Member Books – Poetry Society of Michigan

Descending the Staircase / Laurence W. Thomas

Published on February 14, 2023 by Editorial Staff

Larry Thomas has a new book out. You can read it for free online or order a print copy from Amazon. Click on the cover image for details.

“The dream aspects of surrealism come to me naturally. Like most people, I dream frequently and vividly, sometimes so nightmarish that I force myself to wake up in order to escape the fear and horror. Interpretations of dreams are largely guesswork, Freud notwithstanding, and retelling them, impossible. But in those dreams, people, places, and happenings appear in incongruous juxtaposition and contortion providing the basis for surrealistic writings. Some of the poems in this collection are taken directly from such nocturnal experiences recollected through veiled layers of time and the continuous blanketing of subsequent happenings.” – L. W. Thomas

In Which We See Our Selves: Eric Torgersen

Published on March 25, 2021March 25, 2021 by Editorial Staff

With In Which We See Our Selves, Eric Torgersen begins with the formal structure of the ghazal as popularized by Agha Shahid Ali and unapologetically makes a more American thing of it, arguing in his Afterword that this transformation is as inevitable as what happens when the children of immigrant parents pass through an American junior high school: not everyone is pleased with the result. “I’ve tried to avoid faux-Eastern themes and tones,” he writes. Fluently metrical and effortlessly rhymed, at times in short, hard-hitting lines with refrains as brief as a single word, these poems leap off the page with speech as American as this:
My gang all quit when I didn’t split the take right.
We crashed and burned when I didn’t hit the brake right.
(Click the cover photo to order from Mayapple Press)

EricTorgersen Eric Torgersen was born in Melville, New York. He has a BA in German Literature from Cornell University; after two years in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. He retired in the spring of 2008 after 38 years of teaching writing at Central Michigan University. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan with his wife, the quilt artist Ann Kowaleski. Since retiring, Eric has volunteered for the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy. He enjoys fishing and foraging for wild mushrooms. He is available for workshops and readings.

Mr. Torgersen is presently serving a two-year term as Honorary Chancellor of the Poetry Society of Michigan.

Spindrift / Laurence W. Thomas

Published on March 18, 2021 by Editorial Staff

Spindrift suggests stuff blown onto beaches, beaches of discovery in one’s mind. When these poems show a squirrel, a fish, birds, a beggar, an Irish pub, or a dish we see these as metaphors which conjure up ideas or feelings from our own familiarity with them. A poem that begins as an abstraction, like an enemy or peace or patience, becomes objectified. Spindrift is comprised of whatever little gems might be found along the shore, examined closely to become part of the reader’s experience. These jottings of spindrift take off from that experience like going to an airport when you want to be someplace else – or like poems which say one thing when they mean another.

Published by Atmosphere Press, 2021. 124 Pages, ISBN 163649532X
or purchase from Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

aaLarryThomas Laurence W. Thomas is the founding editor of Third Wednesday Magazine. He has been around long enough to know the sting of rejection and the salve of acceptance. His shelves are lined with his own publications as well as the works of many other poets. He Chancelor Emertus of the Poetry Society of Michigan.