An Individual History describes the fears, anger, and guilt personal, familial, societal, political, and historical that comprise a life. The figure of the speaker s maternal grandmother who was institutionalized for five decades serves as an overriding metaphor for this haunting, bold new work by an essential American poet. from An Individual History This was before the time of lithium and Zoloft before mood stabilizers and anxiolytics and almost all the psychotropic drugs, but not before thorazine, which the suicide O Laughlin called handcuffs for the mind. It was before, during, and after the time of atomic fallout, Auschwitz, the Nakba, DDT, and you could take water cures, find solace in quarantines, participate in shunnings, or stand at Lourdes among the canes and crutches."

Think of a time when you've feigned courage to make a friend, feigned forgiveness to keep one, or feigned indifference to simply stay out of it. What does it mean for our intimacies to fail us when we need them most? The poems of this collection explore such everyday dualities-how the human need for attachment is as much a source of pain as of vitality and how our longing for transcendence often leads to sinister complicities. The title poem tells the conflicted and devastating story of the poet's friendship with the now-disgraced Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, interweaving fragments of his parents' funerals, which the Bishop concelebrated, with memories of his childhood spiritual leanings and how they were disrupted by a pedophilic priest the Bishop failed to protect him from. This meditation on spiritual life, physical death, and betrayal is joined by an array of poised, short lyrics and expansive prose poems exploring how the terror and unpredictability of our era intrudes on our most intimate moments. Whether Collier is writing about an airline disaster, Huey Newton's trial, Thomas Jefferson's bees, a piano in the woods, or his own fraught friendship with the disgraced Catholic Bishop, his syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail, and flawless ear bring the felt-and sometimes frightening-dimensions of the mundane to life. Throughout, this collection pursues a quiet but ferocious need to get to the bottom of things.

Whether Michael Collier is writing about an airline disaster, a friendship with a disgraced Catholic bishop, his father's encounter with Charles Lindbergh, Lebanese beekeepers, a mother's sewing machine, or a piano in the woods, he does so with the syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail, and flawless ear that has made him one of America's most distinguished poets. These poems cross expanses, connecting the fear of missing love and the bliss of holding it, the ways we speak to ourselves and language we use with others, and deep personal grief and shadows of world history. The Missing Mountain brings together a lifetime of work, chronicling Collier's long and distinguished career as a poet and teacher. These selections, both of previously published and new poems, chart the development of Collier's art and the cultivations of is passions and concerns.

The Greek Tragedy in New Translations series is based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves, or who work in collaboration with poets, can properly re-create the celebrated and timeless tragedies of the great Greek writers. These new translations are more than faithful to the original text, going beyond the literal meaning in order to evoke the poetic intensity and rich metaphorical texture of the Greek language.
Euripides was one of the most popular and controversial of all the Greek tragedians, and his plays are marked by an independence of thought, ingenious dramatic devices, and a subtle variety of register and mood. Medea, is a story of betrayal and vengeance. Medea, incensed that her husband Jason would leave her for another after the many sacrifices she has made for him, murders both his new bride and their own children in revenge. It is an excellent example of the prominence and complexity that Euripides gave to female characters. This new translation does full justice to the lyricism of Euripides original work, while a new introduction provides a guide to the play, complete with interesting details about the traditions and social issues that influenced Euripides's world.

This is an anthology of irreverence and humor in the hands of our best poets. Can serious poetry be funny? Chaucer and Shakespeare would say yes, and so do the authors of these 187 poems that address timeless concerns but that also include comic elements. Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, ""Seriously Funny"" ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness. Most of the selections were made in the editors' battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they'd set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn't driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it. Readers will find a true generosity in these poems, an eagerness to share ideas and emotions and also to entertain. The singer Ali Farka Toure said that honey is never good when it's only in one mouth, and the editors of ""Seriously Funny"" hope its readers find much to share with others.

