April 2016
Michael L. Newell
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
I have lived approximately one third of my life outside my home country of the United States. I have been, among other things, a teacher, a professional stage actor, a federal bureaucrat, and a life long nomad, even here in the states. My work has recently appeared in, among other places, The Lilliput Review, Ship of Fools, The Iconoclast, and Jerry Jazz Musician. After a 27 year career as a secondary school English teacher, twenty of which were spent abroad, I retired to coastal Oregon 21 months ago where I lead a quiet life which includes walking several miles most days. I have had many books and chapbooks published, none of which are still in print. The most recent book, Traveling without Compass or Map, was published in 2006 by Bellowing Ark Press.
Chaos in a Three Piece Suit
He was chaos in a three piece suit:
all slashing verbs and dancing adjectives,
his language never followed reason's route
but darted, dangled, dazzled, in phrases eschewed
by witnesses clinging to logic's cliffs.
He was chaos in a three piece suit.
"That is no way to pluck meaning's fruit,"
they cried. "What use are freeform verbal riffs?"
His language never followed reason's route.
Phrases were simply something to be used
to soar above, loop and glide, spin and drift.
He was chaos in a three piece suit.
He played with language like an ancient lute
unstrung, restrung, an anarchist's gift.
His language never followed reason's route.
His words were fired ceaselessly as children shoot
sling shots or rubber bands and just as swift.
He was chaos in a three piece suit;
his language never followed reason's route.
Previously published in Comstock Review (1998)
Response ro a Friend's Letter
(for Don Salper)
I am not in a league
with poets P and Q—they are
BRAND NAMES. I am dust
in the corner and occasionally
manage to hitch a ride
on their shoes, inflict
a scuff mark or two. I will
be removed by the shoeshine
man outside the TEMPLE
OF POETRY. They will be
escorted to the altar to deliver
today’s sermon in verse,
extempore, versatile, daring,
and, above all, witty witty witty.
My goal is one day to slip
inside the TEMPLE doors
and gleam in the reflected light
from visiting members of poetry’s
clergy. Perhaps I will win poetry’s
lottery, be given my own letter—a Y
or Z—or, simply, an asterisk. Yes, an
asterisk would suffice. Meanwhile, I
wear sweatshirts inscribed with the
letters of favorite poets: no A or B,
too well-known; no C or D, far too
critically popular. No! I choose g
and s, genuine subversives, who
insist on lower case status, doubt
they are poets, write poetry in prose,
and dare to read it in public.
Where Do a Poet's Words Come From
the wind, but not borne on the wind, something
inside the wind, some feeling which suggests
possibilities, a joy and a sadness intertwined
the ocean, but not riding the waves, something
intrinsic, a force which summons song, which
compels utterance of those twins, hope and despair
the rain, but only when one stands or walks in it,
its steady commitment to grief, not the words of
grief, but the feel, the taste, the forgiveness, the prayer
the mountains, not their grandeur, rather their
endurance, their ineffable patience, their connection
of earth and sky, their challenge to rise above, to dare
Previously published in Seeking Shelter (Four Sep Publications, 2004)
For Once, the Truth
Friends worry I write autobiography
in my poetry. Once
this was true. Now
this seldom occurs. This poem
is a seldom occurrence.
I have written poems in the voice
of a married man, an old man, a lover,
an exile, a disillusioned world-weary
vagrant, a smiling visitor to an
interesting country. All of these
voices are fictions, masks, tried on
to see how they fit. I change
masks as often as most people
change shirts. Even a poem
in a deeply personal voice filled
with convincing detail is seldom fact.
I invent tales as much as any
fiction writer does. Believe
the truth of the insight, not
the verifiability of incident. Why must
a poem be autobiography? Why should
a poet be held to rules different than
a prose fiction writer? Remember the “real
toad” in the “imaginary garden.” This toad hops, skips,
and dances; walks, talks, and tells wonderful lies.
From Me to You
There are never words enough
to make meaning clear—even to the writer—
or maybe
it is the excess of words, the sheer largesse
of language that spreads a curtain between
meaning and perception, a gauze that restrains
yet seems to suggest the possibility of communication
and so I write these words and you sympathetically (or not)
peruse, pursue, ponder, operate on them
and perhaps you say aha and I say yep you've got it
or maybe you say what the hell is this and I reply
you've got your nerve, but either way
we still are lost in ink, no closer to the other's mind
than we were before our exchange
and yet we both continue
to splash about in language, sometimes
chilled, sometimes warmed, sometimes
with abandon, sometimes
with caution, but always with hope, hope
which doesn't seem to die no matter how
often it meets with disappointment.
