Description
A new collection from Chicago poet Michael O'Leary.
Second collection of poems by Michael O'Leary.
Poetry.
“‘First night, heading out west /pulled in late to a roadside motel in the middle of Missouri.’ So begins Michael O’Leary’s ‘temporary exile’ to the central coast of California. Captivated by a new and unfamiliar landscape, and imprisoned ‘in the dark between /unknowing and knowing my way back home . . .’ O’Leary explores the place where ‘Ideas reach /into the deep but go no further than words allow.’ There, miraculously, at the seeming limit of expression, the poems in this extraordinary collection take flight. Inspired by solitude, longing and memory, O’Leary crosses into a new frontier, a place where ‘Only the mind can know the blue /of the sea and infer traject- ories /of light from ideas of beauty.’ Probing, restless, bursting with energy and oracular insight, OUT WEST reinterprets the monumental metaphor of the west for a new generation navigating an anxious era."
—Patrick Lohier
Author Bio
Michael O'Leary is the author of THE RECEPTION (The Cultural Society, 2016). He started off his career in data entry, but soon left for landscaping and construction, then became a jazz record auctioneer as well as a shelver of books at the local research library, which led to a stint as a grant writer at a university where he met a titan of industry and became a ghost writer. Somewhat desperate for a stable income, O'Leary became an engineer in the nuclear power industry. When the bottom fell out, he landed in a career as a quantitative analyst in the financial services industry. All of this occurred over the course of thirty years in Chicago where he still lives. He is an editor for Flood Editions in his free time.
Author City: CHICAGO, IL USA