Elemental Things

2nd Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2022

As the increasing complexities of our world press on with their insistent yammering for our attention, it often feels difficult to hear the soft whisperings of our own spirits as they try to encourage us toward those choices which might be most meaningful for our lives. Here in Elemental Things, Michael Glaser employs poetry to grapple with that reality and show how attitudes of both gratitude and wonder might serve as nurturing companions for our journeys.

Early Praise:

"These poems return us to the sacred in our everyday lives, calling us back to the language of awe, as the poet puts it so gorgeously in the opening poem. These poems feel both elemental and essential themselves, capturing so many holy moments in nature, inviting us into the solitude and presence from which absorbing poetry is born."

-James Crews, contest judge, poet, editor of How to Love the World

"If pen to paper is a prayer-these are word temples."

-Deanna Nikaido, poet, educator, visual artist

"Glaser's poems remind us what a gift it is to be alive, even during difficult times."

-Elizabeth Lund, reviewer and host of Poetic Lines

Michael S. Glaser is a professor Emeritus at St. Mary's College where he served for 50 years. A Poet Laureate of Maryland (2004-2009), Glaser has received awards for his poetry, his teaching, and his service to poetry and the poetic tradition in Maryland. A former Board member of the Maryland Humanities, and the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center, he served as a Maryland State Arts Council Poet-in-the-Schools for nearly 25 years and now co-leads retreats which embrace the reading and writing of poetry as a means of self-reflection and personal growth. Glaser has published several collections of his own poetry, edited three anthologies and co-edited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA 2012). He writes book reviews for The Friends Journal and is the proud father of five children and ten grandchildren. He now lives in Hillsborough, NC with his wife, the educator and Courage and Renewal facilitator, Kathleen W. Glaser.