Michael Harty, one of
my students in the KC area master workshop, will be featured with Walter Bargen,
former Missouri Poet Laureate, at the Thomas Zvi Wilson reading 6 pm on April
19, Johnson County Central Resource Library, 9875 W 87th St, Overland Park, KS
66212.
Harty’s tight-knit poems
are full of details, always honed to a purpose, as in this poem:
Later
Vision
In the
end we just get tired
of keeping
things straight
when time
insists on folding
back on
itself like a tissue pattern
pinned
today to some petrofiber
as
yesterday to woven wool.
All day
in our minds we hear
old songs
new-written for today:
as it is
in dreams, when we see ninety
and
twenty at once, smooth faces
overlaid
on those long ruined.
The
cataracted eye sees
through the
ceremonial wall
dividing was from what-could-have-been.
Michael Harty lives and works in Prairie Village, a suburb
of Kansas City. He has had a long career as a psychologist and psychoanalyst.
He started publishing poetry in 2005. They appear in New Litters, Kansas City
Voices Amoskeag, San Pedro River
Review, Coal City Review, Texas Poetry Calendar Midwest Quarterly,1-70 Review, The
Lyric, and others. Two have been nominated for Pushcart prizes, and he
won the 2015 2015 Anne Dittrick Sonnet Writing Contest. His chapbook The Statue
Game is available online: michaelharty.com
© 2014 Michael Harty. Reprinted
with permission and
Poet Ross Gay described his third collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude as a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it. “This is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard,” he said, “those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.” Gay hopes his exploration of gardening and planting will intrigue readers who ordinarily might not reach for a poetry book. . . . and thank you to the man all night long / hosing a mist on his early-bloomed / peach tree so that the hard frost / not waste the crop, the ice / in his beard and the ghosts / lifting from him when the warming sun / told him sleep now; thank you . . . “These poems are shout outs to earth’s abundance: the fruits, blooms, meals, insects, waters, conversations, trees, embraces, and helping hands—the taken-for-granted wonders that make life worth living, even in the face of death,” said Evie Schockley in praise of Gay’s work. “Lyric and narrative, elegy and epithalamion, intoxicated and intoxicating—expansive, but breathlessly uttered, urgent. Ross Gay has much to say to you—yes, dear reader, you—and you definitely want to hear it.” Aimee Nezhukumatathil commented, “Gay offers up a muscled poetry of a thousand surprises, giving us a powerful collection that fireworks even the bleakest nights with ardency and grace. Few contemporary poets risk singing such a singular compassion for the wounded world with this kind of inimitable musicality, intelligence, and intoxicating joy.”
.jpg)
Maryfrances Wagner has taught creative and academic writing for over twenty years, taught workshops at all levels, served as President of The Writers Place and is currently chair of TWP Programming Committee and board secretary for KC Creates. She is co-editor of I-70 Review and co-edited Whirlybird Anthology of Greater Kansas City Writers. She has published six collections to include Salvatore's Daughter, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award winner for literary excellence), Light Subtracts Itself (A KC Star Notable book of the year), and Dioramas. She has edited or co-edited three anthologies and also served as co-editor of New Letters Review of Books.
