Kirjahaku

WINNER OF THE 2007 AGNES LYNCH STARRETT POETRY PRIZEDismantling the Hills is a testament to working-class, rural American life. In a world of machinists, loggers, mill workers, and hairdressers, the poems collected here bear witness to a landscape, an industry, and a people teetering on the edge of ruin. From tightly constructed narratives to expansive and surreal meditations, the various styles in this book not only reflect the poet's range, but his willingness to delve into his obsessions from countless angles Full of despair yet never self-loathing, full of praise yet never nostalgic, Dismantling the Hills is both ode and elegy. McGriff's vision of blue-collar life is one of complication and contradiction, and the poems he makes are authentic, unwavering, and unapologetically American.

A lyricist at heart, McGriff is a masterful maker of metaphor.--Third CoastThere is majestic beauty in these descriptions, and it is clear that McGriff honors this place as a place--not as mere setting, but as a distinct element of his verse.--Gently Read LiteratureMichael McGriff's second full-length collection explores interior landscapes and illustrates life in a rural community in the Pacific Northwest. Whether tender or hard-hitting, McGriff juxtaposes natural images of deep forests, creeks, coyotes, and crows against the harsher oil-grease realities of blue-collar life, creating poems that read like folk tales about the people working in grain mills, forests, and factories.New CivilianThe new law says you can abandon your childin an emergency room, no questions asked. The young fathercarries the sleeping boythrough the hospital doors.Later, alone, parked at the boat basin, he takes a knife from his pocket, cuts an unfiltered cigarette in two, lights the longer half in his mouth.He was a medic in the war.In his basement are five bronze eaglesthat once adorned the wallsof a dictator's palace.Michael McGriff attended the University of Oregon; the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in creative writing; and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow. He is the co-founding editor and publisher of Tavern Books and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

It's McGriff's] language that keeps you reading along, transfixed.--New York Times Book ReviewA lyricist at heart, McGriff is a masterful maker of metaphor. --Third CoastMcGriff's vivid grit remains hard to gainsay.--Publishers WeeklyA book-length sequence inspired by the Nazi-persecuted German Expressionist painter Karl Hofer's work, McGriff's third collection meditates on eros, cosmology, independence, provenance, occupied territories, and deviance. Detailed yet indeterminately American landscapes flood with surrealist dream imagery and subtle violence, while the voice of these poems intertwines between the intimately personal and the honestly imagined--all while remaining plainspoken, angular, direct.From CosmologyThe river movesbeneath the sheet ice.The wind is a grand hallof records.In the recipe boxabove the refrigerator, the deathbed photosof four generations--somewhere, their handshave turned to prime numbers...Michael McGriff is the author of three books of poetry and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Our Secret Life in the Movies. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, Bookforum, The Believer, Tin House, American Poetry Review, and on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and PBS NewsHour. He is currently teaching at the University of Idaho.

Winner, 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Michael McGriff’s Eternal Sentences bears witness to the world of gravel roads, working-class families, and geographic isolation in poems that illuminate both common occurrence and the territories of the surreal. Here, in rendering every line as a single sentence, McGriff depicts a world seen through fragments, quick leaps, and wild associations. Haunted as much by place and people, landscapes and distant figures, as by the possibilities of image-making itself, Eternal Sentences is a song for the hidden depots of rural America.

"A blend of the low-rent sociology of Raymond Carver with the quirky imagination of Richard Brautigan."–Billy CollinsMichael McGriff’s book-length poem Inquest is an oblique ode to Pablo Neruda’s posthumous masterpiece The Book of Questions. Each sentence is rendered as an unanswerable query, be that a consideration of poverty, aesthetics, place, Ezra Pound’s Chinese translations, the absurdity of everyday life, the exhumed body of Pablo Neruda, or the sanctity of common objects. Deeply surreal and humane, this collection centers unknowing and wonder as twin forces central to self-articulation, social witnessing, and survival.