Clayton Michaels’ poems have a way with words, whether it’s in the flow of a sentence or as standalone objects, whether it’s asking “What shape is the closest synonym for lonely?” or stating that chokecherry, though bitter, is “harmless, unlike kiss.” The startling figurative language, from a “Keith Richards death’s-head” to “we will learn to speak / in stones,” weaves humor, loss, and mystery, often in the space of a few lines. With its methamphetamine-selling bait-shops and its hallucinations of saints, Michaels’ unique America is a place I want to learn more about.

Famous Statements That I Don’t Like About Poetry & Writing

Or, at the very least, that I think get misapplied too often now.

“A poem should not mean / But be.”–Archibald Macleish

First, do you really think it’s a good idea to take poetic advice from Archibald fucking Macleish? In the same poem, he submits that poetry should be “mute / As a globed fruit, // Dumb / As old medallions to the thumb,” but I guess those directives don’t sound quite as powerful on the tongues of workshop pedants. Isn’t it funny, though, how “A poem should not mean / But be” boils down to a meaning?

“No ideas / but in things.”–William Carlos Williams
“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’…”–T. S. Eliot
“For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf.”–Archibald Macleish
“Show, don’t tell.”–aphorism

Elisa already has a good series about ideas in poems on her blog. I think the same goes just as much for a well-turned emotion as for a clever idea, especially since the notion of an object that immediately calls up the same intended emotion for everyone is obvious bunk, never mind the claim that there’s only one way to express emotion in art. I’m all for avoidance of unearned big abstractions like Love and Soul and Fate, but I think those statements above have been used to excuse an awful lot of poems where there’s plenty of hydrangea and cracked macadam but not a whole lot of interesting thought or feeling.

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”–William Wordsworth

Here’s the line that spurred me to start this piece after I (re-)read it on John’s blog. The inverse of the Eliot quote in some ways, and equally spurious. If Wordsworth had put “My” on the beginning of that quote, fine, but I can’t take it seriously as a reflection on all poetry. I’d lean toward being suspicious of any kind of prohibitive statement like this even if it weren’t 200 years old.

“First thought, best thought.”–Allen Ginsberg (also drawing on a William Blake line)

Mostly held as a shield by smart-but-lazy youngsters who don’t want to revise, though I guess the occasional hippie burnout will use it as well. Even Ginsberg didn’t get away without a lot of clunker lines, and the rest of us don’t have the advantages of as much inspiration, dope, or churn as he had. (Or, in the case of Blake, pure loonbag genius.)

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”–Percy Shelley
“It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.”–William Carlos Williams

Poets dredge these up when they’re feeling down about what a silly pursuit we’re engaged in. For increased modern relevance, how about we change the first one to “Star Trek fan-fiction writers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”?

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. “–Robert Frost

Setting aside the tiresome po-war insults, you really think it’s a good idea to wield a line that equates your style of poetry with tennis? “Timothy Steele defeated Adam Kirsch 6-4, 7-5 when Kirsch committed a foot-fault in the final stanza.”

“Write what you know.”–aphorism

Kind of an offshoot of “Show, don’t tell,” in that it encourages undergraduate classes to write stories/poems about what they ate for breakfast or breaking up with their high-school sweethearts instead of what it really means, which is “Don’t attempt an authoritative voice about nuclear fusion based on your C in an Intro to Physics class and the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry,” which seems like advice more poets could stand to take.

“Murder your darlings.”–Arthur Quiller-Couch, misattributed to every writer in creation since then
“Omit needless words.”–William Strunk, Jr.

The first sounds cool and is worth remembering when self-applied to good lines that don’t fit in a particular piece, and the second is fine for keeping things streamlined, but in workshops they mostly mean “Fuck you, I don’t like this part of the poem, you should delete it.”

“You have to be always drunk . . . . On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”–Baudelaire

Yeah, this doesn’t go well.

That felt good. Any others?

“Whatchu doin’ with Lulu?”

By the way, since I posted on Facebook but forgot to promote it here, you should check out my poem and interview up at The Collagist.

The title of this one is stolen from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I’m not sure it’s the right title still. Oh well, that’s what vacation is for.

Poems I liked:
“Flashback in Laundromat, South Industrial Way,” K. E. Allen
“Echolocation,” Mark Bibbins
“A. Vespucci,” Sherwin Bitsui
“In Erieville,” Malachi Black
“Vanishing Hands,” Malachi Black
“Natual History XV. Randall Jarrell,” Dan Chiasson
“Yellow,” Joshua Corey
“The Assassin,” Justin Courter
“Advertisement for the Mountain,” Christina Davis
“The Sadness of Lingua Franca,” Christina Davis
“Poetics of Trauma,” Jordan Davis
“The Return of COLORED ONLY,” Thomas Sayers Ellis
“A Poem That Starts Out Wrong,” Landis Everson
“A Theme Song for Oranges,” Landis Everson
“Notes on the Prefix ‘un’,” Ryan Flaherty
“What Fits in the Battered Blue Lunchbox and What Doesn’t,” Justin Goldberg
“The Cartoonist in Hell,” Paul Guest
“P(r)etty Sonnet LVIII,” Anthony Hawley
“Physical,” Bob Hicok
“The Song That Breaks the World Record,” Cathy Park Hong
“Silk City,” Major Jackson
“Natalia,” Ilya Kaminsky
“Sunday Nocturne,” August Kleinzahler
“Phact,” Mark Lamoreux
“Bob Kaufman Trip,” Adrian Matejka
“This Is Our Punk Rock Thee Rusted Satellites Gather and Sing,” James Meetze
“Summer,” Honor Moore
“Letter to Allison with Musical Notation of Hawk,” Joshua Poteat
“Burial Practice,” Srikanth Reddy
“Tonight,” Spencer Reece
“What’s Eating You,” John Schertzer
“Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene: A Catalogue of the Ten Sections of My Large Painting,” Zachary Schomburg
“The He in She,” Catherine Turner
“Transit of Venus,” Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
“Conjunction,” Sally Van Doren
“Preposition,” Sally Van Doren
“My Life Expresses a Spirit of Flexibility,” Stephanie Young
“Just Because,” Matt Zambito

That’s 38 poems out of 81 for an excellent 46.9% of poems I liked in the issue. 6 of the poems I definitely would have published as well (though that’s freighted with a couple strong efforts from St. Louis friends).