UI Press | Michael S. Harper | Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems

Songlines in Michaeltree

New and Collected Poems

Awards and Recognition:

• Stephen Henderson Award, African American Literature and Culture Society (AALCS), 2013
• Author is a recipient of the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, Poetry Society of America, 2008

Songlines in Michaeltree is the long-awaited collected poems--with the sparkling addition of some new ones--of one of America's most revered poets.

Hailed by critics as a distinctive and powerful presence in contemporary American poetry, Michael S. Harper is an artist and a truth teller who tempers his astonishing technical virtuosity with a compassionate and healing vision. A keen observer and a potent commentator, Harper calls a complacent society vigorously to account while cradling the wounded and remembering the lost. Calling Harper "one of the finest poets of our time . . . [and] one of the most human and humane,"

George Cuomo of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle observed, "Harper's poetry has drawn its vitality from the incredible energy of his language and the honesty of his perceptions." Songlines in Michaeltree is a magnificent celebration of Harper's continuing, unstinting gifts.

"The songlines in this collection are rootlines back to the best poems of thirty-plus years, and new shoots and branches greening the new season of Michael S. Harper's poetic project. . . . Songlines in Michaeltree reminds us of how boldly he explores the outer reaches of love and grievance, so that he might find the fresher pitches, fresher phrasings, of a love supreme--peace on earth."--Robert B. Stepto

Michael S. Harper, University Professor and professor of English at Brown University, is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Dear John, Dear Coltrane, Honorable Amendments, Images of Kin, and History Is Your Own Heartbeat. He has been honored with the Melville Cane Award of the Poetry Society of America, the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and the Robert Hayden Poetry Award, among others.

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