Celestial Joyride
In these poems of taut clarity, craft, and texture, Michael Waters continues his bold exploration of sensual pleasure and moral transgression as means of affirming spiritual faith. Just as a joyride suggests recklessness and exhilaration, so Celestial Joyride is an energized journey marked by spiritual recklessness in the face of perpetual mortality. Compelling, musical narratives offer rich meaning and vivid consequence.
Michael Waters's poetry books include BOA Editions titles Gospel Night, Darling Vulgarity, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Parthenopi, finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. He teaches at Monmouth University and in the Drew University MFA Program.
Michael Waters’ books of poetry include BOA Editions titles Gospel Night (2011), Darling Vulgarity (2006—finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001—finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize), as well as Bountiful (1992), The Burden Lifters (1989), and Anniversary of the Air (1985) from Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has co-edited several anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003). Shoestring Press in the UK published Selected Poems in 2011. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, and Rolling Stone. In 2004, he chaired the Poetry panel for the National Book Award. The recipient of five Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Waters teaches at Monmouth University and in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation.
