Espy congratulates Michael Morse on his fellowship from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. FAWC awards ten fellowships to emerging poets and fiction writers each year. Morse will be working at FAWC from October through May 2009. Morse plans to work on a manuscript of poems titled "Void and Compensation," a series of poems that he started during his Espy fellowship in 2004. Morse writes, "I borrowed the collection title and spirit from the work of Simone Weil; my work contemplates broad and specific responses to loss in varied tonalities, ranging from the meditative to the playful."

Michael lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and at Gotham Writers' Workshop, where he started the poetry program. His poems have appeared in Tin House, Spinning Jenny, Field, The Iowa Review, Colorado Review, Fine Madness, West  Branch and Antioch Review.

Void and Compensation (Pug-nosed Dream)           

If most things speak for themselves, can't it be said
that really you're doing the thinking for them?

The first step is all about obsession with exclusion,
the cold front coming in and forcing you to hunker down,
the migrants winging their way to some gold coast
with enough fat in their chests to burn down a barn.

Isn't your own heart that way from what or whom you can't have?
Wasn't Sarah Vaughn singing this all along?

Polka dots and moonbeams, for sure, and that dress
that loves your body suddenly put aside, and that touch,
oh brick wall, oh tin car, oh small space
inside the crumple zone of either/or.

Copyright © 2006 by Michael Morse.
First published in Spinning Jenny. Appears with permission of the author.

“Oysterville is simply gorgeous and quietly invigorating.  I can’t think of a better place to work. It’s invaluable to feel that others recognize the merits of artistic process and create spaces where we can write, read, and mediate on craft; the Espy Foundation’s offer of time and space—and what space!  Is there anywhere else like this in the country?—where process is of primary import is about the best gift a writer can get.”

Michael Morse, Espy Resident 2004, 2006

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