"Michael Collier's book is refreshing in its refusal to push for one particular aesthetic. He regards his own preference for realism over abstraction as more a matter of temperament than of considered judgment, and respects poets more skeptical than he is about the ability of poetry to connect with the world. The result is an engaging record of his influences and enthusiasms, which are wide enough to include both Whitman and Larkin, both Jorge Borges and William Maxwell."--Carl Dennis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Unknown Friends" and "Practical Gods" "Michael Collier combines pietas and wildness in these essays on poetry as inheritance, and poetry as struggle. One feels the young man in his 'rampage of literature, ' and the older writer reflecting on an art that is at once personal and impersonal, deeply matured in the imagination. This is a wise and well-lived book."--Rosanna Warren, author of "Departure" and "Stained Glass" "The essays and remembrances in "Make Us Wave Back" radiate Michael Collier's characteristic insight and sagacity on every page. Clear-minded, ardent, brightly illuminating the art of poetry, this is as lucid as writing about writing gets."--Campbell McGrath, author of "Pax Atomica" and "Florida Poems" National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Michael Collier explores the influences that have made him one of the most distinguished poets of his generation. "Make Us Wave Back" includes essays on an expansive list of subjects, among them the literary correspondence of William Maxwell; the meaning of the author's own role as poet laureate of the state of Maryland; the journals of Louise Bogan and how they reveal Bogan's struggle with her own personal fears aswell as the reconstruction of herself as a writer; and many more.Michael Collier is Professor of English and Codirector of the creative writing program at the University of Maryland. He is also director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is the author of several books of poems, including "The Clasp and Other Poems, The Folded Heart," and "The Ledge,"

The San Andreas Fault is the most famous fault on Earth, running nearly the entire length of western California from just north of the Mexican border to the Mendocino coast. It is a very active tectonic boundary which directly affects the lives of more than twenty million people. The San Andreas Fault has been responsible for shaping much that is beautiful about California, and it also has the capacity to destroy the communities that lie along its course. "A Land in Motion" provides a geologic tour of the San Andreas Fault in an accessible narrative punctuated with dramatic color illustrations, lively anecdotes, and authoritative information about earthquakes.
As he tours the length of the fault, Michael Collier provides a valuable overview of plate tectonics and gives a geologic history of the San Andreas Fault written for non-scientists. He discusses the evolution of seismology as a science and traces the knowledge that scientists have gleaned about earthquakes and plate tectonics from their work on the San Andreas Fault. Collier looks into human history as well, discussing major earthquakes that have hit the San Andreas, including the famous San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the San Fernando quake of 1971, the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, the Landers quake of 1992, and many lesser temblors.
Collier illustrates his text with magnificent photographs that highlight some of the most beloved landscapes in California. He provides excellent views of the fault throughout the state--of Crystal Springs reservoir near San Francisco, of Pinnacles National Monument east of Monterey, of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco, and more.
Collier concludes his tour of the San Andreas Fault with a provocative discussion on earthquake prediction versus earthquake planning that all Californians--and all who live where earthquakes occur--will want to read.

The award-winning poet Michael Collier's elegiac fifth collection is haunted by spectral figures and a strange, vivid chorus of birds: From a cardinal that crashes into a window to a gathering of turkey vultures, Collier engages birds as myth-makers and lively messengers, carrying memories from lost friends. The mystery of death and the vital absence it creates are the real subjects of the book. Collier juxtaposes moments of quotidian revelation, like waking to the laughing sounds of bird song, with the drama of Greek tragedy, taking on voices from Medea. As Vanity Fair praised, his poems "tread nimbly between moments of everyday transcendence and spiritual pining."

William Maxwell, who died in July 2000, was revered as one of the twentieth century's great American writers and a longtime fiction editor at "The New Yorker." Now writers who knew Maxwell and were inspired by him both the man and his work offer intimate essays, most specifically written for this volume, that "bring him back to life, right there in front of us." Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel "So Long, See You Tomorrow"; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell's kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist."

Michael Collier's much acclaimed fourth collection of poetry poises experience on the ledge between the everyday and the unknown. In THE LEDGE, the poems are narrative and colloquial, musical and crystalline, at once intimate and sharp-edged. The world is rendered beautifully mysterious as the poems slide into unexpected emotional territory. The artistry and directness of THE LEDGE confirm Collier's place among the most significant poets of his generation.

