sara michas-martin

gray matter

“How much of a body is a spirit, and vice versa? Does the biology of our minds make for our behavior, become our destinies?  Can we make choices not determined by the chemistries that comprise our brains? What does this mean for free will and fate, and for faith itself?  Is the spirit quantifiable?

Each era of scientific revolution - a reconceiving of our world as well as the terms in which science defines it - has had its own profound poetries, from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to William Carlos Williams' The Desert Music and Other Poems. Now Sara Michas-Martin's Gray Matter evokes our most immediate scientific revolution, the discovery of the interdependence of biology and environment - even if we don't yet understand to what extent each is altered by the other, and just what the effects may be.  It is no accident that its title echoes that of George Oppen's post-nuclear masterpiece, The Materials.  As Oppen presaged, material is altered by matter's will.”

— Susan Wheeler, Judge, Poets Out Loud Prize.
Full Introduction HERE

“These poems are kaleidoscopic and pulsing; their living focus shows us that instability too has its elegance, that thought like music is in movement. This is a vibrant, beautifully synaptic book."

— Dean Young

"Around the head / stirs a haze of gases" says Sara Michas-Martin, an epistomological-poet, one who works stubbornly at knowing and simultaneously examines the equipment and mechanisms by which we attempt to know.”

—Tony Hoagland

"This eloquent work offers the reader a rare mix of lyrical intensity and abstract rigor. These are poems of inner adventure and outward event, the one sometimes easing into the other like figures at dusk. The narratives here are compelling and the craft hard-earned, making for a wonderful debut collection."           

—Eavan Boland 

"What do I know about poetry? Brains are my business. Well, I know this: great poetry takes the brain by surprise (not merely the reflective self) knocking the neurons out of kilter, just a little, but enough to shock them into fresh patterns of perception, if only for an instant.  Gray Matter is an extraordinary collection. I read it, neurons a-buzz, in a single, absorbed sitting. I’m not sure that’s what one is supposed to do with poems as rich, visceral and playfully profound as these.”

— Paul Broks, Neuropsychologist

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