available in paperback ($20) and as an e-book ($7), with full color inside: https://www.amazon.com/Stay-There-Michael-Klam/dp/B0GZL1N64M/ref=sr_1

Praise for Michael Klam’s Stay There:

    Michael Klam’s poems exude a playful levity and keen observations on humanity. They have an open-hearted spirit of wonder and surprise. . .An entertaining, delightful read. — Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, author of In Praise of Late Wonder

    Klam skillfully balances good humor and absurdity with moments of wonder, beauty, and profound contemplation. Reading this book feels like having the best kind of late-night conversation at a pub with a longtime friend. I love it!

— Dr. Katie Manning, editor-in-chief, Whale Road Review

     This collection is full of surprises, humor, bumps and edges. . .The drawings are as evocative and as rich as the poetry. . .I came away feeling inspired to live boldly — a disposition perhaps best summed up by one word, which is my favorite poem in the book—GUSH!

— Ying Wu, PhD, poet, cognitive neuroscientist, UCSD

     In these pages, the consonance of voices and visual art leads us to a dazzling, trance-like state where beauty, imagination and daily life converge. Here, the reader will encounter poems as mantras to be nested in mind, heart, and soul.

— Olga Gutiérrez Galindo, mathematician, physicist, author of En el nombre de π (Ediciones del Lirio y Los Pájaros)

    Whimsical and piercingly honest. . .Playful sketches and intimate reflections on parenthood bring warmth and unexpected charm to the collection.

— Daniela Paraguya Sow, author of Half Moon Rising (Kelsay Books: 2024)

     Michael Klam’s newest collection is cause for delight. . ., exactly what the world needs right now.

— Judy Reeves, author of A Writer’s Book of Days

     A richly layered world of whimsical sketches and luminous verse. An intoxicating and artfully crafted book that lingers long after the final page.

— Jill G. Hall. author of On a Sundown Sea

     I am utterly disarmed by these poems. Michael Klam reminds us that humor slips the serious past our defenses, and we swallow it whole without even noticing. 

—Carly Marie DeMento, editor, poet, literary arts and environmental advocate

     Reading this new collection, it feels like I’ve been visiting with an old friend. . .but I know instinctively that he speaks for all of us looking for more than just a little hope in the poetry we consume.

— Robt O’Sullivan, Escondido Arts Partnership

        An eclectic mix of poetry interspersed with whimsical drawings. . . Michael Klam throws out the rules and throws down a collection that had me laughing one moment and caught in quiet contemplation in others.

—Alisha Richard, trans activist, poet, performer

      Stay There is the book your phone-addicted, passport-clutching, food-obsessed inner voice wants to slip into everyone’s DMs. . .Read this if you’d like to “remember how to be in love with the world again.”

—Jane Muschenetz, author of All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents

      Stay There is a love letter to family.

—Ted Washington, artist, poet, editor, author of Bone Lyre (Puna Press)

      What a gift to be so silly and lucid, so playful and dead serious at once. . .everywhere we turn in this book, there is something like a beginning, like the chance to feel “a little less hatred in [our] hearts.”

—Margarita Pintado Burgos, PLNU professor, author of Ojo en celo / Eye in Heat