Sandy McIntosh’s Cemetery Chess: Selected and New Poems is intelligent, funny, well-crafted, and just fun to read. McIntosh’s
work has been around in the background for me for quite a while. I knew of it, but I did not know it well; thus, this book comes as a welcome
introduction to the scope of his poetic arc. His work is strikingly
clear, but with a clarity that comes from a place that throws us off
kilter, for it seems that he is looking at daily life with more
insightful eyes than ours. The poems are filled with places and people, especially artist and poets--Eileen Tabios gets her own poem!
McIntosh’s poems are serious pieces that are not pretentious, just pieces from a sharp mind. —William Allegrezza, Goodreads
In a language harnessed from that halo-haired muse, McIntosh's Cemetery Chess is a monument to the salient and steady progress of an extraordinarily compassionate poet. —Neil de la Flor, Galatea Resurrects
On Endless Staircare
With Endless Staircase, Sandy McIntosh distinguishes himself as a significant new talent. His sardonic, often wild humor is the path into very serious personal, social and quite frequently religious/philosophical concerns. I have been genuinely surprised by a voice I have never before heard in matters of such weight and intensity.—David Ignatow, winner of the Bollingen Prize
On Between Earth and Sky
What a treat. I had to stop myself from reading Between Earth and Sky straight through like a novel so I’d have something saved to look forward to. I don’t like people calling writing ‘gorgeous’ but it really is gorgeous writing. One of the very best things about this collection, for me, is that it’s approachable. So much of it is just wonderfully lyrical and funny and moving. What a crazy/delicious world McIntosh invents.—Lanford Wilson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
On The After-Death History of My Mother
Sandy McIntosh's entertaining new volume might be mistaken, at first, for a merry romp through personal and literary history conducted by a slightly confused, well-meaning people-pleaser. His confusion begins with his bemused revelation that he has (maybe) two mothers, and continues through various other doublings (dream transformations, reincarnations, literary 'forgeries,' literary mothers both male and female, poems masquerading as prose and vice versa) to a final doubling (double-crossing) that brings with it a 'broade [sic] awaking' to reality.... This is a book of elegies—eulogies, really—to all the literal and literary bastards who have made McIntosh an artist and (maybe) a con. —Laural Blossom, American Book Review
On Ernesta In the Style of the Flamenco
"Ernesta, in the Style of the Flamenco, Sandy McIntosh’s latest volume, bursts with brilliance and sizzles with sass. McIntosh’s new poems are audacious, ravishing, syntactic marvels, clowning-around oddballs. The energy and wit in this book will make you want to whip out your fan, put on your non-skid sole shoes, and dance.”—Denise Duhamel
Sandy McIntosh was born in Rockville Centre, New York, and received a BA from Southampton College in 1970, an MFA from Columbia University in 1972, and a PhD. from the Union Graduate School in 1979. After working with children for eight years as a writer in the schools he completed a study of writers who taught in the program and how their work with children affected their own writing. The study, The Poets in the Poets-in-the Schools was published by the Minnesota Center for Social Research, University of Minnesota. He alternated teaching creative writing at Southampton College, New York Institute of Technology, and Hofstra University with publishing nonfiction works, such as Firing Back (John Wiley 1997), and computer software, such as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! (Electronic Arts, 1986). For several years he contributed journalism, poetry, and opinion columns to The New York Times, Newsday, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, American Book Review, and elsewhere. He was also editor and publisher of Wok Talk, a Chinese cooking bi-monthly and the author and editor of several Chinese cook books.
His first collection of poetry, Earth Works, was published by Southampton College the year he graduated. He has since published seven more collections. His original poetry in a screenplay shared the Silver Medal in the Film Festival of the Americas. The title poem of this collection was published by The New York Times’ web edition. An excerpt of his collaboration with Denise Duhamel appears on The Best American Poetry blog.
He served as chairman of the Distinguished Poets series at Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY from 1980-2000. He was elected to PEN American Center in the 1990's. His biography appears in Contemporary Authors volumes 45-48 (Gale Research Company).
He has been managing editor of Long Island University’s national literary journal, Confrontation, and is publisher of Marsh Hawk Press.
ISBN: 978-0-9846353-6-8 (pbk.) $15.00
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