Denise Low Reviews Michael Poage's Selected Poems

Comments by Denise Low

When I met Michael Poage 20 years ago, I snapped to attention when he mentioned his study with Richard

Hugo and Madeleine DeFrees in Montana. Their tandem tenure at the MFA program produced some of my favorite writers, like James Welch, Sandra Alcosser, Kim Barnes, Art Homer and Richard Robbins. Poage has his own voice and technique, well-honed by his training. Gerard Manly Hopkins is an author whose works suggest Poage’s lines. Each poem has an internal working, like a separate clockwork. They are encriptions that intrigue readers to follow intriguing sequences where paradox upsets balance. His early books of poetry are letterpress beauties from Black Stone Press, Handbook of Ornament and Born. Since these early works, he continues to develop his handiwork, with a more global framework. He describes his travels, often for humanitarian and/or literary projects:

“For the past 40-plus years I have continued to write and have given readings and workshops in several states as well as in Mexico, Latvia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina.. . I also participate in progressive social justice activities in the U.S. and abroad.  I was part of the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo in 2009, went to the West Bank in 2010, and traveled to the Gaza Strip with Physicians for Social Responsibility in April, 2012 working as a trauma counselor. . . . I work with the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, have done community development work in northwest Mexico, taught English and worked with Church World Service in Bosnia.”

Madeline DeFrees endorsed his recent collection The Average Level of Happiness: “These terrifyingly honest poems confront the essential loneliness of the human condition…that of the ghost fish, Miss Kansas, or a suicide bomber.  And, as always the poems are full of surprises generated by the simplest of everyday occurrences such as starting a new address book or forgetting what day of the week it is.”
Here are two sample poems by Michael Poage, reprinted with permission from his Human Ink: The First Five Books 1975-2005 (Wichita: Blue Cedar Press, 2017)

NOT EVEN IN A BLUE MOON

There are continents
looking for a sign
of faithfulness
to the end.
And there is you.
The walk you promised
yourself along the edge
of one land mass
also brings you close
to your voyage.  My
adventure will be to sit
on this front porch
and taste the passion
of the thunderstorm
rolling across the prairie
from the west,
from all we never touched.

THE BLACK SEA
It looked blue to me
but as you all know
I have been wrong
before.  No one I
talked to on the
Turkish coast could
give an explanation
for the name.  It seems
one of those mysteries
we face when we are
the least bit alert
or very lost.  When climbing
out of our painful
selves we often will
attempt a bargain, make
a deal between where
we have been and what
we can’t quite see
ahead.  In this case
trying to bluff is very
dangerous.  None of us
really has what some
call a “poker face.”
We give it dead away.
Just go the way of the
Prophet named Oti
(we think), and this wisdom:
“Poetry is like driving a truck
5,000 miles to a town
worse than yours.”

Michael Poage has worked a variety of jobs: grocery store clerk, manual laborer, elementary school teacher, office clerk, sheep and cattle rancher in Montana, and 25 years as pastor to three United Church of Christ congregations in Kansas. He currently is an instructor of English at the Intensive English Language Center, Wichita State University, where he lives with is wife Gretchen Eick. He has ten collections of poems published and a selected works, Human Ink (Blue Cedar Press, 2017). B.A., Westmont College, 1967; MFA, U. of Montana, 1973; M.Div., San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1985 www.michaelpoage.com  Michael Poage

PO Box 48715  Wichita, KS  67201