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| Living in the Counterpoint by Michael T. Young Finishing Line Press ISBN 1-59924-870-0 Paper, $12 Release Date: January, 13, 2012 Reserve Your Copy Today! Pre-order directly from the publisher: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm |
Author Michael T. Young writes about writing Living in the Counterpoint:
These poems were written over about an 8-year period. If you’ve ever been astonished that in all the infinite amount of time, and all the endless empty and silent space in the universe, you are now alive and aware of being so, that is what my poems try to approach. All of them surfaced in the course of daily life, while sitting on the subway, sitting in a café, rising in a moment of insomnia, driving home toward the sunrise. In these moments, I find myself confronted by the question of identity in the face of loss and change -- the way the daily details render the face of who we are.
The most dominant influences while writing these poems were Stephen Dunn and Gerald Stern. I've alway admired their ability to take quite personal moments and find some concern central to simply being alive.
Praise for Living in the Counterpoint:
“Michael T. Young has crafted a metaphysics of memory in all its ache and luster. These poems pin down ghosts; finger the stirrings of nostalgia and its seeming perpetuity. Through a yearning to define those feelings most elusive, Young succeeds in unveiling them. Living in the Counterpoint coaxes introspection and haunts like a summer dusk, it is a true achievement.”
-- Benjamin Evans, Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity
“With the deftness of a magician, Michael T. Young moves us seamlessly between point and counterpoint, so seamlessly that we are almost unaware of the shifts from the living to the dead, from light to dark, near to far, and early to late. In tightly crafted gem-like poems, he contemplates fossils, diamonds, headstones, rivers, bridges, and even a slug, ultimately achieving and imparting ‘a deep knowledge of the earth.’”
-- Diane Lockward, Poet Laureate of West Caldwell, NJ
and author of Temptation by Water
From Living in the Counterpoint:
THE RISK OF LISTENING TO BRAHMS
I like action movies for the same reason
I like Brahms, or undiluted scotch
the constant flux of the sea,
or the sun’s light and heat stripped down
to raw fire, to the burning sine qui non,
like the first time I fired a gun and felt
deliriously naked and in that denuded moment,
remembered what I was chasing after when
as a teenager, without telling anyone,
I hopped on a bus for Philadelphia
and checked into the first hotel,
struggling to dodge those who knew me
to find if I wasn’t something more
than they expected, or could become
something other than they could know,
thrilled by the risk and uncertainty, the same
as when I hiked a mountain without water
on a humid summer afternoon,
trudging deeper into heat exhaustion,
the nausea stopping me every twenty feet
to gather strength from the pleasure
of wondering if I would make it home.
About the Author:
Michael T. Young has published two previous collections of poetry: the full-length Transcriptions of Daylight (Rattapallax Press, 2000), and the chapbook Because the Wind Has Questions (Somers Rocks Press, 1997). His next full-length collection, The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost, will be published by Black Coffee Press in 2013. He has received both a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a William Stafford Award, and he has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He received the Chaffin Poetry Award from the Chaffin Journal. His work has appeared in numerous journals including The Adirondack Review, Barrow Street, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Potomac Review, The Louisville Review, and The Same. His work is also included in the anthologies Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions, 2005) and Phoenix Rising (T&W, 2004). He currently lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.Reserve Your Copy Today! Pre-order directly from Finishing Line Press:
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