A collection of poetry, prose, and photography by Michael Boer. These works take notice of encounters with places (including several cemeteries) and people (and their ghosts). Sometimes humorous, sometimes earnest, he explores the tensions between the rural and the urban, between community and division, between love and gender, between intuition and faith, between theology and politics. Indirectly or not, these poems probe the contradictory processes between perception and conviction.
Contradiction, Michael Boer's new book, shows an admirable combination of his analytic mind with an artistic, humorous liberal arts approach. It is highly personal, its moods varying just like his music does. It reveals his strong power of observation and sensitive reflection. While reading, at various times I thought: award-worthy, baffling, beautiful phrasing, moving, puzzling, and wow. It is not what an editor would call a balanced or consistent book, but serves as an indirect partial autobiography, or at least introduction to how he thinks.
--Arthur Lee Jacobson
https: //www.amazon.com/Arthur-Lee-Jacobson/e/B001KCBXN0
http: //www.arthurleej.com/)
I like the variety of poetry and pictures in Contradiction by Michael Boer. I like a lot of these poems. Being an offshoot of the William Carlos Williams school as a writer and reader of poetry, I especially like the shorter pieces. For instance, The Unforgetting, The Unimpaired Wind, Weathering Time, Exit by the Front Door at this Stop, Father's Mirror, Motel Smoke Alarms. The ones I like the very best are Cord Theory and BYO Animal for DIY Meatpacking, especially since I worked in a packing house and observed pigs, etc. The book shows a man with great curiosity about the world and life, and I like that. This comes out so well in his tendency to write list poems. He's really good at that!
--David Allan Evans
http: //davidallanevans.com/
Michael Boer's Contradiction has a commanding look, cover & page layout. Well done, a weight well worth the wait! Love The Mission page. It's a masque! (No matter how 21st century the word "tweet" is.) The phrase "speak for itself" will conjure up Robert Mueller. Trigger page is also inspired.
--Jack Garvey
https: //www.amazon.com/Jack-Garvey/e/B00K4EHUZK
https: //buskersdelight.home.blog/author/buskersdelight/)
