Ballooning in Stars
by Matthew Edward Schatmeyer
Gotham Books


"To be human... is to understand just how little time that we have to touch one another."

Schatmeyer’s dazzling poetry collection is set into four distinctive chapters, each of which represents the various stages of a hot-air balloon ride, serving as an extended metaphor throughout. The first chapter, titled “Natural Beauty,” features the “Liftoff.” The second, “Shared Experience,” represents “Soaring.” His third chapter, “Inside Ourselves,” is “Flight” itself, while the final chapter, “Forever Forward,” culminates in “Touchdown.” The more than eighty individual poems included explore an array of universal subjects, including natural beauty, time, seasonal changes, being human, laughter and love, understanding, letting go, eternity and heaven, and more. In the poem “HumansPeak,” Schatmeyer writes, “There are times when it is best to / say nothing. / Times when you must / say something. / Times when you have to / say everything.” Anytime, concludes the poet, is the time to say, “I love you.”

The poems that fill this book are unabashedly human. They are unapologetically heartfelt, focusing on basic goodness and celebratory of the human spirit and the plentiful gifts God has given all life on earth. Taking in the aesthetics of Schatmeyer’s poetic work, one gets the strong sense that for this writer, it is not merely that the cup is half-full but rather that it overflows with charm, grace, and infectious optimism. There is a gentle, loving, and heaven-bound speaker in each of these poems, such that while each poem differs slightly in its nuanced angle of what it means to “balloon amongst the stars,” all solidly share an earnest and tender compassion. Schatmeyer’s ideas and turns-of-phrase are offered delicately—yet with a quiet, reassuring strength—to lovers of verse who will find much within these pages to enjoy and savor.

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