Valley Voices Special Issue :: Michael Anania

Valley Voices Spring 2015 is a special issue on Michael Anania, guest edited by Michael Antonucci and Garin Cycholl, who write, “Anania’s space is the river, the imagined city – a Chicago of relentless modernity, one capable of reinventing itself and making itself for sale again and again as the waters rise and fall. From here, the poet observes and reflects on this Chicago on the make – a sprawl of fresh water and wind, candy and steel.”

Featured in the volume is an interview with Anania as well as several of his poems. Also included are essays on Anania’s work: “Modernist Current: Michael Anania’s Poetry of the Western Rivers” by Robert Archambeau; “‘Out of Dazzlement’…Chiaroscuro Revisited” by Peter Michaelson; “‘Energy Held in Elegant Control’: Vortex Anania” by Lachlan Murray; “Another Italian-American Poet in Omaha: Italy in Michael Anania’s Poetry” by William Allegrezza; “Michael Anania’s The Red Menace: A Study in Self-Production” by David Ray Vance; “‘Like Hands Raised in Song’: Proper Names in Michael Anania’s ‘Steal Away'” by Lea Graham; “On Michael Anania’s In Natural Light” by Reginald Gibbons as well as several more.

“This collection of essays and original work,” the editors write, “offers a set of moments in lands (and waters) surveyed by Anania. That land pretends a relentless modernity – one that Anania has evidenced for readers, colleagues, and other artists page by page, line by line. Charles Olson argued that the poet either rides on or digs into the land. This collection of essays and Anania’s writings attest that he has done both.”