Now that I think of it, No Tobacco, a poem that is a story that is a poem, fits nicely within the style or genre known as Magical Realism. What happens in it is to me, though, an everyday reality, because reality, while impossible to define, is a magical experience. When I say impossible, I mean it’s impossible for me, no doubt in part because I don’t need or want […]
Though the canvas arrived five years after the poem, it was immediately obvious, to me, at least, that the two belong together. The message of both, if there is one, seems to be the same: be attentive; each day is a glory of its own. Survive. Live on. And if they bear no message, which is certainly possible, they still share the characteristics of weathered, well-lived poems. ~ [ 2016 […]
This poem was written fifteen years after my father’s death. He was a good reader, and remembered what he read, but as an adult he wasn’t a reader of many books; certainly not of poems. Like so many of his generation, he read the daily newspaper from front to back. And like my mother, he encouraged his three children to read, and expected us to do well in school, which, […]
How lovely. My first thought is, What Others See is ripe for illustration. My second is, how wonderful it would be if I could somehow see what you imagine as you read this fairy tale of a poem. That would be magical indeed. ~ [ 2010 ]
The speaker of this poem comes from a long tradition of wisdom and reverence. His face is aglow; we can see his hands; and his voice, in its calm assurance, is the instrument of a vital, timeless teaching. May the children who hear it blossom and grow, and their light shine forth ’til the end. For what he said still stands. ~ [ 2007 ]
November 2016: Poems and Passages: it’s worth mentioning, I think, that each piece contained therein enjoyed its “day in the sun” when it was published individually in my previous blog, Recently Banned Literature, which I keep these days as a personal, private archive. Why I offered them less than two years later as a collection is explained in the preface, so I need not go into that here. That they […]
It might be coincidence, and probably is; on the other hand, why would I have awakened from a dream this morning in which I was repeating the Japanese word kangai, of all things, when I, to the best of my memory and knowledge, have never encountered the word? “Strong feelings; deep emotion,” one definition says, which is mingled with a sense of “nostalgia or contemplation.” And now I look at […]
In terms of poetry, I find the seventeen-syllable habit a good one, and I’ve written many in this mode and haven’t found it limiting. I call them haiku, and several have been published here and elsewhere as such within that very fluid definition. Splitting hairs over form is something in which I don’t engage. Times change; language changes; people change; stones, ponds, stars, cherry blossoms, remain the same. Haiku or […]
I’ve corrected the penultimate line. Instead of forgetting the earth is a ripe plum in a boy’s bleeding shirt pocket it’s now forgetting the earth is a ripe plum bleeding in a boy’s shirt pocket This might not seem a big thing, but I’m surprised, and a little disappointed, I didn’t notice it before. When our children were growing up, I told them often, Say what you mean, and mean […]
Another small collection of very short, related poems, The Poem I Wrote Is Glad It Missed the Train is a quiet mix of autobiography and family history. In the introduction, I say that each word is a kind of love letter, and I hold by that description. Certainly, each poem is. As brief as the they are, each contains much more than meets the eye, incorporating personal philosophy and nature […]
William Michaelian 