Thrash

THRASH is the second full-length poetry collection by Michael Diebert, a native of Kingsport, Tennessee. His first collection, entitled LIFE OUTSIDE THE SET, was published in 2013. He teaches writing, research, and literature at Perimeter College, Georgia State University and previously served as poetry editor of THE CHATTAHOOCHEE REVIEW and president of Georgia Poetry Society. His poems have appeared on the podcast "Secret Architecture: The Process of Process" and in the zine NOT MY SMALL DIARY. A two-time cancer survivor, Michael lives in Avondale Estates, Georgia with his wife and dogs.

Michael Diebert's new collection interrogates the dynamics between self and body with a courageous facing of mortality, a disarming humor, and an embrace of the strange. At the core these poems shine with unsentimental clarity. They are probing, psychologically deep, direct, intimate, and lithe. These poems, just like the body, are proof of life. 

-Andrea Jurjević, author of SMALL CRIMES and NIGHTCALL

Michael Diebert's THRASH is a stunning and deeply thoughtful collection that acknowledges but does not concede to the divided self that inhabits us all-the part of us who does what's expected-claps when appropriate, praises on point, attends when asked, but then there's what we'd rather be doing. These poems capture the tension, doubt and disappointment of the persona, a man who chafes against society's definition of masculinity with precision and wry humor. These pages are rife with the salt and pluck that good poems are made of.

-Katie Chaple, author of PRETTY LITTLE ROOMS