There's a Box in the Garage You Can Beat With a Stick

(Paperback)

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Michael Teig's poems are moving, intelligent, full of delight, and-most refreshingly-a pleasure to read. Stephen Dobyns says of Teig's poems, "they have this ability to make the world fresh again and make us realize why we love the world, despite its failings and our own."

When they gave him a shovel
he repaired the ground.

When they addressed him in memos
he said I am lonely too.

He gave them a shrug
and held

a gray cat to his chest
like an alibi.

Michael Teig is founding co-editor of jubilat. He won the inaugural A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.

Reviews

"...in his image-rich free verse, the boundaries between cause and effect, the lines separating people, animals, vegetables, and manufactured products nearly disappear, creating a space part pastoral, part postmodern, and close to the poet's peers and models... from Tomasz Salamun to Dara Wier." --Publishers Weekly "Brimming with wit ... Teig's second book of poems has one of the boldest titles in poetry-book history, and he follows his standout title with highly imaginative poems boasting imagery with passionate reach. Nearly every poem in this collection can be viewed as a picturesque mural that doesn't quite make sense,yet, curiously, leads to wonder and excitement ... It is quite possible that Teig has inherited the mantle of William Carlos Williams' 'Red Wheelbarrow.' But there is nothing here that is definitive, and that is the point." --Booklist "...the poems in There's a Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick are weird but likeable, and they make your brain feel all tingly when you read them ... There's A Box in the Garage You Can Beat with a Stick pairs charming, irreverent images with a sincere tone, making poems that at once are both accessible and elusive." -Newpages "...these poems, through their connectivity and juxtapositions, through their dexterous leaps of mind and perception, rise from the page and occupy, in dazzling multiplicity, the unseen yet fully habitable rooms of consciousness, rooms writers and readers enter to consider questions guaranteeing at best transitory answers. In these pages Teig insists on embracing the push and pull of an uncertainty that springs from within and bears down, from without." -American Microreviews & Interviews

Author Bio

Michael Teig is the author of Big Back Yard (BOA Editions, 2003), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in many journals, including FIELD, Conduit, Black Warrior Review, Bateau, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, and A Public Space. He is a co-founder and editor-at-large of jubilat. Born in Franklin, PA, Teig holds degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Academy of American Poets, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He lives in Easthampton, MA, with his wife and son.