Michael Graves

A Prayer for the Less Violent Offenders: New & Selected Short Poems Michael Graves

Poetry. A PRAYER FOR THE LESS VIOLENT OFFENDERS showcases New York-based poet Mike Graves' best short poems. Known in New York circles for hosting Phoenix Reading Series in West Village, Graves' is a significant voice celebrating a dark Self coming to grips with a traumatised, wounded and drunken past. The book is a concise but wide-ranging treasure offering the pleasures of formalist, confessional and metaphysical poetry along with the plain-spoken directness of the Beats laced with echoes of the New and Old Testament. Written over a quarter of a century, these poems reflect a consistent poetic voice and the best of Michael Graves. He balances metaphor and theme to provide a powerful and convincing perspective on the perduring psychological struggles of being.--A. Nicholas Fargnoli, President of The James Joyce Society Michael Graves is a poet old and young, old and new. He has a past, a memory, a sharp eye and a good ear, a thing about snakes and a foxy way with rhyme, an American's voice, an Irish-American's family issues, and an Irish-American's lapsed Catholic's history of uneasy commerce with guilt and the Four Last Things.--John Gordon