"Juxtaposing our wars, our disturbed cities, our flawed policies with the erotic and domestic, Michael Broek creates, in
Refuge/es
, a stunning love song for our troubled nation and world. Consisting primarily of three sequences, this audaciously original first book is actually one complex collage with recurrent points of reference, assembled with uncommon skill and passionate care."—Martha Collins
Intimate and explorative,
intricately weaves together political, historical, and highly specific cultural movements across many countries and time periods; challenging themes of war, violence, love, and suffering. Michael Broek counters the macro worldly lens with a microscopic view of what makes us distinctly human, which exposes a deep irony: sometimes what we run from, we also create.
The Counterpane 7
I've dreamt nightmares of wounds & made moans so loud I woke myself bellowing.
I somehow know what is coming—everything that follows after the first Word
is what has to follow. I am one of these men: I hear a man in a bar say, "One"
& because he speaks I know just why I will die.
This is not because I'm proud.
I've dreamt he dapples me with whiskey kisses then makes me sit on the Judas chair.
Tonight I'll dream a long dream of witness.
Michael Broek
is the author of two chapbooks,
The Logic of Yoo
(Beloit Poetry Journal) and
The Amputation Artist
(Emerge Literary Journal). His poems have been published in the
American Poetry Review
,
Beloit Poetry Journal
Blackbird
Connotation Press
Drunken Boat
Exit Strata
Fourteen Hills
, the
Great River Review
Literary Imagination
Literary Review
, and elsewhere in print and online. He has held a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Council. He holds a PhD from the University of Essex (England) and edits the online journal
Tran(s)tudies
.