Exigent Futures

Synopsis

‘This book gathers together poems from four of Michael Heller’s major collections along with some new work from this remarkable poet. An air of profound elegy, loss and remembrance permeates Heller’s work. Reader’s will delight in the care and weight of this lonely, beautiful voice, and the triumphs of love in its patient recounting.’

Reviews of this Book

‘There is a classic largeness to these poems, whether of means or of reference – a consummately civilized response to our times that makes the intimate and the physical still primary despite the generalized chaos Heller movingly confronts.’ —Robert Creeley

‘… tone perfect poems – the tone, the scale, note by note, interval by interval – attack on the ‘gods of ennui and loneliness.’’ —George Oppen

‘Michael Heller’s poetry is the song of metaphysical narrative.… The generous and powerful energies in these poems track the potential transformations inhering in ‘flimsy beatitudes of order,’ whose possibilities haunt and illuminate the entire book.’ —Armand Schwerner

‘The formal and thematic tension here creates a nearly elegiac tone.… Abstract ideas are juxtaposed with imagery of earth and sea, and nature becomes a symbol of human drama – passionate, unbridled.’ —Publishers Weekly