Michael Waters 
Caw 

In passionate poems about sin, obsession, and mortality—an artist’s infatuation with a doll, an interspecies relationship, an ex-lover whose presence lingers in recipes, ecclesiastical birds, and a sex toy holding a loved one’s ashes—Waters delivers impeccably crafted narratives infused with his signature lyrical gestures. At the book’s core is a sequence of twenty-five poems on aging, dementia, and caregiving, chiseled phrase by phrase toward unflinching and memorable closure.
Caw is a brilliant, intimate and moving addition to Waters’s body of work and may be his most powerful collection yet.

About the author

Michael Waters is the author of twelve previous books of poems & editor/co-editor of six anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). His recent books include The Dean of Discipline (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) Celestial Joyride (BOA Editions, 2016) & the anthologies Border Lines (Knopf, 2020) & Reel Verse (Knopf, 2019). His book Darling Vulgarity (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize & Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Rolling Stone & American Poetry Review. He has taught at Ohio University, Salisbury University (MD), Bucknell University (PA), Monmouth University (NJ) & The University of Athens (Greece). Widely traveled, he has spent time in numerous countries, including Romania, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Iraq, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Tobago, Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Turkey & Belize. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellow & 2007 Fulbright Fellow, recipient of five Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & NJ State Council on the Arts, & residency fellowships from Yaddo, Mac Dowell, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), St. James Cavaliere Centre (Malta) & Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), Waters lives without a cell phone in Ocean, NJ with poet & translator Mihaela Moscaliuc.