Pagan Sky: New and Selected Poems 2000–2025

In these richly textured poems—crafted with taut clarity and consummate skill—Waters confronts the immutable presence of death by reveling in sensual pleasure and spiritual daring. Each poem unfolds as a compelling narrative, sharpened by precise diction and lifted by lyrical grace and musical phrasing.

Waters’ range is expansive, moving across geographies from Brooklyn to Romania, from the Dominican Republic to Greece, all while engaging in urgent political realities such as AIDS, Black Lives Matter, and authoritarian rule. He also draws on a vibrant cultural lineage that includes Caravaggio, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cesare Pavese, and Balthus.

Pagan Sky: New and Selected Poems 2000–2025 presents a body of work that affirms Michael Waters as a singular and enduring voice in American poetry and as an artist whose poems continue to deepen, resonate, and enrich his remarkable literary legacy.

Praise for Michael Waters

“It is difficult to imagine poetry could be more finely crafted and compelling than the work of Michael Waters, who has been quietly writing some of the best poetry in the United States for the past three decades.” —Stephan Delbos, The Prague Post

“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 Rodriguez, American Book Review

“One who has written fourteen well-regarded books of poetry across nearly fifty years is still capable of producing work that ranks among his best… Michael Waters is a patient craftsman.” —Tony Leuzzi, North American Review 

“Michael Waters is perhaps the best poet of his generation.” —Floyd Collins, The Gettysburg Review

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

“Waters’s work assumes a divine erotic presence even in his most harrowing poems.” —Judith Vollmer, The Georgia Review

Otherworld

Our dozen or so ringed the holy well,

Some stooping low to cup in palms

Cold water seeping through stone.

This being Ireland, two swans

Frothed the estuary. Someone twined

Her mauve scrunchie onto a branch

Among pandemic masks & strips of scarves,

Ragged decoration in raucous devotion.

Lapsed, I stood my ground among believers

Who gathered stones for cairns, who

Blessed themselves more than once

With soppy fingers as the whole country

Greened around us & lines of poems

By Kavanaugh, Heaney, & Boland

Wound through sky briefly bluing.

I listened closely to the wind-thrust words.

We tromped through mud back to the bus

Idling in mist of its own making,

Then raced the weak light west as rain

Shawled our surfacing reflections.

Our faces wept beside us as we slept.