In, YOU MUST HAVE YOUR FAMINE, by Michael Poage, understand you will never go without. Poage supplies plenty of sustenance through his intricate detailing and depiction of intimacies, losses, and the ravings and solace found in the world at large. This is an 'old soul' poet who knows himself well, choosing each word for impact and understanding; and he does so with unique languaging. ...the fabric tulip keeps its shape...a handsome violence...
My heart is bone, not flesh... Beggar's Belief, is one of the most powerful poems in this collection. This is a body of work to ingest and find provision for both body and soul.
-
Ronda Miller
is a Life Coach and a former state president of Kansas Authors Club, 2018-2019. Her five books of poetry include, I Love the Child, winner of The Children's Book Award in 2020 at the state Kansas Authors Club Convention.
In
You Must Have Your Famine,
Michael Poage writes like a survivor who tells "... the story every/ chance they get." He stands at the "... edge of the world," to tell us the truth, that " ... the ripples of surface/ water go the way/ of the wind," that so often we take our lives " ... far out to sea,/ drop them like an anchor," that "... the world knows nothing./ Cares less." Yet Poage is careful in his observation, open in his love of the world and its harsh landscapes, and keen in his sense of the longevity of relationships between people and places. He performs, as he writes in one poem, "the ancient rescue at the edge of everything."
-Thomas Fox Averill
, Professor Emeritus, Washburn University, author of
Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr
."