Cinders of My Better Angels

What moves me most about Cinders of My Better Angels is how it illuminates our ordinary lives, how it depicts that illness makes us not less ourselves, but more so. In this incisive collection, direct, smart, darkly humorous poetry mines the gems of our fragile mortality with courageous, resolute spirit. Through Michael Magee’s superb mastery of craft, the speaker of the poems and the readers become as one, all of us united under the same moon’s watchful eye, afflicted yet determined, ailing yet healing, “hoping for rescue to come along / in the shape of a period.” —Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of A New Red

From the echo of his grandfather's vaudeville patter to the sound of his mother's ragtime piano, Michael Magee's work has encompassed dance, theatre and photography projects, radio scripts, and a movie, "Shank's Mare." His poems have been choreographed for dance productions, performed as songs on the C.D. "Vaudeville," on-air for PoetsWest and as podcasts for Jack Straw Productions. While in England, his play "A Night in Reading Gaol With Oscar Wilde" was produced. He also worked for Billy Smart's Circus in London and appeared on BBC radio, Nottingham and Derby. His chapbooks Ireland's Eye and A Trip to Jerusalem reflect his love of travel and trips to Italy, Czechoslovakia, Turkey and Morocco. In 2010, along with photographer Peter Serko, Michael was co-curator and co-editor of 20/20: Tacoma in Images and Verse. Three years of chemotherapy and ongoing cancer treatment have contributed to this collection. His prognosis for continued poetry is "good." He lives in Tacoma, Washington.