From his pioneering studies of the Objectivist poets and of uncertainty and representation in modernist and contemporary thought, Michael Heller has been seeking to expand the terms of how we read and discuss poetry. In these recent writings, at once revelatory and precise, Heller deepens the exploration, articulating a sense of poetic language’s inscription and trace, often with respect to aspects of Judaic thought and Buddhist influences, the “poetics” of Walter Benjamin, Heidegger, the Objectivists, Oppen and Reznikoff, H.D., Robert Duncan, and other twentieth century writers and thinkers. As Xavier Kalck writes in his Foreword to this collection, Heller’s concern is with “the sacred as a function of language and as an objective in his poetics.”

Michael Heller's most recent books of poetry are Telescope: Selected Poems, Dianoia, and Dans le signe, translations of his poetry in French. His libretto/poem for Constellations of Waking, a work based on the life of Walter Benjamin, was published in 2019. Among his many awards and honors are the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Prize, a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities Poet/Scholar Award and the Fund for Poetry. A collection of essays on his work, The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: Nomad Memory, was published in 2015.