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HALFWAY
DECENT
SINNERS
BY
MICHAEL
CLEARY |
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HOMETOWN,
USA
BY
MICHAEL
CLEARY
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BEARABLE
WEIGHT
BY
MICHAEL
CLEARY
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MICHAEL
CLEARY BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1945, I grew up in a family of 5 children in Glens Falls, NY, in the Adirondacks, a city profiled in LOOK Magazine’s 1944 series, “Hometown, USA” which depicted a “typical” hometown of returning WW II GI’s. First of my family to attend college, I taught high school English before earning my doctorate in Tennessee and joining the English faculty at Broward College, an open door institution in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I’ve been awarded an Endowed Teaching Chair for classroom excellence, teaching students from remedial to honors level while specializing in American Literature, Creative Writing, and Film.
I began to publish with essays on 20th C. writers
such as Edward Albee, Thomas Berger, Harold Pinter,
and Flannery O’Connor. When I tried my hand at poetry some 20 years ago, my third poem was accepted by The Texas Review—a pure case of dumb luck. Since then, my work has appeared widely in journals as well as 3 college anthologies. I’m a two-time recipient of a $5,000 Florida Arts Grant in Poetry (1986 and 1999) and a Featured Lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities (on the classic American Western, Shane). As winner of the Paumanok Poetry Award, in November 2006 I was visiting writer at Farmingdale State University of New York, adding my who-the-hell-is-he? name to a prestigious list that includes Galway Kinnell, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin.
My book, Hometown, USA, was published as 1992
winner of The American Book Series Award by San
Diego Poets Press. My second collection, Halfway Decent Sinners, appeared in 2006 from CW Books.
I live in Fort Lauderdale with my wife, Carol, who shares my passion for demolition salvage sales as we renovate our 1950s cottage near the beach.
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ARTICLES
AND INTERVIEWS
Halfway
Decent Sinners
Poetry
Compilations Can Often Come from Local Streets
Hometown,
USA
Hometown
Poet
Prize-Winning
Poet Uses Writing to Sing
Work earns $5,000 Grant from Florida
Hometown
Redux: Poet Revisits Glens Falls
Florida
Prof to Publish Glens Falls Poems
Throng
Attends Michael Cleary Reading at the Hyde
Tomahawks
Bested by Kerry Blues in Conference Game
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REVIEWS
AND BLURBS
Bearable Weight
The “bearable weight” of Michael Cleary’s title is mortality, he tells us in his poem, “Carnal.” That phrase almost perfectly characterizes the tones and attitudes of this striking collection. Rueful, grateful, regretful, and joyful by turns—and sometimes all at once—these lines reconcile the sorrows and pleasures of a whole lifetime, as well as capturing vivid personalities like Tooter O’Heany, Retread Williams, and Sister Lard Ass with a few telling strokes. Only a poet with a love of hard-won experience could say it:
I wonder if any such as me ever made it
all the way over there from where I’ve come.
Only a poet with such love could mean it.
—Fred Chappell
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Halfway
Decent Sinners
Michael
Cleary’s welcome second book continues his eloquent
exploration of our flawed human condition. Vividly colored
by his Catholic upbringing, these poems look with both passion
and compassion at childhood, family, marriage, divorce, work
and play. They form a hymn of praise for the flowers of life
and love, despite (or perhaps because of) the serpent lurking
in every garden.
—Peter
Meinke
Halfway
Decent Sinners. The title says it all—these deeply felt
poems focus on the contradictory mixture of pleasure and guilt
that make us human. Cleary acknowledges and celebrates our
humanity in all its forms—the vulnerability of both
the flesh and the spirit. He’s a natural storyteller
with a twinkle in his eye, full of good humor and good will.
The cast of characters that inhabit these poems are lively
and memorable. Their complex human desires and frailties constantly
butt up against the rigid structures of organized religion.
While this rich, varied collection contains everything from
the sacred to the profane, Cleary, like our best poets, has
a definite fondness for the sacredly profane.
—Jim
Daniels
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Hometown,
USA
In
1944 LOOK Magazine published a series of articles about Glens
Falls, New York. There they claimed to find the heart of America.
Michael Cleary, a native of that town, finds a different America
entirely, a more personal one, gritty and believable. And
he sets down what he finds in poetry that is heartfelt, plainspoken,
evocative, and engaging. Hometown, USA, is a wonderful book.
—Fred
Chappell
These poems remind us with a start how quickly it all
goes by: the slick surface of the American Dream turning slowly
to the salt echo of an old and necessary melody. Cleary knows
what all true elegiac poets know: that the one thing necessary
in this life seems to be to stop and rest in the lingering
afternoon of the mystery to light a candle for a world itself
become a shadow.
—Paul
Mariani
Michael
Cleary’s first book looks back on his family and country
with a gentle but passionate eye: gentle because these people
and places are recreated lovingly: passionate because they
are shown truthfully, and in depth. Hometown, USA is a moving
and lyrical debut of a fine poet.
—Peter
Meinke
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