Michael Magee: Crowed
Crowed should be read slowly and luxuriously for each poem is deeply layered and
gorgeously told in stunning language. The subject matter is varied and intriguing, from
encounters with birds to travels through Ireland and backthrough history. Each poem is a
delight. In its entirety, the book is a wonder.
—Maggie Kennedy, author of The Unraveling Script
Road to Galway
Five miles from the city it begins to rain,
I walk the soft margin of the road
with my stick to lean on for a walking cane
past caravans and trails of gypsy camps,
the laundry hung out in waves to dry.
I’ve come from Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee
and am haunted not so much by Yeats
as blind Raftery and dead Mary Hynes.
So the rain is no sorrow to me today,
but I bear the weather as a brother,
the sight of the bay is enough for now.
A few children playing by the road stare
at my army raincoat, tweed cap and wildflowers
like a man who has found his way home
from the pub after too many hours.
And I enter old Galway near Claddagh Quay
towards the dock and the bay where a woman
at Stella’s Café directs me to No. 19.
There an Irish Spencer Tracy lets me in
brings my wet things for the line
and I feel my breath coming back to me
like swans on the tide.
Crowed is Michael Magee’s 5th collection published my MoonPath Press; his others are
Shiny Things, Terra Firma, How We Move Toward Light, and Cinders of My Better Angels. Michael’s poems
reflect his interest in nature, theatre, music, literature, and travel. His mentors and friends have
been David Wagoner, Ben Drake, and William Matchett, professors emeriti at the University of
Washington. His musical influences include: Franz Liszt, Chopin, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen,
Marianne Faithfull, and Townes Van Zandt. New work appears in Open Book: Western Washington Poets
Network Anthology and Cirque. He conducts writing workshops and appears on KTAH FM
RadioTacoma, VerseDaily.Org, and The Writer’s Almanac.
Visit Michael's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Michael's collection from your favorite retailer:
Jed Myers: Can’t Be Far
Can’t Be Far is part memory, part prayer, part biblical allusion, part news report, part
history, part eulogy, part road trip, part slow dance across the universe. The stars might
show an “immense lack of tenderness,” but Myers never falters as he resurrects “the
golden expanse / of forsaken instants we didn’t note.” From the amusements of childhood
to the rubble of destruction, these poems invite us into his twitching, kicking, shimmering
world—buckle up and enjoy the ride.
—Jane Medved, author of Wayfarers
Morning Glory and Ivy
In these hills where near all the tongues are
green, you’ll hear a long-winded chatter,
lively even through the dark hours,
if you walk your ears out this far,
into green various as the dialects
crossing the station platforms of the air,
green luminous in the pond reed banners,
purpled in the pennyroyal rabble on the banks,
sheened in the moss pelts trunk to root
where the heavens’ blues slant through
the high-slung scaffolds’ magnesium greened
ranks—it’s the drumroll-sung
speech of the leaves in their gusty unrest.
I dream you’re standing here in the slow green
fire of the earth’s breath, dressed in morning
glory and ivy, beside me once more
while the iron-red world takes a century
deciding if it should devour itself
completely, airstrike by plague by tsunami,
or let our hilltop green ark float past.
Jed Myers serves as editor for the online journal Bracken, participates in the music-and-poetry ensemble
Band of Poets, helps arrange and performs in benefits for World Central Kitchen, and plays in
Easy Speak’s house band known as The 52nd Street Band. Can’t Be Far, Myers’s fourth full-length
collection, was a finalist for the MoonPath Press Sally Albiso Award. His previous collection,
Learning to Hold, won the Wandering Aengus Press Editors’ Award. His other books are
The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center
Book Award), and six chapbooks. Currently retired from his therapy practice, Myers writes, makes
music, and walks in the nearby wetlands along the
Lake Washington shore.
Visit Jed's page at MoonPathPress.com
Purchase Jed's collection from your favorite retailer:
