Tag Archives: Michael R. Burch

Michael R. Burch, ‘Water and Gold’

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You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys? Mere wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.

You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.

You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.

I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes:

Published by The Lyric, Black Medina, Dusure Abueaoa (Tokelau), Shabestaneh (Iran), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Kritya (India), Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Freshet, Captivating Poetry (Anthology), Strange Road, Shot Glass Journal (the first stanza as “Dry Hump”), Better Than Starbucks, The Chained Muse, Famous Poets and Poems, Poetry Life & Times and Sonnetto Poesia (Canada)

The last time I checked, Google reported that “Water and Gold” appeared on 1,500 web pages. That’s a lot of cutting and pasting and suggests a number of readers have liked the poem enough to share it.

I’m a fan of nature shows and the opening lines were inspired by a nature show about the sudden flowering of deserts after any kind of rainfall. But deserts also produce mirages and it occurred to me that Bedouins would realize that the rain might be an illusion and that in any case the flowering would be unlikely to last. Love affairs can be like that.

None of the poem was planned and I didn’t know how it would end until I wrote the closing couplet. I came up with the title “Water and Gold” after the fact. The first image brought to mind other desert images: of mirages, Bedouins and pyramids. Midas with his “golden touch” just popped into my mind. I write most of my poems “organically” with no planning. My method is to “open myself to words” and I often have no idea how a poem will end when I begin.

Surprisingly, many such poems of mine end up telling coherent stories with unusual twists at the end. I’m not sure how that happens but I think not imposing too much of my myself on a poem probably helps.

I have never liked picky “rules” about sonnets and other poetic forms. I always do as I please and any sonnet can be shorter or longer than 14 lines, but 14 lines seemed to suit this poem.

There are different versions of the poem with line three being one of the following:

But joy is an illusion to the expert:
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
But joys? Mere wan illusions to the expert:
But joys are mere mirages to the expert:
But joys are heat mirages to the expert:
But joys are heat’s mirages to the expert:

Which one do you prefer? Please let me know in the comments, because I continue to waffle.

These are comments that have been made about the poem over the years…

I was especially moved by your beautiful poems “Water and Gold” and “Memory.” The music of “Water and Gold” is admirable, and the variations very strong. – Terese Coe, poet and translator

I have been reading more of your work: “Distances” and “Water and Gold” are some magical pieces, and “Something” is a tug too deep. – Rafia Bilkis, poet

I was going through your poems again to see which ones would be published in issue one [of New Lyre]. I LOVE “Will there be starlight” and “Regret”. SO DREAMY. Love it, love it. “Lady’s Favor” and “Water and Gold” are some of my other favorites. – David B. Gosselin, poet and editor

David Gosselin later led off the first issue of The New Lyre with five of my poems: “Distances,” “Will There Be Starlight,” “Water and Gold,” “Lady’s Favor” and “Regret.”

It’s a great sonnet!—Joyce Wilson, poet and editor of Poetry Porch and Sonnet Scroll

A really brilliant piece of writing. I’m not surprised it has been published so widely. Thank you for sharing. I for one am enriched from the experience of reading it. – Griffonner, poet

Marie Stella, a student in the Philippines, chose “Water and Gold” for analysis and criticism.

Robert L. Smith mentioned “Water and Gold” in a review of one of my books:

Michael R. Burch’s Violets For Beth is an exceptional collection, compromised mostly of formalist poems that seem so fluid and natural that it’s easy to forget they are rhymed and metered. Mr. Burch’s technical virtuosity is not what makes this collection memorable, however. These poems, all of them, possess an extraordinary emotional depth and tenderness, and resonate in the heart as well as in the mind. Consider the sonnet “Water and Gold,” one of my favorite pieces in a cornucopia of gems. The poem is flawless from start to finish, but its exquisite concluding couplet is positively breathtaking:

“I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
Then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.”

There are no subpar poems anywhere here, and more than a few would truly be worthy of Yeats or Rilke in their prime. Other favorites of mine include “Redolence” and the gorgeous “Infinity.” Mike Burch is a true poet in the very best sense of the word, and this haunting little book is a treasure to be read, reread, and savored for generations to come.

