Welcome to poetryvlog.com
A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.
Michael Walsh earned a degree in Anthropology at Cleveland State University and did additional course work at John Carroll and Yale Universities. He is a collector of Native American pottery and the fossils of Paleozoic seas and forests: the impressions of primeval fern-trees, and the testimony of animals silenced by extinction. He also does research on the evolution of marine shells and contributesto building bridges between science, religion and spirituality.
Michael has published over 80 poems in anthologies and magazines, among them Mudfish, Chaminade Literary Review, North Atlantic Review and Long Island Quarterly. Michael is especially concerned with wildlife, precarious cultures worldwide, and the rescue of the human narrative. He is contributing editor to Bookmark and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Reviews
Through feats of imaginative empathy and a talent for language, Michael Walsh becomes, uncannily, his very subjects - whether they be "a swamp thing" or evolution itself. His vision teems with nature and imagery, and its spiritual urgencies often yield surprising erotic impulses.
- Diana Chang
Michael Walsh is a poet who celebrates the individual and collective journeys of all beings climbing "up the green ladders" of evolution. His passion is the great chain of life, and all his senses are alive to the wonders of octopus, frog, falcon, iris, minotaur and Greek, Stone Age man, and "Sleepy men in wilted flannel." Here is a poet unafraid of "the sweeter air of danger" his journey demands. Like one of his craft-wise hunters he makes a lure of words that compel us to follow him, whether "on pillars of air" or " buoyant in a rising sea," or to the center of the unconscious "bellowing/to the blue Aegean sky." He is indeed an "owl-eyed poet" who opens our own eyes to the great vision spinning out all around us. His work is an ambitious collection, embodying the grand design and filled with the caring spirit of the singer. To read his poems is to enter upon a high adventure.
- Georgette Preston