Michael Casey

Examines the practice of lectio divina in the Benedictine tradition, looking at its history and theology, and applying traditional imagery as a guide to reading the sacred texts

The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina

Sacred Reading

The first significant book of poems by an American to spring from the war in Vietnam. Michael Casey is a natural and frugal storyteller, his honesty shines through, and he listens. How beautifully he listens, and what a fine ear for speech patterns. Michael Casey is a workingman's poet, a grunt poet that humped the boonies and made it back to let us know his visons of the worlds he has met with and what may be important for the future. Right on, Michael Casey, right on.

Obscenities

"The global financial system has enormous influence on the day-to-day lives of billions, yet is shrouded in mystery and poorly understood. Through narrative-driven reporting, vivid storytelling, and perceptive analysis Michael Casey brings to light the distorted, dysfunctional global economic system that benefits a tiny elite but leaves the rest of the world's population powerless. In ways that wonkish tomes cannot, this anecdote-rich account of the effects of global finance on the lives of ordinary people shows why we must understand and care about rigid misaligned exchange rates, currency wars, and the dangerous imbalance in the world's savings and spending patterns"--

how our broken global financial system destroys the middle class

The unfair trade

Raiding a Whorehouse

n 1972, Michael Casey won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for Obscenities, a collection of poems drawn from his military experience during the Vietnam War. In his foreword to the book, judge Stanley Kunitz called the work "a kind of anti-poetry that befits a kind of war empty of any kind of glory" and "the first significant book of poems written by an American to spring from the war in Vietnam." Its raw depictions of war's mundanity and obscenity resonated with a broad audience, and Obscenities went into a mass market paperback edition, and was stocked in drugstores as well as bookstores. In the decades since, Casey's poetry has continued to document the places of his work and life. Then and now, his poems foreground the voices around him over that of a single author; they are the words of young American conscripts and their Vietnamese counterparts, coworkers and bosses, neighbors and strangers. His compressed sketches and unadorned monologues have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. There It Is: New and Selected Poems presents, for the first time, a full tour through Casey's work, from his 1972 debut to 2011's Check Points, together with new and uncollected work from the late 60s on. Here are all the locations of Casey's life and work--Lowell to Landing Zone, dye house to desk--and an ensemble cast with a lot to say. The publication of Michael Casey's New and Selected Poems, with his quirky portraits of ordinary Americans, is an event to celebrate. Like a photographer snapping pictures relentlessly, he must have written a poem about everyone he ever met with dead-on realism. Compared to him, the Spoon River Anthology is a work for kiddies. If Robert Frost was a poet of the rural New Englander, Michael Casey, also a New Englander, brings to life his mill town background, the guys who didn't go on to college and the larger world, but married the girls they dated in high school and got jobs in the mill. When he's sent to Vietnam he captures his fellow soldiers in their own military jargon. A master of the vernacular, he forces one to question writing in the 'correct' language when so many of us speak it quite differently, the language we think and feel in. Rare among poets, he's willing to explore colloquial speech in all its messiness, and gets it down perfectly - in fact, he's got us all down spot on. This collection, with its wide range of voices, is a unique achievement." -- Edward Field, author of The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag and After the Fall: Poems Old and New "I first heard Michael Casey read these poems on a July evening in New Hampshire long ago while the war in Vietnam was still a tremendous confusion and sorrow for all of us and the poems made sense of it in a new way. My writer father had discovered that our summer neighbor was a poet and had invited him to read to us. I was stunned by the power of the language, the great-heartedness of the poems, the way Casey was not afraid to write about how men act under pressure, the way he used ordinary words to describe extraordinary feelings. Now I read the poems in a New York City apartment in a time that seems as confusing as the 1970's. Michael Casey's poems changed as he went back to work after the war and later when he moved north, but their power is undiminished. He is tough but the poems are tender. These are poems that grab you by the heart and refuse to let you go. Read them!" - Susan Cheever, author of Drinking in America: Our Secret History and E.E. Cummings: A Life "These are wonderfully droll, deadpan poems, like slyly condensed short stories, with an eye for the tellingly absurd detail and an ear for the oddities of everyday speech." -- Michael Foley, author of The Age of Absurdity and Isn't This Fun: Investigating the Serious Business of Enjoying Ourselves

New & Selected Poems

There it is

Poetry. In these 52 poems, the author continues the subject of the Vietnam War he began in his 1972 collection, Obscenities. In CHECK POINTS, he reveals, through characters and situations, the essential horror of that experience in a voice full of dark humor that makes it all the more memorable. This new volume incorporates many of the poems in the limited edition chapbook, Raiding a Whorehouse (Adastra Press, 2004). What Stanley Kunitz said of Casey's first book of poems holds true for this new collection as well: "He has had the original insight and the controls to produce a kind of anti-poetry that befits a kind of war empty of any kind of glory."

