"In 1972, Michael Casey won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for Obscenities, a collection of poems drawn from his military experience during the Vietnam War. In his foreword to the book, judge Stanley Kunitz called the work a kind of anti-poetry that befits a kind of war empty of any kind of glory and the first significant book of poems written by an American to spring from the war in Vietnam. Its raw depictions of wars mundanity and obscenity resonated with a broad audience, and Obscenities went into a mass market paperback edition, and was stocked in drugstores as well as bookstores. In the decades since, Caseys poetry has continued to document the places of his work and life. Then and now, his poems foreground the voices around him over that of a single author; they are the words of young American conscripts and their Vietnamese counterparts, coworkers and bosses, neighbors and strangers. His compressed sketches and unadorned monologues have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. There It Is: New and Selected Poems presents, for the first time, a full tour through Caseys work, from his 1972 debut to 2011s Check Points, together with new and uncollected work from the late 60s on. Here are all the locations of Caseys life and workLowell to Landing Zone, dye house to deskand an ensemble cast with a lot to say. The publication of Michael Casey's New and Selected Poems, with his quirky portraits of ordinary Americans, is an event to celebrate. Like a photographer snapping pictures relentlessly, he must have written a poem about everyone he ever met with dead-on realism. Compared to him, the Spoon River Anthology is a work for kiddies. If Robert Frost was a poet of the rural New Englander, Michael Casey, also a New Englander, brings to life his mill town background, the guys who didn't go on to college and the larger world, but married the girls they dated in high school and got jobs in the mill. When he's sent to Vietnam he captures his fellow soldiers in their own military jargon. A master of the vernacular, he forces one to question writing in the 'correct' language when so many of us speak it quite differently, the language we think and feel in. Rare among poets, he's willing to explore colloquial speech in all its messiness, and gets it down perfectly in fact, he's got us all down spot on. This collection, with its wide range of voices, is a unique achievement. Edward Field, author of The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag and After the Fall: Poems Old and New
Michael Casey is from Lowell, Massachusetts, and attended the public schools in that city. He received a B.S. degree in physics in 1968 from University of Massachusetts-Lowell, where poet William Aiken taught the modern poetry course. Drafted that year, Casey became a military policeman in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and later in Landing Zone Bayonet, Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam, with the Americal Division. The journal of his military experience became the book Obscenities, published in 1972 by the Yale University Press. His book, Millrat, on blue collar work in a textile mill dye house has been published by Adastra Press. Casey taught for many years at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
I first heard Michael Casey read these poems on a July evening in New Hampshire long ago while the war in Vietnam was still a tremendous confusion and sorrow for all of us and the poems made sense of it in a new way. My writer father had discovered that our summer neighbor was a poet and had invited him to read to us. I was stunned by the power of the language, the great-heartedness of the poems, the way Casey was not afraid to write about how men act under pressure, the way he used ordinary words to describe extraordinary feelings. Now I read the poems in a New York City apartment in a time that seems as confusing as the 1970s. Michael Caseys poems changed as he went back to work after the war and later when he moved north, but their power is undiminished. He is tough but the poems are tender. These are poems that grab you by the heart and refuse to let you go. Read them! Susan Cheever, author of Drinking in America: Our Secret History and E.E. Cummings: A Life
These are wonderfully droll, deadpan poems, like slyly condensed short stories, with an eye for the tellingly absurd detail and an ear for the oddities of everyday speech. Michael Foley, author of The Age of Absurdity and Isnt This Fun: Investigating the Serious Business of Enjoying Ourselves"
We understand the importance of accessibility for all of our customers, including those with disabilities. While our website may not currently meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA, we are actively working towards compliance and constantly seeking ways to improve the user experience for all of our customers.
To that end, we have implemented a variety of accessibility tools provided by third-party app, AppifyCommerce. These tools include features such as keyboard navigation, high contrast mode, font resizing, and alternative text for images read focus, various cursor sizes. We have also incorporated tools to help with visual impairments, such as screen readers and text-to-speech functionality.
In addition to these technical solutions, we have also made a commitment to providing clear and easy-to-understand information on our website. This includes using simple and straightforward language, providing alternative text for images and videos, and including clear and detailed product descriptions.
We understand that accessibility is an ongoing effort and that there may be areas of our website that are not fully accessible. If you have any difficulty accessing our website or have any suggestions for improvements, please contact us at [email or phone number]. We will make every effort to respond to your request as soon as possible and work towards resolving any issues you may have encountered.
We also strive to provide equal access to our products and services, including our online store and customer service channels. So, we are always open to feedback, suggestions, and ideas on how we can continue to improve accessibility on our website and in all aspects of our business.
Our ultimate goal is to ensure that all of our customers, regardless of ability, have a positive and seamless experience when visiting our website and purchasing from our store. Thank you for visiting our store and for your patience as we continue to work towards full compliance with the WCAG guidelines.
