Description: "In The Halo of Bees: New & Selected Poems 1990-2022, award-winning author Michael Hettich presents selections of his previous books-more than two dozen, spanning five decades-alongside a section of new poetry written for this collection. His poetry "takes us on a constant course of discovery," and The Halo of Bees is a journey as much for the reader as it has been for Michael Hettich"--
Brief description: Born in New York City and raised in its suburbs, Michael Hettich has lived in Colorado, Northern Florida, Vermont, Miami, and Black Mountain, North Carolina, where he now lives with his family. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Miami and taught for many years at Miami Dade College where he was awarded an Endowed Teaching Chair. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in many journals and anthologies, and he has published more than two dozen books of poetry across five decades. His honors include several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize, a Florida Book Award, and the Lena M. Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. His website is michaelhettich.com
Review Quotes:
Hettich takes us on a constant course of discovery, often verging off the map into worlds of surprising unpredictability. The result is an engaging, compelling poetry filled with imaginative turns and intersections, and reading it we find ourselves awakened once more to the mystery, beauty, and wonder of the world around us.
-Robert Hedin, author of At the Great Door of Morning
His poems are finely observed, precisely felt, and they bring magic to the domestic life, the real magic of language that has the power to transform a world.
-John Dufresne, author of Storyville
Look carefully at the glinting lights he paints. Like everything beautiful, they will be gone before you know it.
-Lola Haskins, author of Asylum
While it is said that all poems are love poems, this is particularly true of Hettich's work-these poems are a reaching out, striving to reach the point of connection to ourselves and others.
-Jim Daniels, author of Gun/Shy
Michael Hettich's poems resemble half-remembered fables or lyrical dreams, animistic dramas played out in moonlit meadows, domestic interiors that shimmer like velvet jewelry boxes. Wisdom and enchantment are his calling cards, and he strews them about with purpose, like Hansel and Gretel marking the path home through the forest.
-Campbell McGrath, author of The Radiance Archive
Michael Hettich inhabits the interior world of consciousness, that world in which one encounters oneself beyond language.
-Steve Kowit, author of Cherish: New and Selected Poems