Mudsong

In poems made of muck, time, magic and jazz, Michael Spring’s Mudsong reminds us that nature, ours and the world’s, is at once organic and mysterious. Spring’s art celebrates by paying attention – by resolving to slow down, be somewhere in particular and listen and look. With nods to Pierre Bonnard, Ornette Coleman and Mary Oliver, among others, the poems in Mudsong sing human with “the music…of the earth.”– Lex RuncimanMichael Spring addresses the connection between human consciousness and “the serpentine landscape,” “leaves in the current.” He is walking side by side with Ovid, Jung, Hermes Did the Great Fall truly alienate us? Or, as Spring suggests, is there an ageless link between humanity and "the gospel of mycelium and rock," an energy accessible only to those who can "become the ground." This is a stellar collection, dramatically envisioned, beautifully crafted.– John AmenThe Pedestal MagazineMichael Spring's first book, blue crow, plunges the reader instantly into a world that is the everyday heightened with sensuous awareness, charged with visionary intensity, held from melting by a gentle mocking irony. Poem after poem does this with spare but precise language and perfect timing. Spring's new poems in Mudsong are songs of metamorphosis – the poet feels so acutely the natural and human lives around him that he enters them, or they possess him.– Eleanor BerryOregon State Poetry AssociationAll of the adjectives (including "beautiful") that we might use to describe Spring's work are strangely old-fashioned. And yet, it's perhaps we – and not Spring's poetry – that are anachronistic for allowing these words to slip so subtly out of usage and, finally, "integrity," "substance," "soulfulness."– Terri Brown-DavidsonMichael Spring's poems are strong and tender. Whether waxing of the natural world, his children, or his astute erotica, his is a voice that needs to be heard. These poems are passionate, compassionate, and wise. I recommend his powerful work.– Leonard CirinoPygmy Forest Press