All books using the keywords: Michael Sobsey

One of the author's best-received collections. Written at a time where he was intently pouncing on inspirations and experiencing the full range of life's beauty as well as it's miseries. Loaded with humor and stark imagery, this is a new kind of erudite folk poetry for modern times, literary but accessible. It's a detailed record of a time that will appear simpler and saner to today's readers as the world continues collecting the injurious ingredients to hasten the ultimate catastrophe and ensuing oblivion.

The author selected representative pieces spanning his writing career from 1974 to 2019. The works are taken from his six books as well as unpublished pieces. It is a project in which the author wanted to offer readers a chance to see what the author considers to be his most inspired and fully realized poems. Who was it that said, "I write so that I have something to read"? It was myself, and these are the ones which produce an electrical epiphany in the consciousness and reveal the deeper layers of meaning embedded in the experiences of life.

From the first page to the last, a funny and insightful series of stories taken from life seen as a vast unfolding poem. Capturing the wit and the absurdity of the planet as the Muses suggest themes that his imagination elaborates. Former student of Ginsberg and adherent of the French surrealist and prose poets. This is Sobsey's sixth collection. It was written over a two year period and the poems are set in New York City, Switzerland, Venice Beach, Toronto, and his home base, Hoboken, NJ, and numerous other locales. Avoiding over refinement, the poems have an accessibility which is a welcome change from elitism and willful obscurity. He wants the reader to see in the world the humor and ...

A selection of 'Outtakes," which, for various reasons, were never collected in book form. The collection comprises works that are important to the writer, and which should be amusing and exciting for readers, both those familiar with his style of writing, and to those sampling it for the first time. From early rhymed 'rock and roll' chants to petite vignettes in lyrical prose, the choices cover most of the qualities that make Sobsey a distinctive and accessible voice, speaking in the present with a long rich tradition bringing up the rear and providing a literary context.

Self-taught poet Michael Sobsey has been perfecting his poetry for over fifty years now. You will find a lineage for his work in the singer-songwriter lyrics of the Sixties and all their antecedents: the Beats, the Surrealists, and the British Romantics. Alternating between verse poems and poems in prose, the author gives a lucid account of life on the edges of New York City. One facet that Sobsey seeks to capture and preserve is the wit and humor which we mortals use to laugh off the sometimes spooky human condition. He cites Bob Dylan, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Brautigan, Max Jacob, and notably Philip Lamantia, the San Francisco surrealist. Sobsey's father, the late Chester Sobsey, was a jo ...

Combining humor and insight Sobsey explores the world and nature capturing inspiration and marking his own territory in the lineage that starts with Romanticism, and leads to Surrealism and rock and roll. Chronicles his reaction and dismay as the world takes some questionable turns that leave one grasping for a way to maintain their individual liberty, to arrive at a Sustainable Identity uniquely one's own as the mold of conformity gets less interesting all the time.

In his tenth book the author spends seven weeks in the Swiss Alps. Like other lyric poets who have come before, he draws inspiration from the awesome landscape and beauty of the region. Combining his trademark humor and surrealist proclivities, the book is insightful, funny, and entertaining. Sobsey has developed an accessible modern folk poetry that is uniquely his own, while extending the modern poetic tradition that runs from Romanticism to Rock and Roll.

Altered states by the sea, the poet escapes New York City seeking shelter and solace from the historic global meltdown and the plague over the earth. Evidence of the resilience of the species, the poet still finds humor and beauty even as the terrors of modernity and the threat of the termination of all existence grow alarmingly near. Buoyed by human love and the strength that comes from the power of real solidarity, a man and his family hold onto their freedom even as the doors of confinement and of deprivation slam shut all around them, taking away the innate right to live freely that the pilgrims, pioneers, and faithful dreamers have sought for centuries and have tried to establish ...