Poems that depict the reality of life in rural America.Angel Sharpening its Beak, Michael McGriff’s fifth collection, searches for meaning at the intersection of surrealism, place, and poverty in rural America. From long sequences to dense enigmatic sketches, the poems gathered here honor the inner lives and daily encounters of those surviving, working, and seeking joy at the margins of contemporary life.
Michael McGriffis the author of five poetry collections, including
Eternal Sentences, Early Hour, Home Burial,and
Dismantling the Hills.His other books include the linked story collection
Our Secret Life in the Movies(coauthored with J.M. Tyree); an edition of David Wevill’s essential writing,
To Build My Shadow a Fire; and a translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s
The Sorrow Gondola.He co-directs the creative writing program at the University of Idaho.
"Angel Sharpening its Beakis a sublime book of gathering darkness. Vaporous and seductive, Michael McGriff’s poetry documents the richness and cruelty of American life, in which the perfectly rendered image is the only stay against death, against forgetting: 'Thunderheads stack above the crow / whose reflection crosses / the oiled skin of my coffee / while it cools in my hands.' In their embrace of winter, their courtship of oblivion, McGriff’s new poems are dangerously beautiful."
"Angel Sharpening its Beakpaints the whole, unseen, desolate town that Keats invokes in 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.' After the ardent young lovers and before truth and beauty, there is everyone else, with their river and sea, dike and field, woodstove, blue tarp, burn pile, pill bottles, and broken animals. In a voice that is both knife-sharp and mystic, Michael McGriff does not spare the pastoral, but takes it to the altar and asks why it should continue to live. The answer is laced like veins l£
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