Michael Magee grew up in North Carolina and Western Massachusetts, thus receiving his education in race and class on the playground before the classroom.  From 1989 to 1993 he attended the College of the Holy Cross where his Catholicism lapsed, he met his wife and began writing poems.  In 1994 he began graduate studies at Penn and became actively involved in The Writers House along with poets Kristen Gallagher, Mytili Jagannathan, Louis Cabri, Matt Hart, Jessica Chiu, Nate Chinen, Bob Perelman and many others.  Just before leaving Philadelphia in 1998, he founded the poetry and poetics journal Combo.  He received his PhD from Penn in 1999 and currently teaches at Rhode Island School of Design.  He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Susanna and daughter Anabella.

COMBO web site.

PUBLICATIONS        

Poetry

MS (New York: Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming 2002).

Morning Constitutional (Buffalo: Handwritten Press, 2001).

Leave the Light On, chapbook (New York: Boog Literature, 2000).

My poems have appeared in: 6ix, Amelia, America,  Caf Review, Callaloo, Cicada, Combo, Crazyquilt Quarterly, CrossConnect, DCpoetry Anthology 2002, The East Village, The Florida Review,  Highwire Yearbook 1998-1999, Ixnay, Kenning, Kiosk, Lungfull!, Magazine Cypress, Mirage #4 Periodical, New American Writing, Nine to Zero, Outlet, Pavement Saw, The Philadelphia Inquirer, PO-EP, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Motel,  Poison Tree, Riverrun,  Soundings East, Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review,  Washington Review, Wayne Literary Review.

Articles

"The Motives of Emancipated Prose: Emerson and the Collaborating Reader," ESQ: A

Journal of the American Renaissance (formerly Emerson Society Quarterly),

forthcoming.

"Tribes of New York: Frank O'Hara, Amiri Baraka and the Poetics of the Five Spot,"

forthcoming, Contemporary Literature, XLII, 4 (forthcoming, 2002): 694-732.

Emersons Emancipation Proclamations,4 Raritan 20:4 (Spring 2001): 96-116.

Constituting Ellison: Juneteenth as a Function of American Democracy,4 Review 22 (2000): 37-55.

3Democratic Symbolic Action Sketches Toward a Guide to Practice,4 Kenning: A

Newsletter of Contemporary Poetry, Poetics, Nonfiction Writing 2:2 (Summer, 1999): 57-77.

3A Comedy of the New: On Burke, Language Poetry and Literary Change,4 Philly Talks 6 (Fall 1998).        

Reviews

"Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernsim and Twentieth Century Poetry by

Lorenzo Thomas," Sagetreib: Poetics After Modernism 18.1 (2001): 205-7.

Chris Stroffolinos Stealers Wheel, Rhizome 4 (2000): 143-44.

An Anthology of New (American) Poets,Poetry International 3 (1999): 152-54.

Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars,Grand Tour: The Journal of Travel Literature 2.4 (Fall/Winter 1997): 154-56.

Interviews

 "An Interview with Carla Harryman," Combo 9 (Winter 2001): 44-60.

Conversation with Bill Berkson,4 Combo 5 (January 2000): 25-57.

An Interview with James Tate,4 CrossConnect 4.1 (1998).  An abbreviated version of this interview also appeared in Philadelphia City Paper (March 1998).

Conversation with Harryette Mullen,4 Combo 1 (Summer 1998): 36-51.  A longer version of this interview with Mullen can be found on the Harryette Mullen Author Page at the Electronic Poetry Center (http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/mullen).

Editing

Founder and Editor, Combo, a journal of experimental poetry and poetics; contributors to the first nine issues have included Bob Perelman, Harryette Mullen, Bill Berkson, Amiri Baraka, Alice Notley, Lorenzo Thomas, Clark Coolidge and John Ashbery (1997-present).