PRAISE FOR THE POETRY OF MICHAEL GASPENY

“There is a lovely, tough-but-tender-hearted mood to these gritty, noirish poems. If ‘the devil is in the details,’ then Gaspeny’s poems are indeed devilish, but the better angels are dancing there, too, and profligately. Strong sentiment held in check by formal clarity is so often the secret of memorable poems, and Gaspeny has learned that arduous lesson by heart. Strongly narrative and chock full of vivid characters and voices.”
—JIM CLARK, author of Dancing on Canaan’s Ruins

“In Gaspeny’s world, so masterfully crafted with pain and compassion, it’s hard to tell the caregiver from the taker, the dying from the dead. Characters...have their ‘eyes tuned inside’ or climb into the attic to check the ‘rafters for something dangling.’ Yet, because near-death awareness may inform their outbursts, they offer revelations we may not yet know we need.”
—JANICE MOORE FULLER, author of Sex Education

“Gaspeny’s singular voice is a reason to get out of the house and go to a poetry reading. A mix of humor, wry observation, and a moving continued belief in the necessity of human connection, his voice wavers over Greensboro in a gravely cackle behind a falling tear for the times we live in.”
—BRIAN LAMPKIN, author of The Tarboro Three

MICHAEL GASPENY is the author of the novella in verse The Tyranny of Questions and the prose novel A Postcard from the Delta, as well as two chapbooks. He has won the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and the O. Henry Festival Short Story Competition. For hospice service in Greensboro, North Carolina, he has received The Governor’s Award for Volunteer Excellence. A former reporter, he taught journalism and English for almost forty years, mainly at High Point University and Bennett College. He is married to the novelist and essayist Lee Zacharias. Their sons are Al and Max.