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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simplicity, Sincerity, Sonority: A New Voice in American Poetry, February 7, 2008
We are not living in an age of poetry, sad but true. The greatest lines of our most famous poets no longer enter our everyday vernacular. Shakespeare and Robert Frost, among others, still remain in our vocabulary, but the age of technology and the omnipresence of mass corporate culture has replaced the role of the poet in our society.
When one discovers an original poetic voice, a voice that actually matters, it is reason to take notice, to remove the iPod earbuds and try once again to read a book of poetry and enjoy it. This time, you will not be overwhelmed by obscurity, nauseated by pretentiousness and bored by irrelevance.
William Michaelian is a poet that matters, and most of all, he is a poet who communicates what matters, those small parts of everyday life that are the finest moments of our lives -- moments of observation, insight and awakening.
I am a journalist, writer and poet, and lucky to be living a mile from the Claremont Colleges where I have sat through many a poetry reading with several poet laureates and many of the most celebrated poets of our age: Robert Haas, Seamus Heaney, Louise Glück, W.S. Merwin, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, W.D. Snodgrass and others.
While there is no denying the brilliant minds of our contemporary poetry masters, too much poetry has abandoned the great American middle of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman -- all poets whose writing infused the character of our country.
The modern poetry "establishment" has withdrawn into the hallowed halls of academia from where most of the literary journals are published. So much of our nation's most revered poetry needs translation, even for the average college-educated reader who is not going to spend hours on a single poem to get at the kernel of meaning. Only the university student, often under duress, will engage in that kind of in-depth parsing.
And what has filled the void of "popular poetry"? Televised "Def Poetry Jams" that by way of contrast make Rod McKuen's commercially pedestrian verse of the 1960s and early 1970s seem highly refined.
Someday, when we tire of our technology and long to take pen in hand once again and write a letter on a beautiful piece of paper, perhaps we will again turn to poetry for insight, for an observation of everyday life that most of us cannot quite put into words. Most of us cannot climb outside of our lives long enough to get a clear view. That is what we need poets for -- real poets -- to look at our lives and tell us what they see.
William Michaelian is a new age Walt Whitman, but mercifully without the droning or the length. He is an abbreviated Whitman for an abbreviated culture that has no time for the immense amount of scholarship it takes to read some of Ezra Pound's finest poems. Our times have irrevocably changed, but we are a hollow people in need of new poetic voices, voices that will speak honestly and without pretension about these lives we are living.
Michaelian is a man in his early fifties of Armenian heritage but raised on a farm in Central California. His work has appeared in a number of literary journals and he has a web site chock full of poetry, prose and criticism. He is the author of two extraordinary books of poetry, "Another Song I Know," and "Winter Poems," published last year by Cosmopsis Books, a small San Francisco publisher of books and a quarterly journal.
"Another Song I Know" is a reintroduction of poetry to the jaded, apprehensive middle of America that has long since sworn off prosody as irrelevant at best and insulting at worst. The poems in this book are short, tight, Hemingwayesque in their economy of language, yet full of light in a style similar to the translations of Chinese and Japanese poetry by the late Beat poet Kenneth Rexroth.
Michaelian's poem, "Seeds," for example, is an observation of his mother. Ah yes, I remember during my university days how my poetry professors winced at the thought of having to read yet another "dead grandmother poem" from their students. We all succumbed to the temptation of writing about beloved family members.
But for most of us here in the real world, beloved family members and friends are what we treasure most in this life. Nice furniture is a poor substitute for companionship. Those we know and especially those we love define us, haunt us, keep our souls alive, give us something to worry about, give us an opportunity for sainthood.
Michaelian manages to write an endearing observation of his mother without the saccharine syrup of the greeting-card verse of eager collegians. And unlike the more "sophisticated" poets of our age who condescend on occasion to versify on beloved family members, Michaelian writes with the clarity of the brief but highly charged image, so familiar to readers of the best Asian poetry. Consider his Zen-like poem, "Seeds."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While my mother
drinks her tea,
I eat a tangerine.
My dish is full
of pale-hard seeds.
She tells me
I should plant them.
I see her in a garden
on her knees,
waiting, looking down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Inside "Winter Poems," there is an introductory snippet of verse, a striking portrait of the eternity of the soul, so richly saturated with the sense that eternity is synonymous with joy -- all this hope and light in a single sentence, from his poem, "So Much Like Now."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So much like now, it was cold the day I died:
cold but not unforgiven,
cold with beauty unrelenting,
cold with magic all around.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Had I read this line in a bookstore I would have immediately purchased the book and hurried it home. This slim, but full volume lives up to the promise of its introduction.
Michaelian has a way of reflecting on so many familiar yet untranslated parts of our lives with a language that is clear, crystalline and communicative. It is a language that does not seek to impress either literary colleagues or pretentious poetry devotees. It is a language that seeks to communicate. As Robert Frost once described himself, there is no doubt that Michaelian is also "one of those poets who wants to be understood." He is willing to shed the literary egotism of the academic crossword-puzzle poets of our age in order to be understood.
As a poet who lives in rural Oregon, Michaelian, like Frost, writes intimately about winter, neither eagerly enthusiastic nor darkly dystopian. This is a poet of balance. In his poem, "Wolves," he writes how they appear "braver this year, hungrier, more brazen" as a reflection of the onset of a winter that is "bolder" than the last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What thick coats
they have, what eager
eyes and tongues.
What wild dreams,
framed by a rim
of naked trees.
I give a carefree
whistle, call them
to the door.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a portrait of a man who does not retreat from life, but rather a man who opens himself to all observations, whistling them to the door so he can capture them and write them down.
It is uncertain whether poetry can ever reclaim its voice in the American vernacular, but there are hopeful signs among the vast numbers of poetry readers on the Internet who are seeking simplicity and relevance in poetry, who are seeking enlightened observations of the lives we all lead. We need poets to help pull us out of the distractions of our lives, to see our lives with a kind of deathbed appreciation, while we still have time to grow wise, to grow larger souls.
If there is a new poetry movement of Simplicity, Sincerity and Sonority underway, William Michaelian should be read and recognized as one of those who is bringing poetry back to the great American middle, whistling the wolves to his door.
Russ Allison Loar
Claremont, California
2-7-08
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