Okay, well I emailed Picador last night and this is the reply: "These absolutely shouldn’t be out of print; indeed, I asked for them to be reprinted in August! I’ll get on this asap."
So that's good news.
Kevin, what a great account. And you seem to have enough to go on, by heart, for the moment. One poem I really like is "A Darkroom." I hope this link works: it's Michael reading it on a site called the
Poetry Jukebox, run by 57 Productions.
There's a lot to say, Andrew, about the earlier poems as compared to the later ones; some of my very favourite poems are in
Safest, for example. I think "A Darkroom" is in there, and the one I quoted at the beginning of this thread. There are two poems based on Troy. And of course C
onjure has "Black Ice and Rain", though I agree it isn't my absolute favourite, even of the monologues... though it does have that outrageous semi-gothic (more like as in "Southern Gothic" I suppose) atmosphere. (Michael was an admirer of Diane Arbus; you can see that, can't you?)
More later.