Players, Poems by Michael D. Riley

Michael D. Riley’s Players is full of the bounty and pathos of life itself. This expansive work, spanning a wide range of experiences and voices, melds inner and outer history into a memorable tapestry.

Sample Poems by Michael D. Riley

“This big, populous book is tribal more than personal, and Michael Riley’s players show us many lives. His poems reach into the world in surprising ways—from Bergen-Belsen to Easter Island, vaudeville to Hollywood. His many characters and voices comprehend a vision of grace, ‘the garden of humility’ where ‘We bury what we cannot bear to see / of love, then become her archeologists.’ A welcome and welcoming compendium, Players displays a refined generosity of spirit.”—David Mason

“Energetic everyman Mike Riley gives us poems aware of all the challenges of living, from the domestic, to the erotic, to the literary. Whether he writes of his mother and John Keats or a mere post office, he escorts us directly to a realm of clear, genuine emotion and bold simplicity. He always insures we are welcome in the world of the Players. With humor and candor and an inspiring awareness of all the ways poetry makes music, Riley can move us, delight us, and give us courage.”—Molly Peacock

Michael D. Riley’s first book of poems, Scrimshaw: Citizens of Bone, was published by The Lightning Tree Press in Santa Fe, NM. Circling the Stones (poems from Ireland) appeared in January 2008 from Creighton University Press. Ashore Here, a meditative collection with a seashore setting, is in production at March Street Press. He has poems in two recent anthologies, Irish American Poetry From the Eighteenth Century to the Present and Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust. His poems have appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, South Carolina Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Fiddlehead, Arizona Quarterly, and Southern Humanities Review. He is Professor of English at Penn State Berks in Reading, PA. He lives in Lancaster, PA with his canonized wife, Anne. His two grown children, Erin Beth and Devin Michael, escaped to families of their own some years ago.

ISBN: 978-1934999356, 176 pages

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