The stew that serves as the poetry of Chad Weeden is equal parts science, surrealism, and unyielding biological synchronicity that recognizes the magic in the everyday, and forces the reader to acknowledge their part in the flow. Poetry gives shape and sonic architecture to the unseen elements that comprise our lives, and in line after line, Weeden's poetry serves as a camera illuminating those various aspects and recording them, making tangible "the air in a piano and the inertia in a rented room." NC buys more books of poetry per capita than any other state and this is one collection from an up-and-coming Tarheel artist that I highly recommend you add to your library.
—Keith Flynn, author of The Skin of Meaning and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review
Chad Weeden’s collection the ice stayed but the water left takes unlikely, even ordinary, moments, and infuses them with significance and even beauty. “He hovers above the sink like an old disease,” he writes, and “Trash piles up when you’re gone wrangling the infinite sea.” The poems here peel back layers to reveal deep truths—” . . . why we decorate the crawlspace with tea leaves and relics abandoned of exotic molds we try so hard to fit into we forget what it’s like to be destroyed,” and “What will burn will burn. Not because it can. But because it should.” He explores the coldest grief and regret—“His one suit hangs on the bedroom door so you can take it to the funeral home,” and “I am an echo between two windows,” and “I was a burden. You were a chore . . .” Chad is a poet sensitive to nature in all her vicissitudes, sensitive also to sound and image. His poems sometimes whisper, sometimes scream. I’m blown away by the sheer beauty of this collection.
—Lori Baker Martin, Poetry Editor, The Midwest Quarterly