Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and educated at the University of Notre Dame and Brown University in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Michael Cervas came late to the writing of poetry. Decades into a teaching career, he began writing poems in his mid-forties, partly as a way of encouraging his students to take creative writing seriously. A sabbatical year in 2006 allowed him to devote himself more fully to his own writing and to revise earlier work, as a result of which his poems have begun to appear in journals and magazines throughout the country. As his poems attest, Michael’s extra-literary interests include gardening, cooking, jazz, and sports, especially that most poetic of all sports, squash. Together with his wife, Deborah, and his daughter, Anne, Michael lives in Simsbury, Connecticut on the campus of Westminster School, where he teaches English and directs the Westminster Poetry Series. Read some sample poems from the book. The Antrim House seminar room offers notes, ideas for discussion & writing, images, and/or additional poems. Click here to read the seminar offering for Inside The Box. |
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BOOK STATISTICS ISBN 978-0-9792226-3-4
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THE BIRTH OF LANGUAGE I’m with my cousin Billy, two ten-year-olds We’re both lost here in our privacies, to see a tall boy, smoking a cigarette, and says in a voice so exotic but, struck dumb, I can’t move, |
AN EXTRA SECOND
Yesterday, on the last night of the year, Last night, we also gained an extra second, Luckily I saved my moment for today. against the blankness of snow and trees, |
DIRT June 30, 2005 From a distance what you would see as he digs carefully beneath the stones, you will find him here, quiet and focused, but he has a daughter living out west |
THE ANNOYING AGE
She’s thirteen, almost fourteen now. and so here I am at least for the next eight years or so but only, only |
SPARROW’S LAMENT When there were only six |
ON THE ROAD
These days I’m trying No talk shows, Only the thrum just background until one by one |