"Michael Collier's book is refreshing in its refusal to push for one particular aesthetic. He regards his own preference for realism over abstraction as more a matter of temperament than of considered judgment, and respects poets more skeptical than he is about the ability of poetry to connect with the world. The result is an engaging record of his influences and enthusiasms, which are wide enough to include both Whitman and Larkin, both Jorge Borges and William Maxwell."--Carl Dennis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Unknown Friends" and "Practical Gods" "Michael Collier combines pietas and wildness in these essays on poetry as inheritance, and poetry as struggle. One feels the young man in his 'rampage of literature, ' and the older writer reflecting on an art that is at once personal and impersonal, deeply matured in the imagination. This is a wise and well-lived book."--Rosanna Warren, author of "Departure" and "Stained Glass" "The essays and remembrances in "Make Us Wave Back" radiate Michael Collier's characteristic insight and sagacity on every page. Clear-minded, ardent, brightly illuminating the art of poetry, this is as lucid as writing about writing gets."--Campbell McGrath, author of "Pax Atomica" and "Florida Poems" National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Michael Collier explores the influences that have made him one of the most distinguished poets of his generation. "Make Us Wave Back" includes essays on an expansive list of subjects, among them the literary correspondence of William Maxwell; the meaning of the author's own role as poet laureate of the state of Maryland; the journals of Louise Bogan and how they reveal Bogan's struggle with her own personal fears aswell as the reconstruction of herself as a writer; and many more.Michael Collier is Professor of English and Codirector of the creative writing program at the University of Maryland. He is also director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is the author of several books of poems, including "The Clasp and Other Poems, The Folded Heart," and "The Ledge,"

No one in America would deny that the weather has changed drastically in our lifetime. We read about El Nino and La Nina, but how many of us really understand the big picture beyond our own front windows or even the headlines on the Weather Channel? Hydrologists and climatologists have long been aware of the role of regional climate in predicting floods and understanding droughts. But with our growing sense of a variable climate, it is important to reassess these natural disasters not as isolated events but as related phenomena. This book shows that floods and droughts don't happen by accident but are the products of patterns of wind, temperature, and precipitation that produce meteorologic extremes. It introduces the mechanics of global weather, puts these processes into the longer-term framework of climate, and then explores the evolution of climatic patterns through time to show that floods and droughts, once considered isolated "acts of God," are often related events driven by the same forces that shape the entire atmosphere. Michael Collier and Robert Webb offer a fresh, insightful look at what we know about floods, droughts, and climate variability--and their impact on people--in an easy-to-read text, with dramatic photos, that assumes no previous understanding of climate processes. They emphasize natural, long-term mechanisms of climate change, explaining how floods and droughts relate to climate variability over years and decades. They also show the human side of some of the most destructive weather disasters in history. As Collier and Webb ably demonstrate, "climate" may not be the smooth continuum of meteorologic possibilities we supposed but rather the sum of multiple processes operating both regionally and globally on different time scales. Amid the highly politicized discussion of our changing environment, "Floods, Droughts, and Climate Change" offers a straightforward scientific account of weather crises that can help students and general readers better understand the causes of climate variability and the consequences for their lives.

Since issuing its first volumes in 1959, the Wesleyan poetry program has challenged the reigning aesthetic of the time and profoundly influenced the development of American poetry. One of the country's oldest programs, its greatest achievement has been the publication of early works by yet undiscovered poetry who have since become major awarded Pulitzer and Bollingen prizes, National Book Awards, and many other honors. At a time when other programs are being phased out, Wesleyan takes this opportunity to celebrate its distinguished history and reaffirm its commitment to poetry with publication of The Wesleyan Tradition.
Drawing from some 250 volumes, editor Michael Collier documents the wide-ranging impact of these works. In his introduction, he describes the literary and cultural context of American poetics in more recent decades, tracing the evolution of the Deep Image and Confessional movements of the 50s and 60s, and exploring the emergence of the "prose lyric" style. Although the success of the Wesleyan program has inspired its share of imitators, no other program has had such a fundamental impact. Works by the eighty-six poets included her both document and celebrate that contribution.

An Individual History describes the fears, anger, and guilt-personal, familial, societal, political, and historical-that comprise a life. The figure of the speaker's maternal grandmother who was institutionalized for five decades serves as an overriding metaphor for this haunting, bold new work by an essential American poet. from "An Individual History" This was before the time of lithium and Zoloft before mood stabilizers and anxiolytics and almost all the psychotropic drugs, but not before thorazine, which the suicide O'Laughlin called "handcuffs for the mind." It was before, during, and after the time of atomic fallout, Auschwitz, the Nakba, DDT, and you could take water cures, find solace in quarantines, participate in shunnings, or stand at Lourdes among the canes and crutches.