Overview

INTRODUCTION: SHINY THINGSThe sound of her singing was something like a cellogetting up in the morning.-Richard Goldstein, about the Germansinger Nico on the album The VelvetUnderground & Nico.Michael Magee has lived in England and traveled widely, but calls the Northwest home. In October 2023, he traveled to Budapest and crossed many bridges, leading to the chapbook Budapest After Dark, published in 2024 by Open Sesame Books. Section I of Shiny Things reflects those travels. In Section II, ""Pro Femina,"" his mother, late wife, cats, movie stars, andpaintings come into play. Section III explores the natural world, and inner and outer landscapes from earth and space. This collection is a map without a compass to guide you. Start wherever ""shiny things"" appear in your eye, as you cross bridges from Pest into the hills of Buda, or in the reflections of portrait artists: Sargent, Berény, Van Gogh, Rippl-Rónai, andVermeer. Michael also draws music from the wells of Bach, Liszt, Oliver Nelson, and Astor Piazzolla. And yes, from the cello, that most passionate and sensuous of instruments (besides the voice), one that you can get your arms around.

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Shiny Things is a marvelous compendium, a gallery of impressions and reflections inspired by art experience, travel, the natural world. The poems, some ekphrastic, many synesthetic, are lush, electric, vivid as gemstones. But there is a magical translucence to them: Magee doesn't only look at, but through the varied subjects and objects of this transparent life. In these chromatic, radiant poems, the poet's own ""glassy eye sees through itself / to the other side of wonderment."" -Sati Mookherjee, author of Eye and Ways of Being Shiny Things is a poetry collection that invites us to come and discover. Whether the subject is a bridge or damselfly, a post office or a painting, Michael Magee's rich observations and wonderfully startling comparisons coax us into seeing anew, listening again, rethinking, and reimagining. These deeply layered poems yield new meaning with each reading, and they are worth opening again and again. -Connie Hampton Connally, author of Fire Music and The Songs We Hide

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