To Curve, Poems by Michael Daley

In To Curve by Michael Daley, memory is as vivid as life itself, and these poems move seamlessly between the past and the present. Daley deftly melds scene with sense, image with insight.

Sample Poems by Michael Daley

“These are my kind of poems. In them the ‘frail piece of human’ is given voice. Meticulously seen, luminously felt, and moving by careful measures from pain, through pain, and into joy and compassion, these poems remind us of our essential selves.”—Nance Van Winckel

“In this latest collection Michael Daley combines his knack for narrative with his compelling view of memory. His poems allow us to slow our thoughts from the frenetic pace of life in this information-blitzkrieg century—to savor the natural world, where the sunflower becomes feminine. Daley’s lines move with ease from familial relationships toward larger, more universal relationships. In To Curve history, epiphany, and fragility travel the curve together. As a son learns from his father, so the persona in these achronological, naturalistic, sonorous poems inherits the gift of prophecy: This book braids questions and answers to style a new world filled with tenderness.”—Judith Skillman

“Michael Daley has been given a lyrical memory. His calling is to use this gift to explore family and family roots. He does this with sainted humility. A pale moon in an afternoon solstice sky breaks through a week of clouds turning the day blue and Daley implodes: ‘I should never complain again.’”—Jim Bodeen

“Michael Daley shows us over and over what it means to be ‘painfully awake’ in the world. He has an uncanny eye for presenting the telling details of the present, but also for visiting the past. Not content with elegies, he brings the dead forward, listens to them again, and integrates them into the now. This is no crazy quilt of poetry, but carefully ordered swatches that form the pattern of a single poem.’”—Samuel Green

Michael Daley was born in Boston. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts and the University of Washington. After he worked as a laborer, taxi driver, waiter, tree-planter, editor, and Poet-in-the-schools, he became a high school English teacher, and later a Fulbright Exchange teacher in Hungary. Twice the National Endowment of the Humanities has awarded his work, as has the Seattle Arts Commission, Bumbershoot, and the Fessenden Foundation. In 2007 he published Way Out There: Lyrical Essays with Pleasure Boat Studio of New York. To Curve is his second collection of poetry in 25 years.

ISBN: 978-1934999196, 92 pages

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