Michael Neal Morris: 9 books

Most Wednesday afternoons, I can be found sitting in the Performance Hall at Eastfield College. Here I have been blessed to listen to a variety of music played by virtuosos and students most of whom have delighted and enchanted me. One day, I found myself scribbling verses in the blank spaces of my...

The goal here was to strip these "micro-poems" to the barest point, clothing the voice just enough to make it audible in quiet rooms or concert halls. Think of "naked" in all its meanings. This isn't not just about getting to the skin and bones, but searching for and seeing, however blurred, what is essential.

Lester Baum is getting out of prison, and about to try returning to the house he once shared with his wife and children. Perhaps only his lawyer and neighbor care that he didn't commit the crime his wife accused him of as she unleashed her own terror. He must register as a sex offender. He wants to live a quiet, unobtrusive life. But that is not going to happen.

This book includes poems published between 2009 and 2012 mostly, whose themes of domestic life, work, suffering, and redemption still resonate. The collection includes free verse poems, as well as works using and experimenting with forms. A number of previously unpublished pieces have been added,...

This slim volume of meditations invites readers to act prayerfully, and to consider the deeper places where scripture intersects with their everyday lives. The book contains personal and painfully honest reflections, not only on our foibles, but on the God who lifts us up.

Twenty short stories. These tales are about families in turmoil, men who wrestle with the expectations of others and what is expected of them, and hard to find grace.

Haiku, Etc. takes a modern approach to haiku and its related forms, without losing sight of a variety of traditions. The book contains three sections. First, is "before me the black road curves," which includes haiku, senryu, and tanka poems. Next comes a selection of three renga titled...

During weekly music recitals at my school, students and faculty are exposed to a variety of types of music and performers, from classical to Texas Swing and jazz, and from student musician to professional. The poems I draft during those performances and edit later, I hope, give readers a chance to...

This is a collection of photographs and micropoems written about those pictures. Specifically, the poems are part of the ekphrasis tradition of one piece of art as response to another, except that both pieces are by the same artist.