Caw

by Michael Waters

Overview

In passionate poems about sin, obsession, and mortality—an artist’s infatuation with a doll, an interspecies relationship, an ex-lover whose presence lingers in recipes, ecclesiastical birds, and a sex toy holding a loved one’s ashes—Waters delivers impeccably crafted narratives infused with his signature lyrical gestures. At the book’s core is a sequence of twenty-five poems on aging, dementia, and caregiving, chiseled phrase by phrase toward unflinching and memorable closure. Caw is a brilliant, intimate and moving addition to Waters’s body of work and may be his most powerful collection yet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950774128
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Series:	American Poets Continuum Series , #181
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael Waters is the author of twelve previous books of poems & editor/co-editor of six anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). His recent books include The Dean of Discipline (Universityof Pittsburgh Press, 2018) Celestial Joyride (BOA Editions, 2016) & the anthologies Border Lines (Knopf, 2020) & Reel Verse (Knopf, 2019). His book Darling Vulgarity (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize & Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Rolling Stone & American Poetry Review. He has taught at Ohio University, Salisbury University(MD), Bucknell University(PA), Monmouth University(NJ) & The Universityof Athens (Greece). Widely traveled, he has spent time in numerous countries, including Romania, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Iraq, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Tobago, Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Turkey & Belize. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellow & 2007 Fulbright Fellow, recipient of five Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & NJ State Council on the Arts, & residency fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), St. James Cavaliere Centre (Malta) & Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), Waters lives without a cell phone in Ocean, NJ with poet & translator Mihaela Moscaliuc.

Read an Excerpt

ONE CAW

Against the snow they’re silhouettes,
These crows, how many hundreds
Burdening branches, these
Blunt-scissors-&-construction-paper
Kindergarten cut-outs, these
Rorschach blots, sloppy calligraphy,
Or jagged wounds, the sky torn,
But not political, if that’s possible.
Then a blast scatters the murder
& any direction they flee is wrong.
Smoke on the hillside. The soldier
Stares, rifle tensed on one shoulder.
He’s looking me over, wondering who I am.
I’ve seen this scene in films, Russian novels,
Old Master oils, Pathé newsreels.
Or on CNN—smoke in the city,
Schoolchildren scattered among rubble—
If that’s possible—or blue sky, shade trees,
Suburban sprawl. The police car stops.
The boy stares. How many hundreds.
One caw, then silence.
Something horrible about to happen.

Table of Contents

Self-Portrait with Doll (1920-21) 17

Swyve 18

Dearest Creature 19

Pileta Cave 20

Good Riddance Chicken 21

Spelling Lesson 22

Scientific American 23

Vs. 24

Bohemians 26

Sherry 27

One Last Beat 28

Mother of flames 31

The book of names 35

Dementia dawn 36

Domestic disturbance 37

Ashkenazi 38

White flight 39

Minecraft 40

Sequins 41

Thanksgiving 42

Texts 43

Primer 44

Twenty questions 45

Grocery list 47

Staff 48

Game room 49

Dimes 50

R 51

Reality show 52

Crooner 53

Sundowning 54

Family 55

Criminal 56

Meds 57

Icon 58

Aura 59

Avian elegy 60

Red-Billed Firefinch 63

Luke 23:41 64

Electric Fence 65

The Wall 66

American Pastoral 68

One Caw 69

Aokigahara 70

Song of Absence 71

Good Dead Person 72

Ashes 73

Postscript to Ashes 75

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (1897) 76

Nobody's Poem 78

Notes 81

Acknowledgments 85

About the Author 87

Colophon 96

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The Dean of Discipline (2018)

“He tempers in his latest collection a delight in wit and wordplay with a rigorous prosodic training honed and refined throughout a long and distinguished career… A voluptuary of style… Michael Waters is the ablest poet of an able generation.”
—Floyd Collins, The Gettysburg Review

“The Dean of Discipline’s absorbing subject is the making of art, showing and teaching us a poet’s meticulous and raucous devotion so that we gain a sound and sense of how poems are, in fact, created… Waters’s work assumes a divine erotic presence even in his most harrowing poems.”
—Judith Vollmer, The Georgia Review

Celestial Joyride (2016)

“The consistency of his work over the past thirty years has contributed greatly to American letters, and his unique voice within the poetry world illuminates, with precision and clarity, the intricate nature of the human condition.”
—Esteban Rodríguez, American Book Review

“Waters stands among the best American poets writing today.”
—Roberto Bonazzi, San Antonio Express-News

Editorial Reviews

The Dean of Discipline (2018)

“He tempers in his latest collection a delight in wit and wordplay with a rigorous prosodic training honed and refined throughout a long and distinguished career… A voluptuary of style… Michael Waters is the ablest poet of an able generation.”
—Floyd Collins, The Gettysburg Review

“The Dean of Discipline’s absorbing subject is the making of art, showing and teaching us a poet’s meticulous and raucous devotion so that we gain a sound and sense of how poems are, in fact, created… Waters’s work assumes a divine erotic presence even in his most harrowing poems.”
—Judith Vollmer, The Georgia Review

Celestial Joyride (2016)

“The consistency of his work over the past thirty years has contributed greatly to American letters, and his unique voice within the poetry world illuminates, with precision and clarity, the intricate nature of the human condition.”
—Esteban Rodríguez, American Book Review

“Waters stands among the best American poets writing today.”
—Roberto Bonazzi, San Antonio Express-News

From the Publisher