Poetry. In these 52 poems, the author continues the subject of the Vietnam War he began in his 1972 collection, Obscenities. In CHECK POINTS, he reveals, through characters and situations, the essential horror of that experience in a voice full of dark humor that makes it all the more memorable. This new volume incorporates many of the poems in the limited edition chapbook, Raiding a Whorehouse (Adastra Press, 2004). What Stanley Kunitz said of Casey's first book of poems holds true for this new collection as well: "He has had the original insight and the controls to produce a kind of anti-poetry that befits a kind of war empty of any kind of glory."

Author City: LOWELL, MA USA

Michael Casey was born in 1947 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as a military policeman in Vietnam. Among his books of poems are MILLRAT (Adastra Press, 1999), The Million Dollar Hole (Orchises, 2001), and Obscenities, which was chosen by Stanley Kunitz as the Yale Younger Poet Award for 1972 and reprinted by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2002. His most recent book is CHECK POINTS (Adastra Press, 2011).