Poetry. This winner of the 2011 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Contest will delight everyone who enjoys poetry. Written with a flair for language, a unique way of looking at the natural world, and a compassionate regard for human emotion, Michael Hettich makes the world fresh and new again by his singular and enagaging voice.

"In THE MEASURED BREATHING, Michael Hettich inhabits with great panache and perfect pitch the interior landscape of consciousness, that world in which one encounters oneself beyond language. Hettich is a cartographer of that realm in which we try on other lives 'until we can dress in our own skin again and vanish from ourselves for a while.'"—Steve Kowit

"Mystery, these poems tell us, continues to reside at the center of everything we think we know about existence. Splendidly baffling, imagistically engaging, and full of enjoyable surprises, THE MEASURED BREATHING explores that mystery. Hettich is an earthy fabulist here, yet the poems' ingenious transformations read as integral to survival. Yes, there is darkness, but it 'is filled with streams and underground pools' of imagination."—Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Author City: Miami Shores, FL USA

Michael Hettich's books of poetry include THE MEASURED BREATHING, LIKE HAPPINESS, A Small Boat, Swimmer Dreams, Flock and Shadow, and BEHIND OUR MEMORIES. His work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. He is the winner of two Fellowships from the Florida Arts Council. His Flock and Shadow: New and Selected Poems was selected as a national Book Sense Top Ten Pick in Poetry for 2006, and he received The Tales Prize in 2005 for Swimmer Dreams. Michael Hettich was born in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up in New York City and its suburbs. He has lived in upstate New York, Colorado, Vermont, and northern Florida. He now lives in Miami and teaches at Miami Dade College.

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