Check Points

Millrat

A reissuing of Obscenities, the debut collection of poems by Michael Casey.

Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs

Athirst for God

Fifteen original short stories by various authors relate the exploits of teenage warriors who defeat their enemies with cunning and skill as they strive to fulfill their destinies.

Tales from Old Forge and Singing Anvil

The Butcher, the Baker and the Undertaker

Poetry. "In reading Casey's poems we ought to remember that poetry often arises from an exhilaration and even an intoxification with the sounds of speech."--Ted Kooser "If poetry were the singular truth of a poet, Casey's MILLRAT would be a masterpiece."--Harvard Review"

Poems

Permanent Party

Michael Casey, a monk and scholar who has been publishing his wise teachings on the Rule of St. Benedict for decades, turns to the particular Benedictine values that he considers most urgent for Christians to incorporate into their lives today. Eloquent and incisive, Casey invites readers to accept that gospel living - seen in the light of the Rule - involves accepting the challenge of being different from the secular culture around us. He encourages readers to set clear goals and objectives, to be honest about the practical ways in which priorities may have to change to meet these goals, and to have the courage to implement these changes both daily and for the future. Casey presents thoughtful reflections on the beliefs and values of asceticism, silence, leisure, reading, chastity, and poverty - putting these traditional Benedictine values into the context of modern life and the spiritual aspirations of people today. Strangers to the City is a book for all who are interested in learning more about the dynamics of spiritual growth from the monastic experience.

Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict

Strangers to the City

Go Market

A Poem for Emily Blunt

The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker is a comedy drama about a street of shops in Old Forge and Singing Anvil in England . Here's a flavourWayne buys a derelict pub and his wife is pregnant with twins , things could not be worse , Mrs Murphy comes to the rescue with a loan , and 2 sets of twins the builders work for nothing , God looks down and helps too , Wayne discovers a hidden cellar underneath the cellar , its full of 40year old whisky left over from the war WWII , the pub was where the local black marketeer left everything . Wayne and family are saved The Undertaker has a feud with the traffic warden for putting a parking ticket on his hearse. On the way there' a Jazz funeral, a teddy bear called Patrick, a dog called hairy Amjit who has a mind of his own. The Undertaker's son leaves the business and Percy is at a loss, his son returns with a Prodigal Son plea for forgiveness, "Father forgive me, I now know that computers are not for me, there is no love in computers , but in our business there is love and compassion .The Undertaker tries to blackmail a bent builder who is going to demolish the street of shops where they all live. Peace is restored so the Undertaker becomes the election agent for the builder and takes him on a tour of all the rest homes, so that the builder ends up getting into the Houses of Parliament. The dodge bookie Smiling Paul has a bet on the election and wins 1/4 million pounds. The Undertaker is furious until her hears that Smiling Paul had a road to Damascus experience and gave away all the money to help save the Chinese restaurant business of his Chinese friends.

The Butcher the Baker and the Undertaker

In the Prologue of his Rule, St. Benedict maps out the road that leads to heaven; he lays the foundation for life in a community that seeks God. The themes that are present throughout the Rule 'obedience, humility, prayer, fear of the Lord, eternal life 'are grounded in the Prologue. By reflecting on the Prologue one verse at a time, Michael Casey, OCSO, delves into the richness of meaning that can be found in Benedict's words. These reflections, first given as talks and made available on his community's web site, build a bridge between the sixth-century text and twenty-first-century Christians.In The Road to Eternal Life, Casey invites readers to reflect on the Prologue in light of their own experiences, to seek the road that leads to salvation. Michael Casey, OCSO, has been a monk of Tarrawarra Abbey (Australia) since 1960. After completing a degree in Scripture at Leuven, he received his doctorate from Melbourne College of Divinity for a study of desire for God in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. For the past decades he has been engaged in exploring different aspects of monastic spirituality, writing, and giving conferences throughout the English-speaking monastic world. His books include Strangers to the City (Paraclete Press, 2005), A Guide to Living in the Truth (Liguori, 2001), and Sacred Reading (Liguori, 1996).

Reflections on the Prologue of Benedict's Rule

The Road to Eternal Life

In clear and often delightful prose, Casey brings out the personal techniques and practicalities involved in transforming prayer from an "activity" to a way of life. The freshness of his language reinforces the basic premise of this book that spiritual communion with God must be lived, not merely studied or repeated ritualistically.

Michael Casey

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