Poetry by Michael Heller

November 1, 1989 • 6 x 9 • 96 pages • 978-0-918273-58-1

“Michael Heller’s poetry is the song of metaphysical narrative. In his work the speculative ambiguities of epistemology modulate productively with faceted concretions of felt life. The generous and powerful energies in these poems track the potential transformations inhering in ‘flimsy beatitudes of order,’ (from the title poem) whose possibilities haunt and illuminate the entire book.” —Armand Schwerner

Reviews

“There is a classic largeness to these poems, whether of means or of reference—a consummately civilzed response to our time that makes the intimate and the physical still primary despite the generalizing chaos Heller confronts so movingly.” —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. In his work the speculative ambiguities of epistemology modulate productively with faceted concretions of felt life. The generous and powerful energies in these poems track the potential transformations inhering in ‘flimsy beatitudes of order,’ (from the title poem) whose possibilities haunt and illuminate the entire book.” —Armand Schwerner

“Michael Heller brings an inspiring and lovely clarity to these poems whose practice ranges between the poles of rigorous philosophical articulation and sensuous physical image. But no matter their method, this work reveals a poet who is always grappling with art’s ultimate problem: the ordering of the chaotic world to its latent human orders. A problem Heller often dramatically and movingly solves, at least for the moment, in the luminous spaces of these pages.” —Hugh Seidman