Post by shayepoet on Sept 6, 2008 17:58:21 GMT 2
More Than Shelter
Ann E Michael
"Beatrix Gates says of Ann E. Michael's poems:
"The plot of earth she tends...is depicted in language that trails her need
to understand, witness and enter life on its own terms,
while offering a lush and fascinating vocabulary
full of love for what grows."
Sample poem:
More Than Shelter
1.
When the workmen are gone,
I walk to the unfinished house in silence.
Its angular frame emerges
from a sea of subsoil. Litter everywhere:
nails, sawblades, stubs of lumber,
coffee cups flattened into mud.
Wind coaxes leaves from poplars,
soughs and shivers along the bracing.
2.
In rubble amid the woodlot
I find the fox's dwelling place, not a burrow
but a collection of fallen logs, rocks, dirt:
rubbish claimed and used for housing,
marking this area for the fox.
In russet foliage amid the small wild fruits of autumn,
a veery rustles anxiously in the brush.
3.
For years I've walked these paths,
admired the long slope to the damp hollow,
how sky spreads above ash and oak,
sky with a hawk in it.
Tall grass flattened where the deer bed down,
turkey feathers on clover. Litter:
scat and fur and leavings.
I want to stay; though I've lost the ability
to bed down amid the milkweed,
to eat clover, to taste the hard, sour berries--
to live upon this land and
accept its consequences.
Review for More Than Shelter:
"....It could be, as the Buddhists say, that peace begins in the heart of every man and woman. Peace, then, could begin with a poem. Consider Ann E. Michael, with her gentle drawing in images of nature and herself, putting you, the reader, into it. Consider this world where everything is slowed to a snail's pace and slower, an observant world. Contemplation is peace and this is resonant in her poems..."
--Janet Mason, Philadelphia Poets
On-Line Essays by Ann E Michael:
Poemeleon: The Eye and the Page
Visual Cues: Typography's Potential in the Prose Poem
Triplopia: Reason (Volume VI, Issue 3)
Context, Structure and Transformation: Is Poetry Conceptual Art?
Mothering: Natural Family Living
Unplugged Vacations: Taking Teens on a Family Vacation to the Middle of Nowhere
Poemeleon: The Eye and the Page
Visual Cues: Typography's Potential in the Prose Poem
Triplopia: Reason (Volume VI, Issue 3)
Context, Structure and Transformation: Is Poetry Conceptual Art?
Mothering: Natural Family Living
Unplugged Vacations: Taking Teens on a Family Vacation to the Middle of Nowhere
About the author:
Ann E. Michael is a poet, essayist, librettist and educator who lives in Eastern Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and is a rostered Artist-in-Education with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in newspapers, family magazines, poetry anthologies, educational
and academic publications as well as on radio. She has teaching experience with students from middle school through graduate school; in academic and workshop/seminar settings, she has instructed poetry, personal essay, memoir, radio commentary, creative writing and basic composition. Currently, she is the writing coordinator for the Academic Resources Center at DeSales University in Center Valley, PA.
Ann E. Michael's chapbooks of poems include More than Shelter, (available from Spire Press), The Minor Fauna (available from Finishing Line Press), and Small Things Rise and Go (available from FootHills Publishing).
Website: www.annemichael.com/
ORRT: www.orrt.org/michael/
ISBN 0-9740701-3-0, 27 pages, $7.95
Spire Press, 2004
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