The Dean of Discipline
University of Pittsburgh Press (2018)
In the richly musical and boldly imaginative poems of The Dean of Discipline, Michael Waters explores the confluences of the sensual and the spiritual, and renders their mysteries with precision and clarity. The title evokes the rigorous consciousness that prods the artist to deepen into his craft. Line by line, Waters delivers the passionate eloquence and intensity that distinguish his poems.
"[H]e tempers in his latest collection a delight in wit and wordplay with a rigorous prosodic training honed and refined throughout a long and distinguished career... A voluptuary of style... Michael Waters is the ablest poet of an able generation." -- Floyd Collins, The Gettysburg Review
"The Dean of Discipline's absorbing subject is the making of art, showing and teaching us a poet's meticulous and raucous devotion so that we gain a sound and sense of how poems are, in fact, created... Waters's work assumes a divine erotic presence even in his most harrowing poems."
-- Judith Vollmer, The Georgia Review
© 2018 Michael Waters
Photo: Michael Paul Thomas