*****

Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two outrageously spoiled puppies. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, epigrams, quotes, puns, jokes and letters have appeared more than 7,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs. Burch is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google’s rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Darfur, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba. Burch’s poetry has been taught in high schools and universities, translated into fifteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, set to music by twenty composers, recited or otherwise employed in more than forty YouTube videos, and used to provide book titles to two other authors. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.

Photo: “Gold and Blue Water Reflection” by Stanley Zimny (Thank You for 52 Million views) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 12, ‘City! Oh City!’

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City! Oh City! – poems on the light and dark of urban life. Thirteen of the best contemporary English-language poets present their wildly differing takes on the glamour and squalor, the joy and heartbreak, the varied people and the hidden wildlife of our modern cities.

Five of the poets are new to the Potcake Chapbook series, and I’m delighted to be adding Kate Bingham of England, Francis O’Hare of Northern Ireland, Pino Coluccio of Canada, and Quincy R. Lehr and J.D. Smith of the US. They join eight returning poets. Amit Majmudar and Maryann Corbett deserve special mention for their brilliant use of form to capture contradictory situations: Majmudar’s static street scene which suddenly changes pace to a hectic chase, Corbett’s interwoven Baroque chamber ensemble and homeless encampment with their separate realities in a shared evening in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition: Michael R. Burch, Jerome Betts, Terese Coe, Marcus Bales, Martin Elster and myself; everyone contributes to this memorable capture of the complexity of the modern city.

Bios, photos and links to read more of their work can all be found on the Sampson Low site’s Potcake Poets page, while all the chapbooks in the series, showing which poets are in which, are here. Each of the 12 chapbooks is profusely illustrated (of course) by Alban Low, and can be yours (or sent as an intriguing gift) for the price of a coffee.

Value the city – citification is civilisation!

Michael R. Burch: ‘For All That I Remembered’

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For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved …
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could …
I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush

my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “For All That I Remembered” is one of my personal favorites and one of a number of poems I have written about the transience of memory, along with “The Effects of Memory,” “Violets,” “Moments,” “Distances,” “Redolence,” “Vacuum,” “Afterglow” “Memento Mori” and “Remembrance.” “For All That I Remembered” has been published by The Raintown Review, Boston Poetry Magazine, la luce che non muore (Italy), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Kritya (India), Jewish Letter (Russia), Gostinaya (in a Russian translation by Yelena Dubrovin), Freshet, Orchards Poetry, Poetry Life & Times, Sonnetto Poesia (Canada), Trinacria, The New Formalist and Pennsylvania Review.”

Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two outrageously spoiled puppies. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, epigrams, quotes, puns, jokes and letters have appeared more than 7,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs. Burch is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google’s rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Darfur, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba. Burch’s poetry has been taught in high schools and universities, translated into fifteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, set to music by twenty composers, recited or otherwise employed in more than forty YouTube videos, and used to provide book titles to two other authors. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.

“Memory” by Kris Krug is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘The People Loved What They Had Loved Before’

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We did not worship at the shrine of tears;
we knew not to believe, not to confess.
And so, ahemming victors, to false cheers,
we wrote off love, we gave a stern address
to bards whose methods irked us, greats of yore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We did not build stone monuments to stand
six hundred years and grow more strong and arch
like bridges from the people to the Land
beyond their reach. Instead, we played a march,
pale Neros, sparking flames from door to door.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

We could not pipe of cheer, or even woe.
We played a minor air of Ire (in E).
The sheep chose to ignore us, even though,
long destitute, we plied our songs for free.
We wrote, rewrote and warbled one same score.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

At last outlandish wailing, we confess,
ensued, because no listeners were left.
We built a shrine to tears: our goddess less
divine than man, and, like us, long bereft.
We stooped to love too late, too Learned to whore.
And the people loved what they had loved before.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “If I remember correctly, the poem was written after I read some disparaging comments by Formalists about Keats and Shelley being ‘too emotional.’ In the poem I make fun of the naysayers by pointing out how they now wail about a lack of attention from readers. I was also told by poets on Eratosphere – I call it ErraticSphere – not to use the word ‘love’ in a love poem and to avoid abstractions and personification. Such wisdom! When I pointed out that Erato was the abstract personification of love poetry, I was banned for life! So I worked that into the poem: ‘We wrote off love.’ One might think the wailing poets are free versers, but the inspiration for the poem was actually Formalists who object to abstract language, personifications and even the word ‘love’ in modern poetry.”

Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two outrageously spoiled puppies. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, epigrams, quotes, puns, jokes and letters have appeared more than 7,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs. Burch is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google’s rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Darfur, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba. Burch’s poetry has been taught in high schools and universities, translated into fifteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, set to music by twenty composers, recited or otherwise employed in more than forty YouTube videos, and used to provide book titles to two other authors. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.

Photo: “Folk Band” by garryknight is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Styx’

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Black waters,
deep and dark and still…
all men have passed this way,
or will.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “This original epigram, written in my teens, returns more than 6,000 results. I started writing poetry around age 13 and decided that I wanted to challenge the immortals around age 15. I was always very ambitious about my writing. When I couldn’t out-write Keats and Shelley at age 15, I destroyed everything I had written in a fit of pique. I was able to reconstruct some of the poems from memory, but not all. I still miss a few of the poems that seemed promising which have not cooperated with being resurrected.”

Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two outrageously spoiled puppies. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, epigrams, quotes, puns, jokes and letters have appeared more than 7,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs. Burch is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google’s rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Darfur, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba. Burch’s poetry has been taught in high schools and universities, translated into fifteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, set to music by twenty composers, recited or otherwise employed in more than forty YouTube videos, and used to provide book titles to two other authors. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.

Photo: “Styx” by wilding.andrew is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 11, ‘Lost Love’

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‘Lost Love – poems of what never happened, and of the end of things that did’… how bittersweet; but what a collection of poets, and what a diversity of stories and observations!

Seventeen poets are packed into this chapbook. Seven have appeared before: Marcus Bales, Melissa Balmain, Michael R. Burch, Vera Ignatowitsch, Martin Parker, Gail White and myself. Ten are new to the series, with wicked little pieces from Brooke Clark, Cody Walker and three from Wendy Cope, and with longer poems from N.S. Thompson, James B. Nicola, Mary Meriam, Helena Nelson, David Whippman, Richard Fleming and Vadim Kagan. Bios, photos and links to read more of their work can all be found on the Sampson Low site’s Potcake Poets page, while all the chapbooks in the series, showing which poets are in which, are here. Each of the 11 chapbooks is profusely illustrated (of course) by Alban Low, and can be yours (or sent to an ex) for the price of a coffee.

Heartbreak has never had a happier manifestation!

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Neglect’

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What good are tears?
Will they spare the dying their anguish?
What use, our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence of tears
without action?
What help, the eloquence of prayers,
or a pleasant benediction?

Before this day is over,
how many more will die
with bellies swollen, emaciate limbs,
and eyes too parched to cry?

I fear for our souls
as I hear the faint lament
of theirs departing …
mournful, and distant.

How pitiful our “effort,”
yet how fatal its effect.
If they died, then surely we killed them,
if only with neglect.

Michael R. Burch writes: “This original poem has over 3,000 Google results, perhaps because it has been published by Daily Kos, Black Kos, Course Hero, Think Positive, Katutura (Namibia), Vanguard News (Nigeria), Best Naira News (Nigeria), The World News Platform, Darfur Awareness Shabbat, Genocide in Art, Genocide Awareness, and other human rights organizations including the UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency).”

Photo: “Carrying a lifeless and dying child (Famine Memorial)” by Can Pac Swire is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

My own comments: The statue in the photo is at House Quay, Dublin, and relates specifically to the Great Famine, the Great Hunger, the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 in which a million died and two million left the country then and in the next couple of years. The potato blight also impacted continental Europe, causing a further 100,000 deaths there and becoming a contributory cause of the widespread Revolutions of 1848.

