Sol's September Spotlight

"Nothing They Cannot Say"

Recently, Michael Brown, teacher, performer, dreamer, poet, talked frankly with Sol Magazine.  He posited the old idea of inspiration being what you make it as he mused, "My inspiration comes from many places. I just did poems inspired by a great blue heron and a dead possum, carrying wood, a piece of music, my mother's cancer operation, and teaching."

"I realized I was a poet when I had my first poem, 'Magic,' published in 'Beyond Baroque,' their first issue, in 1969.  I was 29 and had been writing poetry for about eight years.  Robert Hayden was my most powerful single poetic influence.  He showed me what it means to be an independent thinker, dedicated poet, and truly compassionate person."

"My favorite writing memory is when I completed 'Collaboration,' a poem I had been working on for most of a summer.  It was about the "shadow" figures behind noteworthy achievers, discoverers. The poem also used a compass image, the magnetic compass, a bit the way Donne used the drafting compass.  The verse form was borrowed from George Herbert.  It was the first poem I had written that I felt worthy of showing to Robert Hayden.  Sending it to him was one of the greatest pleasures I have had as a poet."
 

Collaboration

Geological remnant of old centeredness,
   the magnetic pole
guides the expedition to its peak, draws compass
quivering on its post, a sliver in a bowl.

Peary and Henson cooperate in twilight,
   could not survive
with any but the other this height,
mating eye and gravity till photographers arrive.

In the "Tribune" they look like Hilary and Tenzing,
   the dark one framed
by the arm of the shadow achiever, sensing
above him the peak that neither named.

A glossy from "The Defender" commands the grand-
   children's forced gloom;
his sons know only the shadow master stand-
ing on the pole, a casket in the living room.

No daughters run to peaks, but fly
   alone a while
and fall on foreign islands from the sky;
while he was grim, they must forever smile.

All beginnings are auspicious we say,
   lying at dawn;
like lines of magnetism through the arc of day,
I point inside your circles and press on.

Brown related to us the story of his college poetry teacher who said he was wasting his time.  Brown's comment? "He was right,  that was just what I wanted to do.  I write because it's the best  thing I can do well.  I always think that the poem I have just written is the best--until it lies around for a couple of days.  After that, there are just too many children to pick a favorite."

He concludes, poetry "is the highest most artistic use of language.  It pushes the leading edges of what we can say.  It can illuminate experience with emotionally charged bursts of insight.  I'd like to see poets be the consciences of a society. There is nothing they cannot say."

When not writing, Brown calls himself an "itinerant professor,"  teaching for over 35 years, including five years of high school and stints at Michigan, East Texas State, Central (Ohio) State, Western Michigan, Illinois-Chicago, the Uptown Chicago Center of Elmhurst and North Park, Roosevelt, Rhode Island, Suffolk, and  Chicago State.

Biography:

Along with Finnish performance poet Erkki Lappalainen, President of the International Organization of Performance Poets, Michael Brown, the organization's General Secretary, produced the first Poetry Olympics held October 1998 in Stockholm.  Over the past 25 years, Brown's poems have been in "Amandla Ngewethu!," "Another Chicago Magazine," "Blue Cloud," "Defined Providence," "Galley Sail," "Greenfield Review," "Kudzu," "Oyez," "Pembroke," "Red Brick Review," "West Coast Poetry Review," and in "Since Feeling Is First" (Scott, Foresman, 1972), "The Vagaries of Invention" (Sidewinder, 1982) and "Stray Bullets: Chicago Saloon Poets 1991" (Tia Chucha, 1992) and others.  He has also written articles for "The Chicago Tribune," "Homage to Robert Hayden" in Commentary (1980), fiction in "Wormwood," feature articles in "The Chicago Reader," and occasional columns in "The Korea Times."

He founded Slam! the International Performance Poetry Newsletter, official publication of the Poetry Olympics and the US national slam, and he is creator of http://www.slamnews.com -- a web site for international poetry news.
 

