Peter Pereira may be the most popular Seattle poet. He may be the nicest and that counts for a lot in polite Seattle. He’s also a neighbor of mine. I remember attending his book release reading at Open Books and they had to turn people away. In this intelligent review by Joel Weishaus, I get a better sense of what Pereira’s doing, but I’m left wanting a deeper experience than the review provided. Is it me, or is there something about this review that is missing?

Here’s the first paragraph:

Although books and anthologies of poems by physicians and other healthcare workers are not uncommon, Seattle family physician, Peter Pereira, has a particular gift in revealing of the pulse of his psyche through his relationship with patients. Perhaps this is because he has had to absorb the prejudice that goes with being a gay man in America. Even in his office, when he refused to write a prescription for the powerful pain-killer OxyContin, “because the Xrays / and MRI don’t show it,” for a man who claimed he had broken his spine in a car accident, the man walked out muttering, “Damn fag.”

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/Poetica/blog-3.htm

What say you? It may take a while before getting your response up here, as the spam is relentless and I may be in Brussels, but do let me know what you think.

Paul Nelson