Michael C Blumenthal's Writings
View Michael’s Books | Read Michael’s other writings below.
|
Article
May.04.2009
JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
And Then There Was “And”
Books
By John Stoehr
Published April 29, 2009, issue of May 08, 2009,.THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
And Poems by Michael Blumenthal BOA Editions, Ltd.,112 pages, $16.00.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith poet Michael Blumenthal.
HETTY HERMANS
Stoic Elegiast: Poet Blumenthal.
Well, in fact, he nearly saith that. Not quite, but almost....
|
|
|
Poem
Feb.26.2009
THE WRITER'S ALMANAC
Days We Would Rather Know
There are days we would rather know than these, as there is always, later, a wife we would rather have married than whom we did, in that severe nowness time pushed, imperfectly, to then. Whether, standing in the museum before Rembrandt's "Juno," we stand before beauty, or only before a consensus about beauty, is a question...
|
Poem
Feb.26.2009
THE WRITER'S ALMANAC
I HAVE LIVED THIS WAY FOR YEARS AND DO NOT WISH TO CHANGE
I hope you'll forgive the black paint on my windows, the smell of cat litter in the kitchen. Guests complain sometimes that my collection of Minoan cadavers spoils their appetite, or that having the shower in the living room creates too much moisture, but I think you'll grow used to it if we get to be...
|
|
Poem
Feb.26.2009
And the Wages of Goodness Are Not Assured
for Aharon Appelfeld
That Jacob stole his own brother’s blessingand lived to triumph from it there can beno doubt, or that Cain slew the sleeping Abel
or that Job suffered so long amid the racked syllablesof his own believing, that the wages of goodnessare oblique...
|
Poem
Feb.26.2009
What I Believe
by Michael Blumenthal
I believe there is no justice, but that cottongrass and bunchberry grow on the mountain.
I believe that a scorpion's sting will kill a man, but that his wife will remarry.
I believe that, the older we get, the weaker the body, but the stronger the soul.
I believe that if you roll...
|
|
|
"Blumenthal the latter-day psalmist encompasses in these brilliant poems both chatter and stillness, pantheism and skepticism, rapture and resignation to the ordinary. He is a wisdom poet, in the fullness of vision and opulent language."”
—Phillip Lopate
About Michael
Michael Blumenthal graduated from the Cornell Law School with a J.D. degree in 1974, after studying philosophy and economics at the State U. of New York at Binghamton. His seventh book of poems, And, will be published by BOA Editions in May, 2009. A graduate...
Connections