Brown holds a Ph.D. in English and Education from the University of Michigan. He is currently Professor of Communications at Mount Ida College, where he teaches all writing except "creative."  Brown currently lives in Onset, Massachusetts.

[All poems copyright by Michael Brown]
 

Flying Arpeggios

I seek the simple, elegant, full resonance
of a grand piano in a large room,
high notes reverberating in my head,
bass vibrations through my torso and gut,
melodies that open and run,
shaking thin frames and rolling somnambulant old folks,
a stern construction solid,
supporting the taut strings and feelings hammered and stopped,
their many cadenzas orchestral,
flying arpeggios and depth to stand on.

I want the thing of sonatas and concertos,
accompaniment and composition,
sharing and satisfaction,
jazz and entertainment,
noodling and parts,
cataclysmic crescendos
and notes that fade beyond our hearing,
the measured final chord or the major crash
echoing past the limits of our lives.

Meanwhile, I'll settle for tinkling ragtime
on an old upright at the back of a smoky bar in Old Town
by someone who cares how mellow the piano was,
how alive the music used to be,
how all the patrons sang in harmony,
and the beer tasted sweeter than California wine.

"An Act of Faith"
Driving to Maine with Marcel

So it was an old pattern when he
headed west, our destination north;
the same when he missed the first exit
for I-95. But to stop in the middle lane
of I-93 at three pm on a Saturday afternoon,
wait for the right lane to clear, creep
to the right and backup in the breakdown
lane, it put me on notice.

He paid close attention to exit numbers
and was easily confused by them.
He wanted to read the map and turnpike ticket
when they were in my hands.
He judged every traffic hazard
three miles after we passed it.

In a calm voice I said,
"That line of cars is stopped.
A toll booth is just ahead.
This is an exit ramp."

I died six times. In one vision
our engine block passed through my middle
followed by a Geo Prizm and a Camry,
just before a truck tail clipped off my head
and the top of our car.

I screamed a couple of dozen times inside,
profoundly, unleashing pure terror.
This man older than myself has driven
this car over 80,000 miles without demolition.
If he can make it 150 miles more,
I will get home exhausted but alive.
This is how we come to faith.

"Poe Was Right"

--Edgar Allen Poe said the most appropriate subject for poetry was
the death of a beautiful woman.--

My father's workbench sits in the basement
like a slab of anthracite, tools and parts at hand,
overhead lamps for micro-precision.
Here I feel my mother's cancer operation most of all.
Laid flat on a cold table,
painfully invasive professionals picking out bad cells,
machinery holds her in place and keeps her turning.

On the first floor French doors open to her bedroom
restored to the dining room it once was--
high federal windows showering sunlight on crystal and china,
three or four generations at the lace-covered table,
an uncle protective of the serving cart
kids always want to play with.
We forget what filled some spaces,
things never used become important,
and all of it is up for sale.

She sits in the backyard shade before a hundred people,
her silver hair a halo,
her hawk-like eyes still bright.
Everything in the house has been advertised in the paper
and set in the open for anyone to examine.
They raise their bidding numbers,
take what they want, and leave the rest.

Three grandsons hold aloft pieces of a productive life.
Surgeons prepared her for this.
When a piece of blue glass scatters a shaft of summer sun,
the auctioneer gets his price, a grandson delivers it,
and she is satisfied.

On her final walk through the house,
she stays on the first floor,
nail holes ragged in smudged plaster,
rubber soles echoing on hard wood,
but no more indignation.

She has begun her stooped shuffle toward the lighted doorway
that won't open completely till she gets there.
It's a solid door, hung straight on sturdy hinges,
fitted perfectly to the frame.
Someone spent a lot of time at a workbench getting it right.
It will close tight.

Paula M. Bentley, Cary, N.C.
http://www.crosswinds.net/~catpoet

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