William Michaelian: The Addison Street Poetry Walk

A while back, I mentioned The Wall Poems of Leiden, an outdoor poetry project in the Netherlands. A similar project is the Addison Street Poetry Walk, located in downtown Berkeley, California. A 296-page companion volume featuring the commentary of former Poet Laureate Robert Hass was also released by Heyday Books in 2004.

Simplicity, Sincerity, Sonority: A New Voice in American Poetry

The following excerpt is from an excellent review of William Michaelian's two books of poetry, Winter Poems and Another Song I Know, posted recently online. The review is by Russ Allison Loar, a journalist, writer, and poet who lives in Claremont, California. The complete review is available at Amazon.com and on the Powell's Books website.

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 take out 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.

William Michaelian: John Anderson, My Jo

Music, anyone? I found this poignant little poem in Songs from Robert Burns, a pocket-sized volume I picked up a couple of months ago at a used bookstore here in Salem. The book is old, but it has no copyright or printing information. The publisher's name: Collins' Clear-Type Press, London and Glasgow. It has a marbled leather cover and marbled endpapers. A nice companion for a shivery winter day.


John Anderson My Jo

John Anderson my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson my jo!

John Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither,
And monie a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we’ll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson my jo!

William Michaelian: Reading Tristram Shandy

Digressions are the sunshine of reading. — Laurence Sterne

Not long ago, I discovered that a poem of mine, "Reading Tristram Shandy," is linked in the introduction to a paper by Thomas Steele on Tristram Shandy as a forerunner to hypertext, and author Laurence Sterne's influence on writers such as Joyce, Stein, Woolf, and Vonngeut. In his paper, Steele discusses Sterne's creative use of language and page layout, his non-linear approach to storytelling, and how they seem to anticipate today's blogs and projects like Wikipedia. Along the way, Steele furnishes a number of links (of course!) to some fascinating examples and references.

Tristram Shandy, meanwhile, is a wonderful book. Sterne's vocabulary is impressive, his wit is keen, his sense of humor is delightfully wicked, and the way he breaks rules is potent medicine for readers and writers feeling trapped or bored by conventional literary "wisdom."

Sarah Friend: Writer's Block

Writer's block. Imbued with previous forward movement, we've all run, full-force, against that merciless brick wall, rebounding back. It sends us reeling, and leaves us messily sprawled on the ground, rubbing our heads, unsure as to what happened or how to proceed. This was my state of mind one recent morning, as I sat, coffee mug in one hand, pen in the other, when I remembered the timeless advice: Just keep writing, no matter what. My what wandered into, whatever happened to sugar cubes as a form of coffee sweeteners?

(Sugar) Cane Mutiny

In the days of yore, sugar cubes were daily liquidated
In London, Paris and New York from human cares they faded

Yet there lived a gallant sugar cube in a tin-box,
Who one fine morning found his home free of locks

The dangers of the world unbeknownst to him still
He shuffled outside to his dreams of adventure fulfill

But there upon the kitchen table, what did he see?
His dear old aunt drown in a cup of boiling tea.

Outraged, he spoke to bananas and pills and the like,
Describing in gory detail the horror of the Fourth Reich.

Rage against sugar cube cruelty grew in fame,
Which explains why today, we use aspartame.

Ed Meek's book What We Love

Ed Meek digs underneath the broad lawns and narrow minds of the suburbs to unearth a deeper and at times darker, truth about ourselves and our lives.

—Doug Holder, Editor and Publisher, Ibbetson Street Press

Ed Meek, whose work recently appeared in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2, has a great book out called What We Love. It's available online at Amazon.com.

William Michaelian: In Watermelon Sugar

This short review of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar is also included in the Richard Brautigan Archives, an extensive wiki-based site founded, organized, and maintained by Birgit Ferran in Barcelona, Spain. The Archives contain a wealth of material on the author known for such classic works as Trout Fishing in America, The Abortion, and So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away. Quotes, images, studies, criticism, obituaries, interviews, links, and more are included.

Reality is a poor excuse not to enjoy the work of Richard Brautigan. It is also the best excuse. Either way, I recommend you set reality aside; let it rest awhile; if you find you need it later, chances are it will still be there. If it isn’t, well, as they say, good riddance.

Brautigan’s gentle vision, melancholy humor, and ear for language are all beautifully evident in his short impressionistic novel, In Watermelon Sugar. The story begins simply and in earnest:

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.

Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.

And work out it does. Effortlessly, Brautigan builds a bridge composed of dry timber and sad, sweet images, and places them beneath a colored sky and sun in a comfortable living room as big as one’s imagination will allow. One end of the bridge is at the reader’s feet. The other is in a small community of peaceful souls once shared by mournful tigers, which ate people with regret, sang, apologized in English, and offered to help the narrator with his arithmetic even as he was being orphaned. The narrator, now an adult, holds nothing against the tigers — and, indeed, nothing against anyone. Life is simply the thing it is. Not everything can be explained, nor does it need to be:

. . . Fred had something strange-looking sticking out of the pocket of his overalls. I was curious about it. It looked like something I had never seen before.

‘What’s that in your pocket, Fred?’

‘I found it today coming through the woods and up from the Watermelon Works. I don’t know what it is myself. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What do you think it is?’

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to me. I didn’t know how to hold it. I tried to hold it like you would a flower and a rock at the same time.

‘How do you hold it?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.’ . . .

To me, that simple confession, “I didn’t know how to hold it,” perfectly describes Brautigan’s feelings toward life itself. How do you hold something that is infinite, delicate, and always changing? The answer: You don’t. You write a book instead, give it to the world, and hope it takes root in watermelon sugar.

Richard Brautigan was born January 30, 1935, in the Pacific Northwest. He lived for many years in San Francisco, and was called by many “the last of the Beats.” He committed suicide in Bolinas, California, at the age of forty-nine.