So let us be clear: whether children are dying from famine, climate disaster, pandemics, government inaction, or warfare (all present in today’s world)–dying without in any conceivable way being culpable–there is not just a moral duty to help, there is self-interest in helping, self-interest in preventing civil unrest and floods of refugees. Refugees are the product of an intolerable domestic situation: all other things being equal, people would rather make their future in the place they were raised, with familiar friends, family, foods, festivals. It is the duty of all governments to make all places so pleasant that no adults or children feel forced to leave, that no one is left to die.

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Ramadan kareem.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Ordinary Love’

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Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white…
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair’s blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we’re older now, that “love” has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
“I love you,” in the ordinary way.

Michael R. Burch writes: “These are some tidbits about the poem:
This was my first villanelle and it’s missing a tercet. The missing tercet was pointed out to me by the formalist poet Richard Moore, who said he still liked the poem. I didn’t feel that I had anything to add, so I left the poem as it was. I’ve never been a stickler for the rules, anyway.
‘Ordinary Love’ was originally published by The Lyric. It later won the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne Poetry Award, was published by Romantics Quarterly, which had sponsored the contest, and RQ nominated it for the Pushcart Prize.
The poem has been translated into Hungarian, as noted below.
That’s not too shabby for my first villanelle!
Here is the complete publication history:
Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Amerikai költok a második (in a Hungarian translation by István Bagi), Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets & Poems, FreeXpression (Australia), PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal, Poem Kingdom and Poetry Life & Times; also winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne Poetry Award sponsored by Romantics Quarterly and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The last time I checked online, it returned nearly 10,000 results for the first line.”

Michael R. Burch is an American poet, editor and translator who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth, two outrageously spoiled puppies, and the ghost of a hamster, Olive, murdered by a former canine family member. For an expanded bio, circum vitae, career timeline, reviews, interviews and other information of interest to scholars, please click here: Michael R. Burch Expanded Bio. To read the best poems of Mike Burch in his own opinion, with his comments, please click here: Michael R. Burch Best Poems.

“Ordinary LOVE” by InfoMofo is licensed under Openverse from WordPress.org

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Epitaph for a Palestinian Child’

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I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

Michael R. Burch writes: “This original epigram once returned over 90,000 results for its second line and still returned over 4,200 results the last time I checked. The epigram began as “Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust” and was set to music by Sloane Simon after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.

It has been published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Super Highway, Mindful of Poetry, Poets for Humanity, The New Formalist, Angle, Daily Kos, Katutura English (Namibia), Genocide Awareness, Darfur Awareness Shabbat, Viewing Genocide in Sudan, Setu (India), Brief Poems, Better Than Starbucks and ArtVilla; also translated into Romanian by Petru Dimofte, into Turkish by Nurgül Yayman, into Czech by Z J Pinkava, into Indonesian by A. J. Anwar.”

Michael R. Burch has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers. He also edits TheHyperTexts.

“ICU child Shifa hospital, Gaza” by Kashklick is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Bible Libel’

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If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

Michael R. Burch writes: “This may be the first poem I wrote. I read the Bible from cover to cover at age 11, and it was a traumatic experience. But I can’t remember if I wrote the epigram then, or came up with it later. In any case, it was probably written between age 11 and 13, or thereabouts. It would be kinda cool to be remembered by a poem I wrote at such an early age. Plus, it’s short, so readers would probably finish it!

I have been using Google results to determine which of my poems are the most popular on the Internet. Some of my poems have gone viral, appearing on hundreds or thousands of web pages. That’s a lot of cutting and pasting, and I like to think people must like a poem in order to take the time to replicate it. This epigram, which I wrote around age 11 to 13, at one time returned over 405,000 results for the last two lines, and over 51,000 results for the entire poem. The last time I checked, it still returned over 292,000 results. I was especially pleased to see one of the first poems I wrote, and possibly the first, go viral. If I wrote anything earlier, I don’t remember it.“

Michael R. Burch has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers. He also edits TheHyperTexts.

Photo: “Bible, Reading Glasses, Notes and Pen” by paul.orear is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0