Gospel Night
ISBN: 9781934414668
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / BOA Editions Ltd.
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature;

Serious passions, homages and memories, scenes described with anger or affection, crop up throughout this 10th volume from the New Jersey-based Waters (Darling Vulgarity), whose string of honors stretches back to the 1970s. Waters excels at stark-eyed, honest elegies-for an influential teacher who killed himself; for Johnny Cash; and for the poet's own father-all rendered in the strong free verse that is Waters's signature. Travel poems visit Costa Rica, Malta, and where Waters's wife grew up, Romania. The austerity of her childhood informs the heartbreaking "Beloved," where Mihaela, in her teens, reads Ethan Frome. She reappears in his poems of erotic love, which at their best move outward from the human body to the natural world, "To bluebells, foxglove, tawny daylilies-/ Ink-dry ampoule, spongy stylus, blunt nib/ That waxed ecstatic for the Beloved!" Waters finds self-confidence in such scenes, such symbols; there are also "swollen, blackened, almost/ Otherworldly cherries./ Their bleached pits will light our path." He is a poet of detail, but also one of directness, pursuing strong feeling wherever it dives or climbs. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Michael Waters: Michael Waters teaches at Monmouth University and in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. He is Professor Emeritus at Salisbury University in Maryland. His eight books of poems include Darling Vulgarity (2006--finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001--finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize), Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (1997)--these titles from BOA Editions--Bountiful (1992), The Burden Lifters (1989), and Anniversary of the Air (1985)--these titles from Carnegie Mellon UP. He has also edited and co-edited several volumes, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and Perfect in the Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois UP, 2003). The recipient of a fellowship in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and four Pushcart Prizes, he has been Visiting Professor of American Literature at the University of Athens, Greece, Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College, Stadler Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University, Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Wichita State University, Core Faculty member in the New England College MFA Program, and Fulbright Scholar in American Studies at Al. I Cuza University in Iasi, Romania. He lives in Ocean, New Jersey with his wife, Mihaela Moscaliuc, and their son, Fabian.

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