The Dean of Discipline (2018)

“He 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

Celestial Joyride (2016)

“The consistency of his work over the past thirty years has contributed greatly to American letters, and his unique voice within the poetry world illuminates, with precision and clarity, the intricate nature of the human condition.”
—Esteban Rodríguez, American Book Review

“Waters stands among the best American poets writing today.”
—Roberto Bonazzi, San Antonio Express-News

Michael Waters is the author of twelve previous books of poems & editor/co-editor of six anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). His recent books include The Dean of Discipline (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) Celestial Joyride (BOA Editions, 2016) & the anthologies Border Lines (Knopf, 2020) & Reel Verse (Knopf, 2019). His book Darling Vulgarity (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize & Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2006) was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Rolling Stone & American Poetry Review. He has taught at Ohio University, Salisbury University (MD), Bucknell University (PA), Monmouth University (NJ) & The University of Athens (Greece). Widely traveled, he has spent time in numerous countries, including Romania, Dominican Republic, Thailand, Iraq, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Tobago, Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Turkey & Belize. A 2017 Guggenheim Fellow & 2007 Fulbright Fellow, recipient of five Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & NJ State Council on the Arts, & residency fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Ireland), St. James Cavaliere Centre (Malta) & Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), Waters lives without a cell phone in Ocean, NJ with poet & translator Mihaela Moscaliuc.