"What's most impressive about AFTER GOD is the quality of the poems-intelligent, fluent, sensuous, and assured. What's surprising is that it's Michael Whelan's first book. The story may be familiar (boy falls in love, falls out of love, keeps longing), but Whelan's handling of it, with unguarded candor and a battery of emotions, is rare and compelling. In lush, vivid language, he reveals himself as a God-besotted child, self-pleased and aesthetically aware; then an irate young man exorcising God from his life; and finally a mature man, yearning for a sip of the old awe. His ongoing effort to reshape God into something rational yet intimate may not succeed, but this rich and heartfelt book surely does." Poet Joan Murray"I don't read poetry, but I like these poems!" So say many readers of After God, a lean, readable, tender tale of a lifelong lovers' quarrel between a poet and God. If you grew up Catholic-whether you have left the Church or remain in it despite its troubles-you will find resonance in this book. If you have left other churches and faiths, but still wonder in your soul about the question of God, this too is a book for you. And it explores the God question through a tale told in poetry-the "whiskey" of literature. The tale opens in winsome poems set in the world of a New York, first-generation Irish Catholic boy who grows up in the 1940s and '50s steeped in God, church and faith. As the boy moves into emerging manhood, he chooses to ground his life in God. He joins the religious order of the De La Salle Christian Brothers, who taught him throughout his boyhood. He enters an ancient world "behind the wall" of the cloister as he makes his way through religious life to become a teaching brother.A decade later, studying new theology, his life begins his "after": arriving in the wild-wonderful late1960s when the world flipped. With its upturn, the brother chooses to leave church, faith, God and brothers. As his agile-talking Irish relatives might have put it, linguistically holding past inside present, "Isn't he after leaving God!"But like a humming bird suspending, a sense of God hovers in His absence. Slowly in the agnostic wake of his gone God, the poet finds an enigmatic "You" more intriguing than any knowing he held of the God-the Him or Her or Whom?- he dismissed as the doctrine-girdled deity he inherited. For the poet, confronting the enigma of this You opens "after" into its second sense: "after" as hunt. i
About the Author: Michael Whelan is an ex Irish American Catholic New Yorker (he's never clear which is the "ex") who loves to stir the waters of the God question after priming his guests with Jameson. He explores the spirit with the charm of a believing agnostic leprechaun who comes from an Irish family where everyone has a heady quickness in spinning words. He is also a lifelong prober of the unknowable side of being and a soul pilgrim who could have ridden in the Canterbury Tales. He holds a master's degree in theology but never puts that on his business resume. He won first prize in The Leitrim Guardian 2012 Literary Awards. His poems have been published in The Coachella Review, The Eloquent Atheist, The Healing Muse, The Little Patuxent Review, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. His poem "Clay Feet," included in this collection, appeared first in the Martin Stannard August 2013 Collection featured in full on The Best American Poetry blog. Irish arts and culture magazine Eirways featured five of his poems in a feature piece on the late Irish poet/novelist/dramatist Dermot Healy, who was friend and mentor to Whelan in his poetry. In its arts and culture page, OpEd online featured a profile of Whelan as poet in 2017