Previously published in The Long Gores Suite (A Month in East Anglia), (Lockout Press, 2002)
He was chaos in a three piece suit:
all slashing verbs and dancing adjectives,
his language never followed reason's route
but darted, dangled, dazzled, in phrases eschewed
by witnesses clinging to logic's cliffs.
He was chaos in a three piece suit.
"That is no way to pluck meaning's fruit,"
they cried. "What use are freeform verbal riffs?"
His language never followed reason's route.
Phrases were simply something to be used
to soar above, loop and glide, spin and drift.
He was chaos in a three piece suit.
He played with language like an ancient lute
unstrung, restrung, an anarchist's gift.
His language never followed reason's route.
His words were fired ceaselessly as children shoot
sling shots or rubber bands and just as swift.
He was chaos in a three piece suit;
his language never followed reason's route.
Previously published in Comstock Review (1998)
Response ro a Friend's Letter
(for Don Salper)
I am not in a league
with poets P and Q—they are
BRAND NAMES. I am dust
in the corner and occasionally
manage to hitch a ride
on their shoes, inflict
a scuff mark or two. I will
be removed by the shoeshine
man outside the TEMPLE
OF POETRY. They will be
escorted to the altar to deliver
today’s sermon in verse,
extempore, versatile, daring,
and, above all, witty witty witty.
My goal is one day to slip
inside the TEMPLE doors
and gleam in the reflected light
from visiting members of poetry’s
clergy. Perhaps I will win poetry’s
lottery, be given my own letter—a Y
or Z—or, simply, an asterisk. Yes, an
asterisk would suffice. Meanwhile, I
wear sweatshirts inscribed with the
letters of favorite poets: no A or B,
too well-known; no C or D, far too
critically popular. No! I choose g
and s, genuine subversives, who
insist on lower case status, doubt
they are poets, write poetry in prose,
and dare to read it in public.
Where Do a Poet's Words Come From
the wind, but not borne on the wind, something
inside the wind, some feeling which suggests
possibilities, a joy and a sadness intertwined
the ocean, but not riding the waves, something
intrinsic, a force which summons song, which
compels utterance of those twins, hope and despair
the rain, but only when one stands or walks in it,
its steady commitment to grief, not the words of
grief, but the feel, the taste, the forgiveness, the prayer
the mountains, not their grandeur, rather their
endurance, their ineffable patience, their connection
of earth and sky, their challenge to rise above, to dare
Previously published in Seeking Shelter (Four Sep Publications, 2004)
For Once, the Truth
Friends worry I write autobiography
in my poetry. Once
this was true. Now
this seldom occurs. This poem
is a seldom occurrence.
I have written poems in the voice
of a married man, an old man, a lover,
an exile, a disillusioned world-weary
vagrant, a smiling visitor to an
interesting country. All of these
voices are fictions, masks, tried on
to see how they fit. I change
masks as often as most people
change shirts. Even a poem
in a deeply personal voice filled
with convincing detail is seldom fact.
I invent tales as much as any
fiction writer does. Believe
the truth of the insight, not
the verifiability of incident. Why must
a poem be autobiography? Why should
a poet be held to rules different than
a prose fiction writer? Remember the “real
toad” in the “imaginary garden.” This toad hops, skips,
and dances; walks, talks, and tells wonderful lies.
From Me to You
There are never words enough
to make meaning clear—even to the writer—
or maybe
it is the excess of words, the sheer largesse
of language that spreads a curtain between
meaning and perception, a gauze that restrains
yet seems to suggest the possibility of communication
and so I write these words and you sympathetically (or not)
peruse, pursue, ponder, operate on them
and perhaps you say aha and I say yep you've got it
or maybe you say what the hell is this and I reply
you've got your nerve, but either way
we still are lost in ink, no closer to the other's mind
than we were before our exchange
and yet we both continue
to splash about in language, sometimes
chilled, sometimes warmed, sometimes
with abandon, sometimes
with caution, but always with hope, hope
which doesn't seem to die no matter how
often it meets with disappointment.
Previously published in The Long Gores Suite (A Month in East Anglia), (Lockout Press, 2002)
©2016 Michael L. Newell