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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

joybragi84
Sep 23, 20212 min read

Kellie Takes the Blog for a Day


Anyway (isn’t that how you begin, Michael?), I have taken over this week’s blog to explain a little about Michael’s upcoming book of poetry, Atheists and Empty Spaces, and to provide a layperson’s understanding of his poetry and why it is important. But first, the title may have confused some people. The poems contained in his volume reveal stories, if you will, of people who are looking to fill the empty spaces in their lives by whatever means necessary. Some are the types of people whom I have known in my life, and some are types of people whom I have never encountered but intrinsically know through Michael’s poems.


You see, I am an English major. I got my Master’s degree way back in 1994 and have taught composition and literature since then. So I guess I do know a thing or two about the value and beauty of poetry even though I am not blessed with the skills to create and compose. Michael, however, is blessed with these skills. What I enjoy most about reading Michael’s poems is I immediately understand them. His impressive ability to write in a particular meter and rhyme scheme makes his words flow smoothly like honey and seemingly without effort. There is a rhythm, a cadence, a magical connection of words to convey strong images and emotions. His poetry is accessible to all. That, perhaps, is one of the greatest qualities of any poet—to speak a message, a truth, so that all can understand it. Is that not why our country selects a poet laureate to serve as “the nation’s official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans”*? Michael’s poetry is lightning. When his book of poetry is available, I invite people to grab a copy and read it. These are not insipid poems about personal feelings. To the contrary, they represent universal truths about people. Go ahead. See for yourself.


*Armenti, P. (2012). What do poet laureates do? The Library of Congress. Retrieved from https://blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2012/02/what-do-poets-laureate-do/


I took the picture of the white flower in this blog in Cheyenne, Wyoming on our trip to Yellowstone this year.

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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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