Michael Casey (poet)

Michael Casey (born 1947 in Lowell, Massachusetts) is an American poet.

His first collection, Obscenities, was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Other collections include Millrat (Adastra Press), The Million Dollar Hole (Orchises Press), Check Points (Adastra), Raiding a Whorehouse (Adastra), Permanent Party (March Street Press), Cindi's Fur Coat (The Chuckwagon), and The Bopper (Kendra Steiner Editions).

Education

Casey received a B.S. in Physics from Lowell Technological Institute where he took a class with the poet and critic William Aiken.

After military service, Casey began an MS in physics at SUNY Buffalo. With the publication of Obscenities, however, he changed course and pursued creative writing, studying under poets John Logan and Irving Feldman. His master's thesis was an early version of Millrat; his advisor for the project was the poet William Sylvester.

Life

After graduating college in 1968, Casey was drafted into the U.S. Army. His stay at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri provided the material and setting for the later book, The Million Dollar Hole; his work as military police officer in Vietnam's Quang Ngai province is rendered in his debut collection, Obscenities.

Casey kept a few books with him while in the military: Alan Dugan's Poems, J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, and a text on thermodynamics. While in Vietnam, Casey studied Vietnamese. He discovered, in a book package delivered for the troops, Donald Allen's New American Poetry anthology, and was drawn to the early work of poet Edward Field.

His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, as well as in many literary journals and anthologies.

Works

• The Company Pool, Frigatezine, Issue #2, 2001
• A Bummer, April 29, 2003
• Bagley's Sign, The Minnesota Review, ns 65-66
• subscribe, subscribe, The Minnesota Review, ns 65-66

Books

• Obscenities, Yale University Press, April 27, 1972, ISBN 978-0-300-01548-5
• Millrat, Adastra Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-938566-81-6
• The Million Dollar Hole. Orchises Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-914061-86-1.

Anthologies

• Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams
• William Daniel Ehrhart, ed. (1989). Unaccustomed mercy. Texas Tech University Press. ISBN 978-0-89672-189-0.
• Survey of contemporary literature, Frank N. Magill, Salem Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0-89356-050-8
• The book of Irish American poetry: from the eighteenth century to the present, Daniel Tobin, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-268-04230-1

Interviews

• An Interview with Michael Casey, turnrow, University of Louisiana at Monroe, Winter 2005 vol 4.2

Reviews

• PETER M. SHANE, Review of Obscenities, The Harvard Crimson, (1972)
• Stephen Spender, Poetry of the Unspeakable, The New York Review of Books, Volume 20, Number 1, February 8, 1973
• W. D. Ehrhart, Soldier-Poets of the Vietnam War, Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1987, pp.246-265
• Justine Kenna, Writing Vietnam, Student Review, 1999

External links

• Interview with Michael Casey at Turnrow
• Review of Million Dollar Hole at Frigatezine
• Poems from the Niederngasse Work Supplement issue
• Poems from The Bridge Review
• Article on Casey and the poetry of work in The Andover Townsman