Bøger af I Michael Grossman

Why This Book is Titled "In Disappearing Ink (the sequel)?Unknown poets get an audience on open mic nights. On arriving, we pencil our names at the bottom of a yellow legal pad. The night's featured poet reads first and then, time allowing, authors on the list have a turn. We head to the podium to pour out a poem and our hearts. Polite applause may follow.There's a flicker in time after such a reading, in the seconds it takes for the poet to travel from the podium back to his or her seat, when...kazaam...it's as if the words of the poem vanish... and are never seen or heard again.A friend, Tracy Hart, compares it to Buddhists who create a mandala. They may labor in shifts for weeks, moving grains of colored sand to craft magnificent art. But when finally finished, they wipe the art away... a metaphor that nothing mortal endures.That reality suggested the title of the first In Disappearing Ink published in 2017 and now the tile of this book... with the addition of the word "more". It brings to mind another human reality - perhaps more upbeat: the joy anyone who has ever written a poem knows - a pleasure arguably more immediate than writing in any other genre. And since many try their hand at verse, I'm, betting you know how good it feels when you replace an imperfect with a perfect word; and that sense of pleasure when a jarring phrase is improved by shifting its position in a stanza.Here's to every poet's hours at the keyboard, to the stanzas, the rhymes created, and the contentment of making, then sharing a poem. I. Michael Grossman

Mike the Moose, Master of Marbles, won't tell his story to just anyone. It helps if you are solidly pro-moose and see no reason in the natural world why moose and man can't live together in a harmonious family. If assured of your position, Mike might let slip some juicy details of his adventures. Maybe how his first trip to a mall brought the police and how he wound up in a trash can. Or what the head of NASA says about him, and the spaceship to Mars, and the DANGERS he faced. Mike's still galactically annoyed at his human sister Carrie for that one. The easiest way to get Mike talking is to ask about his medal: his super shiny one from the State Department, after his encounter with Generalissimo Alfonso Ramonito Crakov del Buston, leader of the Spanish underworld. Mike insists he planned the entire mission to save America. Press him, and maybe, he'll admit to a bit of help from his mom and top agent, Harry Malone. But the way Mike tells it, the mission was run by a moose. Well c'mon, the Commander in Chief was impressed enough to give Mike one of THE most special, extraterrestrial gifts ever offered to man or moose! Mike would be the first to confirm that he is as brilliant, courageous, and handsome as they say - especially when he stretches his antlers - but he'll insist he isn't trying to be Supermoose. All he wants is to revel in his new-found family and play marbles with Carrie. (You do know that Mike is just about the most famous expert on marbles on the planet, right?) But what's a curious mooseling to do when duty calls?

Perhaps the world's longest coming-of-age story, SHRINKWRAPPED shows how one man's search for a better life worked-at last. In a blue-collar Michigan town where corporal punishment was seen as positive parenting, troubled families rarely sought professional help. But Michael Grossman's teachers sent him to see a Freudian psychoanalyst at age 7. It was the first of a parade of therapies that would include Rogerian bear-hugs, Gestalt dream analysis, Rolfing, Bioenergetics and even LSD. Sitting beside Michael on a succession of "shrinks'" couches, the reader follows his progress through one defense after another until he finally achieves a joyful capacity to care for others. Untangling the complex, sometimes eccentric and other times abusive family relationships that enmeshed his Midwestern boyhood in the mid-20th century, the author finally faces fundamental truths that lead to a profound transformation. By turns funny, poignant and shocking, Shrinkwrapped is a story of hope, of growing insight and ultimately of love reborn.

The last man standing?Earth is in crisis. And the intergalactic managers who oversee all creatures of the Milky Way Galaxy are tasked to bottom-line man's usefulness. Should they let homo sapiens survive or watch them continue to their own destruction? To answer that, the extraterrestrials charged with evaluating us as a species discover incredible truths about who we are - the good, the bad, the really, really bizarre. They look at how we govern and decide to change the rules. The Accidental President takes a deep dive into our politics and human nature based on hard-to-believe but historically accurate facts. Take a fresh look at the two-legged creatures who dominate the third planet from the Sun, and follow the extraterrestrials as they tally our vices and virtues to reach a final judgment. Or do they? The Accidental President, I. Michael Grossman's seventh book, is raw satire. You may laugh, even cheer at his take on humanity, or consider him outrageous. But you'll find yourself rolling your eyes about curious creatures known as humankind.