Michael Coffey

Where literary criticism meets memoir, Beckett’s Children explores how absence, lineage, and loss echo across art and life. Beckett’s Children is a lyrical blend of personal memoir, father-son dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and daughter. Although Howe has denied the rumor, the possibility that it might be true leads Coffey to a highly original appreciation of her work and a fascinating focus on the dozens of unattended children who wander through Beckett’s oeuvre. The saga of Coffey’s adult son, at various moments on the run in the Indiana woods, is here tragically updated in a visceral and moving Afterword, shining a harsh light on life without parental connection in a cold America. As an adoptee himself, Coffey looks to literature for traces of his own origin story and lineage, as he mourns the loss of his son. Provocative and beautifully expressed, Beckett’s Children suggests a new approach to the textual worlds of two highly respected artists, providing a revelatory perspective on both American poetics and the vibrant world of Beckett studies.

Beckett’s Children is a lyrical blend of personal memoir, father–son dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and daughter. Although Howe has denied the rumor, the possibility that it might be true leads Coffey to a highly original appreciation of her work and a fascinating focus on the dozens of unattended children who wander through Beckett’s oeuvre. The saga of Coffey’s adult son, at various moments on the run in the Indiana woods or incarcerated, shines light on life without parental connection in a cold America. As an adoptee himself, Coffey looks to literature for traces of his own origin story and lineage, a heritage held in secret by a closed adoption system but which, through books and cultural signs, he has been able to decipher in his own way. Provocative and beautifully expressed, Beckett’s Children suggests a new approach to the textual worlds of two highly respected artists, providing a revelatory perspective on both American poetics and the vibrant world of Beckett studies.

The election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States was a watershed moment in American history. In this book, Michael Coffey reflects on major social and religious issues leading up to and following the election. Coffey addresses the political issues of the day, not from a partisan position but from the question of what it means to be faithful as church now. Rather than pit left against right or Republican against Democrat, Pastor Coffey seeks to explore fundamental issues of Christian commitments centered in love of God and neighbor. Coffey shares his personal responses to the events surrounding the election while exploring central biblical and theological themes that have shaped and challenged the church in every age. This book confronts conservative and liberal Christian assumptions and creates space for dialogue about what it means to prioritize the Gospel message of compassion and mercy over partisan politics, nationalism, and ideology. Church leaders will find resources for leading conversation. Church members will find a rich and challenging resource for dialogue. Those outside of religious communities who are politically engaged will find insight for understanding how people of faith live out their commitments in the public realm. ""It is much more difficult and much more important to respond to the Trump phenomenon in a way that is theologically informed, pastorally sensitive, and politically pertinent. Michael Coffey has made just such a response that moves beyond emotive satisfaction to truthful evangelical witness. He makes that witness with courage and finesse, with good humor and compelling honesty. I heartily commend this faithful read of the tradition that now requires much of us."" --Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary ""Renounce, Resist, Rejoice: Being Church in the Age of Trump is not only timely and insightful, but above all, it is urgent. Michael Coffey speaks truth with love and preaches love with truth through his writing in a moment in history where both virtues are being pushed aside by those in power . . . Pastor Coffey is a voice, hopefully not alone in the desert, to help us renounce and also resist the temptation to normalize and accept what is unacceptable and contrary to the gospel."" --Antonio Ramirez, Director at Breathe-Respira ""In Renounce, Resist, Rejoice: Being Church in the Age of Trump, Michael Coffey presents a series of sermons in the spirit of the theology of the cross made famous by the church reformer, Martin Luther. In poignant reflections, Coffey names the evils of racial and cultural divisions that are tearing at the fabric of our common life. . . . For Coffey, being church in the age of Trump is a call to renounce and resist those elements of the culture that are antithetical to the culture of life and neighbor love. The call to rejoice is an act of hopeful living in an age of cynicism. Coffey offers a fresh alternative to the rhetoric of the current political landscape."" --Javier Alanis, Executive Director of the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest, Austin, Texas Michael Coffey is pastor of First English Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is the author of Mystery without Rhyme or Reason: Poetic Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary (2015). He is a contributing writer to Sundays and Seasons and Sundays and Seasons: Preaching (Augsburg Fortress). His blog can be found at www.ocotillopub.org.

The election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States was a watershed moment in American history. In this book, Michael Coffey reflects on major social and religious issues leading up to and following the election. Coffey addresses the political issues of the day, not from a partisan position but from the question of what it means to be faithful as church now. Rather than pit left against right or Republican against Democrat, Pastor Coffey seeks to explore fundamental issues of Christian commitments centered in love of God and neighbor. Coffey shares his personal responses to the events surrounding the election while exploring central biblical and theological themes that have shaped and challenged the church in every age. This book confronts conservative and liberal Christian assumptions and creates space for dialogue about what it means to prioritize the Gospel message of compassion and mercy over partisan politics, nationalism, and ideology. Church leaders will find resources for leading conversation. Church members will find a rich and challenging resource for dialogue. Those outside of religious communities who are politically engaged will find insight for understanding how people of faith live out their commitments in the public realm. ""It is much more difficult and much more important to respond to the Trump phenomenon in a way that is theologically informed, pastorally sensitive, and politically pertinent. Michael Coffey has made just such a response that moves beyond emotive satisfaction to truthful evangelical witness. He makes that witness with courage and finesse, with good humor and compelling honesty. I heartily commend this faithful read of the tradition that now requires much of us."" --Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary ""Renounce, Resist, Rejoice: Being Church in the Age of Trump is not only timely and insightful, but above all, it is urgent. Michael Coffey speaks truth with love and preaches love with truth through his writing in a moment in history where both virtues are being pushed aside by those in power . . . Pastor Coffey is a voice, hopefully not alone in the desert, to help us renounce and also resist the temptation to normalize and accept what is unacceptable and contrary to the gospel."" --Antonio Ramirez, Director at Breathe-Respira ""In Renounce, Resist, Rejoice: Being Church in the Age of Trump, Michael Coffey presents a series of sermons in the spirit of the theology of the cross made famous by the church reformer, Martin Luther. In poignant reflections, Coffey names the evils of racial and cultural divisions that are tearing at the fabric of our common life. . . . For Coffey, being church in the age of Trump is a call to renounce and resist those elements of the culture that are antithetical to the culture of life and neighbor love. The call to rejoice is an act of hopeful living in an age of cynicism. Coffey offers a fresh alternative to the rhetoric of the current political landscape."" --Javier Alanis, Executive Director of the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest, Austin, Texas Michael Coffey is pastor of First English Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He is the author of Mystery without Rhyme or Reason: Poetic Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary (2015). He is a contributing writer to Sundays and Seasons and Sundays and Seasons: Preaching (Augsburg Fortress). His blog can be found at www.ocotillopub.org.

