnet, double-dactyl, Old-English-style alliterative meter; he turns the limerick on its head as it transforms into a humor-laden meditative tool in sequences such as ¿Mid-Life Limericks¿ and ¿Classical Limericks.¿ Scaer¿s delivery is immediate, simple but never simplistic, laying bare the human condition to reveal that ¿The triumphs that [we] seek/ are held for their own sake,/ and shower us with grace/ like petals on the grass.¿ This finalist for the 2012 Able Muse Book Award is a rare achievement in its deft marriage of the lighthearted and sublime. It is a book to relish from start to finish.