Poetry, Rare and Signed

Darling Vulgarity

Finalist, the 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Poetry Category

Darling Vulgarity showcases Michael Waters' long-standing aesthetic talent - the vivid and sensual poem. Like Whitman, Waters challenges us to embrace humanity's imperfections while, at the same time, urging us toward new spiritual realities. Riding the confluence of idea and metaphor, these poems maintain their psychological intensity as they evoke sharp memories and the dynamics of emotional aftermath. Floyd Collins writes in The Gettysburg Review, "[Waters'] language is uncompromisingly sensual. Few poets of his generation pursue with such unstinting ardor a conflation of narrative and lyric techniques."

Signed copies available in limited quantities

Balthus

When the angel arrived, bare-breasted, androgynous,
its lower half sheathed in tulle
bluer than the plums in ceramic bowls propped on stools,
the vetch in the studio revived; colors assumed blunt authority;
even yellow became heavy. Bells
tolled from tinny speakers: Mozart striking precise notes
with an almost disarming
simplicity, their grace and gravity suggesting
the long marriage of pleasure
and sorrow. Cosi fan tutte. I named the angel
Katia, thus assigning
gender. Now each brushstroke resonates with tumescence.
Black mirror, red table, moth,
white skirt. Nude in Front of a Mantel. Girl on Her Knees.
Sprawled on a chair, Katia
pretends to read a volume of sonnets by Rilke.
I pencil in my journal:
To assume God's face, to ponder what He incarnates:
landscape, young girls' flesh, newly
ripe spring fruits, trees full of sap, the sweetness of sleeping
children. I know that this work--
a painter's required labor-- always means redemption.
When I look up, the angel
has fallen asleep, but the plums, those black plums bursting
flecked skins, have been devoured."