"Riveting ...vibrant and unsparing." --Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review) "Superb...Startlingly original." --Library Journal (starred review) "Once I started reading these stories, I couldn't stop. They absorbed me thoroughly, with their taut narratives and evocative language--the language of a poet." --JAY PARINI, author of Jesus: The Human Face of God and The Last Station "Sherwood Anderson would recognize this world of lonely, longing characters, whose surface lives Coffey tenderly plumbs. These beautiful stories--spare, rich, wise and compelling--go to the heart." --FREDERIC TUTEN, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New World "Whether [Coffey is] writing about a sinning priest or a man who's made a career out of branding or about himself, we can smell Coffey's protagonists and feel their breath on our cheek. Like Chekhov, he must be a notebook writer; how else to explain the strange quirks and the perfect but unaccountable details that animate these intimate portraits?" --EDMUND WHITE, author of Inside a Pearl and A Boy's Own Story Among these eight stories, a fan of writer (and fellow adoptee) Harold Brodkey gains an audience with him at his life's end, two pals take a Joycean sojourn, a man whose business is naming things meets a woman who may not be what she seems, and a father discovers his son is a suspect in an assassination attempt on the president. In each tale, Michael Coffey's exquisite attention to character underlies the brutally honest perspectives of his disenchanted fathers, damaged sons, and orphans left feeling perpetually disconnected. Michael Coffey is the author of three books of poems and 27 Men Out, a book about baseball's perfect games. He also co-edited The Irish in America, a book about Irish immigration to America, which was a companion volume to a PBS documentary series. He divides his time between Manhattan and Bolton Landing, New York. The Business of Naming Things is his first work of fiction.

Now in paperback, Michael Coffey's wonderful book about baseball's holy grail, the perfect game: “The best baseball book of the...season” (Booklist).There have been only fifteen perfect games pitched in the modern era of baseball: The great Cy Young fittingly hurled the first one, in 1904, and Randy Johnson pitched the last one, in May 2004. In between, some great and famous pitchers—Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter, Jim Bunning, and Don Larsen—performed the feat, as did those lesser-known, like Charlie Robertson and Len Barker. Fifteen in 160,000 games: The odds are staggering. In 27 Men Out, popular historian Michael Coffey offers an expansive look at these unsurpassable pitching performances. Here you'll find play-by-play accounts of each of the fifteen perfect games and expert assessments of those who pitched them. Along the way, Coffey goes beyond the box scores to provide fascinating details about how these games unfolded, as well as compelling anecdotes about all of the key players—from Koufax's controversial holdout with Don Drysdale to Mike Witt's victimization by the baseball commissioner to Dennis Martinez's struggle up from an impoverished Nicaraguan childhood. A must-have for baseball fans, historians, and statisticians alike, 27 Men Out is an exciting new benchmark in sports literature.

The quintessential book for history buffs lively, informative inside stories on more than 50 of the most disastrous military mishaps to occur in the past 100 years now in paperback!"Along with millions of you, I am a sucker for war stories. So from the moment I began reading Military Blunders, I was fascinated....Get ready to embark on some riveting cautionary tales." -Mike Wallace, from his Introduction. From the assassination of the Archduke, through Hitler's rise and demise, to Saddam Husseins doomed invasion of Kuwait Military Blunders is a blow-by-blow account of this century's most ill-fated military events. What were they and why did they happen? "Like the best general history volumes, Coffeys book, in clean, muscular prose, expertly informs as it artfully entertains." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Reviewed with an excellent eye...this book pinpoints with great perception the blunders of the high ranking in the military that are generally overlooked or hidden." -Indianapolis Star

* Book has regional appeal to rural East Coast / upstate New York. * Author has ties to L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E. School of poetry, and the New York School; book will be of interest to that audience. * Author is well-known in Irish-American community, book will be of interest to that audience; he edited Irish in America (Hyperion 1997, 0786863477). * Accessible poems, should appeal to a large audience.

This study appraises the work of all the Roman satirists, from the 2nd century BC, to the end of the reign of Hadrian in AD 138. The satirists' work is shown to reflect the constantly changing society in which they lived, and its topics range from the morally earnest to the bawdy. Certain themes are examined which are common to some degree to all the satirists - autobiographical revelation, personal invective, political and ethical judgements and literary criticism. The book provides an exposition of the tradition of verse satire from Lucilius through Horace and Persius to Juvenal, with an assessment of the structure and distinctive literary quality of each satire. It discusses satire in the Menippean tradition, a composite form of prose and verse which was used first by Varro, then by Petronius and by Seneca in his "Apocolocyntosis", a comical and malicious satire on the deification of the emperor Claudius.