In our fast-paced, techo-driven world, the art of reading and writing poetry on the printed page seems to be on a fast track to obsolescence. I realized this when I went to a bookstore recently and found no contemporary or classic works of poetry anywhere on the shelves.

However, I grew up reading and appreciating many extraordinary poets, including Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, and Carl Sandburg. And a book of poems by my colleague, Dr. Eric Weil, has helped me rekindle my old love of this classic art form. My younger son, 19, who loves The Doors, Tom Waits, and the Rolling Stones, is a dedicated fan of Dr. Weil’s work.

“His poems are really intelligent without trying to be,” Leland says. “They don’t ever become too intellectualized but are always natural and human. Every word is important.”

Eric Weil’s most recent book, “Returning from Mars,” is as fine a collection of contemporary poems you are likely to find these days. And if you yearn to get reacquainted with poetry his book is an excellent place to begin.

Dr. Weil ranges far and wide in both mood and subject; from the quiet anguish of a soldier returning from the horrors of war (“I take a pain pill and wait for dreams”) to the poet’s meditation on the mystery of the expanding universe: “...while the present whirls into the black hole of the past, the universe begins, a burst of light traveling to meet us, a dawn breaking somewhere ahead of our vision.”

In these poems, Dr. Weil displays a keen sense of irony and humor, as well a finely-honed talent for conjuring up a whole world of meaning in a few tightly focused images.

In one poem, for instance, about a former student who was murdered by her boyfriend, the reader is riveted by the opening lines: “Four days, beetles and blowflies began the job of turning you into forest. ... Four times the moon pulled the stars over your face.”

Many these poems tell stories that linger. “The Pennsylvania Stationmaster, 1852,” brings to life the story of two runaway slaves, desperately trying to get to Canada--and freedom. In beautifully understated language, Dr. Weil tells of the stationmaster’s efforts to protect them. (“Come, I whisper, lead them to our secret springhouse.”)

In “Ending the Drought” the poet pretends his rain-making efforts have ended a long dry spell. The poem concludes with this touch of whimsy: “I will not claim credit. I will walk humbly under my unbrella.”

In one of the book’s most memorable scenes, the poet visits his father’s grave. (“It does not matter that my father is not here, only that I am.” Weil lays his heart bare in the poem’s final lines, when he describes leaving his father’s favorite flower, a red carnation, on the gravesite, “... seeking that silent part of myself left flat and exposed in the sun.”

A talented playwright and authority on Chaucer and Hawthorne, Dr. Weil is an associate professor of English at Elizabeth City State University. His book is available at Page after Page Bookstore in Elizabeth City.