Carpe Diem: New and Selected Poems
Carpe Diem: New and Selected Poems
Michael Perkins
126 pages. $14.95.
Publication date: August 2011.
Available at The Golden Notebook, Woodstock, NY and above, online.
Since Homer, poetry has been at the center of literary culture because it spoke to people of their lives—of love, death, and the natural world—and it did so in memorable language. No longer. Some time ago poets turned their backs on the general audience, and began to talk exclusively to each other; or, in many cases, to themselves. They forgot their duty to language: having nothing to say, they mumbled in code.
As a neophobe, Michael Perkins has never paid attention to what was trendy. He has written in plain, direct lines, employing the traditional resources of verse, finding often startling metaphors to address the eternal subjects of poetry. In brief, melodic poems in a variety of voices, he is celebratory, elegiacal, and wry. Over the years his poems have appeared in leading literary journals like The Notre Dame Review, The Nation, Talisman, and Big Bridge.
Now, in Carpe Diem: New and Selected Poems, he shares his best work—published over four decades—with new readers. These masterful poems have won the attention of poetry lovers and the admiration of fellow poets.
Praise for The Persistence of Desire
“I love this book—the steadiness of intent, the dear regard the fabled love, the sweet sensuous love and then cold regard for mortality.”
Janine Pommy Vega
Praise for The Gift of Choice
“It is a beautiful collection and one grows fonder of Sam from page to page.”
Robert Starer
About Michael Perkins
Michael Perkins is the author of six collections of poetry. The Secret Record, literary criticism, was published by William Morrow in 1976. Among his other works of fiction and non-fiction are the novels Evil Companions, Dark Matter, and Burn. His poems and essays have appeared in The Village Voice, Younger Critics of North America, The Nation, Mother Jones, Paper, Notre Dame Review, Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, Talisman, Rain Taxi, and American Book Review. He was the Leydig Trust’s Writer of the Year in Great Britain in 2002; and he is a recipient of the 2007 Obelisk Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the 1957 Dunbar Poetry Prize.
