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American Compass, Bill Meissner’s fourth book of poetry, is a collection that steers the reader on a varied, memorable journey down the American highway. Like the four points of a compass, each of the book's four sections has a distinct direction. "First Corners" features poems about childhood and the realizations of early adulthood. "Breaking Dreams" illuminates the myths and realities of popular American icons, with portraits of James Dean, Thomas Edison, Elvis Presley, and Joe DiMaggio. The baseball poems in "Taking the Curve" become subtle metaphors for the game of life. In the "Soul Highway" poems, the author concludes the book with a series of poignant personal experiences that will leave the reader thinking more deeply about his or her life.
American Compass is a personal comment on growing up in America as well as a political comment on the state of American culture, with its heroes and everyday people, its hopes and failures, its winners and losers.
“The legends of Bill Meissner’s boyhood and youth, those well-known American icons and everyday folk cast larger-than-life, lend a long-last note to the national chorus as this poet hears it. Wry and good-natured, these poems take us aside to talk to us the way an old family friend would, telling us what it all meant, what it all might mean.” —Heid Erdrich, author of Fishing for Myth and Sister Nations
Bill Meissner is the author of three books of poetry and a collection of short stories. His writing has appeared in more than 150 journals, magazines, and anthologies. His numerous awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, five PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Awards, two Loft-McKnight Awards, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship. Meissner is the Director of Creative Writing at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota.