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Michael Mathias was born in Jackson Heights, Queens in New York.
When, as a child, he asked his mother what God looked like, she answered, "God is like a cosmic blanket of divine love that surrounds us night and day." When he asked what religion he should be, his mother went out and spent her pension money on a library of the sacred scriptures of the world, telling Michael to select from all the religions of the world. "There is only one Father of All," she said, "only one Father of the Oneness. All the wisdom traditions are sacred."
Michael Mathias saw the Indian Avatar and Sufi master Meher Baba bowing before a model of every religion of the world, saying, "I have come to erase all the barriers of 'my and thine' between religions and to string them together like pearls of a single strand." Michael says, "I was blinded by the song of the sun and I heard Baba say to me, 'I want you to witness this moment of my advent in poetry for the twentieth century. I will call you the Poet of the Silence, because I want your entire life to honor my silence. And to be consumed by this moment in history, I want you to study all the major religions of the world to discover this moment in epic poetry when all the religions of the world will be revealed as panels of a stained-glass window, as facets of a cosmic diamond of Divine Love.'"
Michael Mathias holds a doctorate from Rutgers and advanced degrees in literature, drama and education and has taught at Seton Hall, St. Johns University, University of Rhode Island and many other colleges and universities. Hailed as "one of our major epic lyric poets" by the late Muriel Rukeyser, he has published his poetry m The Awakener, Resonance, Glow International and other magazines and journals. His plays have been performed in New York and abroad. He has worked extensively with Ruth Warrick, star of Citizen Kane-, on international productions of The Secret Bread, a play about Heloise and Abelard which; won the Huntington Hartford First Prize for Poetic Drama. His international play on Samuel Beckett and Lucia Joyce, The Fire Chamber, was chosen by the late film actor, William Hickey, for presentation with Lorraine Serabian and Marian Seldes for presentation at the Playwright's Foundation on Bank Street, New York City.. Mathias is a member of the Dramatist's Guild and his awards include a Best Actor Award for his performance as Leopold bloom in the 1985 New York James Joyce Centennial production of Ulysses
Praise for Michael Mathias
The epical work of Michael Mathias has grown from mythic and transcendent explorations of life and its meaning to mystic and visionary comprehensions of humanity and its complex interrelationships with all peoples... This is a unique poem-no, poem is delimiting; incarnation-and will speak to the mind and the heart like no other I know, unendingly.
John T. Shawcross
University of Kentucky
Author of Milton, The Self and The World
April 2005
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