Homo Erectus

Ed Proffitt's work is of the new period. His poems are not merely word games like those of the last century; they communicate actual human experience as well as being God forbid readable. They are eclectic, mining the rich heritage of the past with a difference: though he can handle free verse and disjunctive forms with the best, much of his verse is metrical and even rhymed. However, his rhyming is usually subtle and his metres experimental (e.g., he will play off against iambic pentameter with a nine-syllable line). All in all, this is a poet of consummate skill who has something to say that touches us all.