“Expect the Unexpected": Tom Keating reviews Bill McCloud’s The Error of the Stars

The Error of the Stars  
by Bill McCloud
Independent Publication (2024)
144 pages

I first read Bill McCloud’s poetry when I ordered a copy of his Vietnam War poem, The Smell of the Light: Vietnam 1968-1969, in which he recounts his year-long tour in one long poem. As a Vietnam War Veteran myself, I was struck by the way he described what we as soldiers experienced there, all in poetry form: ducking under a desk when enemy rockets fell near him; watching a helicopter crash and burn just after takeoff; and dealing with the rainy season’s deluges, every day, all day.  

His latest book, The Error of the Stars, is a collection of his poetry, compiled by Charles Templeton, editor/publisher at eMerge, an online literary magazine. Most of McCloud’s poems appeared in that publication and other literary magazines and websites.

McCloud wrote his first poem when he was fourteen years old and admits that he consumed poetry in high school English classes. While serving in the Army he discovered Rod McKuen and his poetry. He eventually became friends with McKuen. After the military, McCloud entered college and was influenced by the work of Leonard Cohen, Richard Brautigan, and many other singer/songwriters of the time – Paul Simon, Jimmy Webb, Don McLean, and Jim Croce, to name a few. He began publishing what he describes as “poetry outside the norm, the typical, the traditional, the academic, the expected.”  And they are. Joyfully so.

His poems are full of the human experience, with offbeat stories of roller derby girls, magician’s assistants, make-believe lovers, the comedian Sam Kinison (you have to read that one!), and news headlines, and all are accompanied by photographs and visual images that enhance the poems. Human whimsy and emotion fill this book. If you’re at all interested in poetry outside the norm, read McCloud’s latest collection. You won’t be sorry.

Tom Keating is a writer and veteran of the Vietnam War. His book, Yesterday’s Soldier, A Memoir, is a new edition of the December 2020 book. Both editions are published by Stratford Publishing and are available on Amazon.com or from the author. His latest book, Elephants, Secrets and Submarines, Stories and Essays, is now available in paperback and in eBook form. Excerpts from his memoir have appeared in national anthologies such as War Stories, an anthology edited by Sean Davis, and “Shakedown” appeared in Warrior Writers Boston’s Complacency Kills. Other work includes “The Vietnam Memorial, Then and Now” in Dispatches, and fiction in MicroLit and Wrath-Bearing Tree. Tom and his wife, the watercolor artist Kathleen Keating, live in Massachusetts.