In Felt Treeling

Overview

n in felt treeling, Michael Cross has created a pastoral theatre in which elaborate patterns of resemblance are poetically measured by countervoiced assertions of autonomy and difference. The world is invited to “err” and to “air” its intentions freely, treely, freewheelingly, treelingly. These poems are “felt” doubly, as both noun and verb, with their layered emotional registers and their playfully theatrical costume dressing. As this carefully scored work is animated by the vocal fabric of its setting in the woods, the reader becomes transfixed, like Daphne, within the lush, felt landscape of the poems. — Elizabeth Willis

Author Biography

Michael Cross is the author of In Felt Treeling: A Libretto (Chax Press, 01/01/2008), Haecceities (Cuneiform Press, 01/01/2010), and The Katechon: Book One (Compline, 01/01/2018); additionally, he edited the volumes Involuntary Vision: After Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (Avenue B, 2003) and The George Oppen Memorial Lectures (National Poetry Foundation, forthcoming), and he is currently editing a volume of Leslie Scalapino’s uncollected “critical” writing. He coedits ON: Contemporary Practice with Thom Donovan and runs a fiercely independent poetry press called Compline. He teaches English and Literature at Skyline College and lives in Oakland with a menagerie of human and nonhuman animals.