Sun Sep 05 2010
Editor's note: This story is part of an occasional series highlighting career accomplishments of area graduates. Featured today is 1972 Defiance High School graduate Steve Meador, who has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
By ANGELA ASSAF
TAMPA, Fla. -- Steve Meador, a 1972 Defiance High School graduate, is an emerging author making a big ripple in the large pond of publishing.
His recent book, Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree, a collection of autobiographical poems which read like short stories, was recently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and a 2008 National Book Award.
Sprinkled with colorful language, sensual imagery and violence, Meador's poetry, with its bran-like realism and bare-faced nostalgia about coming of age in simpler times, has touched a common nerve in readers.
"I am part of a large boomer group that enjoys my work because they had similar experiences.
"I write purely for entertainment. I am not looking for reading groups to spend hours or days trying to interpret an underlying meaning. Read it, enjoy it, and move on. If it creeps back and causes a gentle reflection or a chuckle, what more could a writer ask for?"
Meador attended Defiance College for two years, before getting his degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University.
His poetry has appeared in popular print and online journals and university publications including Two Hawks Quarterly, Quicksilver, Boston Literary Magazine, Umbrella and Mipoesias, among others. His other published works include two chapbooks, A Good Sharp Knife and Pack Your Bags, both released by the distinguished Pudding House Publications; Throwing Percy was winner of the D-N Publishing 2007 National Book Competition, and contains some pieces from the earlier books.
Much of the material for Percy, Meador explained, comes from growing up in Defiance and small places with names like Blue Jay, Beaver and Rising Sun. "There was little or nothing to do most of the time so I did a lot of creating my own life. That resulted in vivid memories."
His father was a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and the family moved frequently, at times splitting up Meador and his siblings between relatives in different states.
"I was told that my father was an airplane mechanic, but he never came home dirty. He would be gone for weeks or months at a time and come home and surprise us dressed in an Eskimo suit or Hawaiian shirt and flip flops."
Years later, Meador came to discover that his father may have worked in government intelligence, as was fairly common during the pre-Vietnam War era.
Meador spent most of his teen-age years living with his grandparents in Defiance. He was successful in sports (lettered in three) and was always "scribbling down something on paper."
He describes his early writing as "rhymed, metered, senseless observations from rebellious eyes about how to save the country and the world."
Defiance teachers Karen Heisig and Bill Zipfel were the first to glimpse his Pulitzer potential. They submitted a series of his essays to a national writing contest sponsored by the National Conference of Teachers of English. Out of tens of thousands of entries, Meador's rose to one of the top in the nation.
Looking back, Meador said he thought little about his accomplishment. "My grandparents found out by reading an article in The Crescent News."
Having grown up poor, Meador moved quickly to position himself for success early on in life. He married his high school sweetheart, Cheryl Jacob (class of '74), and side-stepped a promising career in journalism to sell high-end real estate.
Since the '80s, he has worked as a broker in California, Ohio and most recently in Tampa, Fla., where today he works with his son, Ryan, 26. He also has two sons, Shaun, 28, who is in new homes sales, and Zach, 17, a high school junior.
For much of the '80s Meador's pen was silent.
The month after his father died in 1991, the poem, "Blended Blame," about his father's relationship with the bottle, "popped" into his head and launched him on a "writing spree" that resulted in hundreds of pieces -- all with the same "parent-adult conflict" flavor.
... It was the Arabian Nights of the blame game
and the only name that didn't have a finger in its face
was Jack Daniels ...
I put my eye on the spout
and looked down to the bottom of his last bottle
like stargazing and sure enough
the blame list was printed there.
In 2005, Meador met up with a childhood classmate "40 years lost."
He recalled, "Writing came up in conversation. I sent her a copy of 'Blame.' Her reaction surprised me. She wanted to know why I had spent my life in real estate instead of behind the typewriter. Turns out she is a tremendously successful author and encouraged me to write again."
In a length of several days Meador wrote the set to Pack Your Bags, most of which cover a six-year span from his youth and carry a somber tone.
"That started me on a personal trip. It churned up memory after memory. Then humorous thoughts dominated. 'Percy,' the poem, was the first of that trend."
A cat always lands on its feet.
Percy did,
after I cradled his upside down body
two feet off the floor
and sprung my arms wide
for his grand release.
... I straddled the limb
and ate cherries
thinking
of who might have a ladder
tall enough to reach our roof.
When explaining about his writing process, Meador talks of his "gift of detailed recollection."
"I can recall events 45 years ago almost exactly as they happened, often nearly verbatim."
He does most of his writing at night between midnight and 2 a.m.
"That's when the world stops and I see things as if I'm watching a movie in my mind, then all I have around me are words.
"A lot of what I write is as-is. I get an idea, it just bursts into my mind and I write it in a couple of minutes. There are few revisions."
Though Meador has tinkered around with his writing style over the years, he says he likes the element of surprise and ending with a "kicker" of some sort, to "reinforce or change the mood."
"Sometimes I send it 180 degrees. Many pieces had several endings and I picked the final from the one I liked the best."
He says his biggest satisfaction to date is finding Throwing Percy in a library. Copies are available at the Defiance Public and Defiance College libraries.
(Meador's books, A Good Sharp Knife, Pack Your Bags and Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree, are available to purchase at hangingmossjournal.com, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com)
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