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Songlines in Michaeltree: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS
Songlines in Michaeltree is the long-awaited collected poems--with the sparkling addition of some new ones--of one of America's most revered poets.
Hailed by critics as a distinctive and powerful presence in contemporary American poetry, Michael S. Harper is an artist and a truth teller who tempers his astonishing technical virtuosity with a compassionate and healing vision. A keen observer and a potent commentator, Harper calls a complacent society vigorously to account while cradling the wounded and remembering the lost.
Calling Harper "one of the finest poets of our time . . . [and] one of the most human and humane,"
George Cuomo of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle observed, "Harper's poetry has drawn its vitality from the incredible energy of his language and the honesty of his perceptions." Songlines in Michaeltree is a magnificent celebration of Harper's continuing, unstinting gifts.
Hailed by critics as a distinctive and powerful presence in contemporary American poetry, Michael S. Harper is an artist and a truth teller who tempers his astonishing technical virtuosity with a compassionate and healing vision. A keen observer and a potent commentator, Harper calls a complacent society vigorously to account while cradling the wounded and remembering the lost.
Calling Harper "one of the finest poets of our time . . . [and] one of the most human and humane,"
George Cuomo of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle observed, "Harper's poetry has drawn its vitality from the incredible energy of his language and the honesty of his perceptions." Songlines in Michaeltree is a magnificent celebration of Harper's continuing, unstinting gifts.
- GenresPoetry
408 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2021
In Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems, Michael S. Harper continues to build his space in public history as a bard. Each of his previous book in this collected volume has been thinned down to a chord, only excerpts, excluding many layers, or multiple harmonies, I came to admire in his solo efforts.
Songlines in Michaeltree begins as a simplified choral strain of one of his greatest collections, Dear John, Dear Coltrane. The dedications after each poem have been taken out and replaced with endnotes positioned in the appendix. The scholar-Harper has dislocated the poet-Harper here by adding an erudite addenda that only serve to depersonalize the verse and create a literal ‘Dear John’ impression.
In Songlines in Michaeltree, Debridement is cut altogether, and the only endnote for this whole section explains, “All the poems printed here from Debridement are from a section entitles ‘Heartblow’, which is a poetic evaluation of the innovations of the novelist Richard Wright.”
In the last section from Songslines entitled “Note to the Reader," he describes his own thematic as primarily a ‘journey motif’ and claims to already have for his poems, "a repertoire of articulate kinsmen” (Harper 373). Despite all this preening presence, even thinned down to an emblematic clarion-structure, there is still so much in these poems that sings, howls, and resonates in Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems.
It would not be unreasonable to assume that this new volume was intended for the novice connoisseur of poetry, and I would advise the poet’s poet to seek Harper in the solo format predominantly and often.
Songlines in Michaeltree begins as a simplified choral strain of one of his greatest collections, Dear John, Dear Coltrane. The dedications after each poem have been taken out and replaced with endnotes positioned in the appendix. The scholar-Harper has dislocated the poet-Harper here by adding an erudite addenda that only serve to depersonalize the verse and create a literal ‘Dear John’ impression.
In Songlines in Michaeltree, Debridement is cut altogether, and the only endnote for this whole section explains, “All the poems printed here from Debridement are from a section entitles ‘Heartblow’, which is a poetic evaluation of the innovations of the novelist Richard Wright.”
In the last section from Songslines entitled “Note to the Reader," he describes his own thematic as primarily a ‘journey motif’ and claims to already have for his poems, "a repertoire of articulate kinsmen” (Harper 373). Despite all this preening presence, even thinned down to an emblematic clarion-structure, there is still so much in these poems that sings, howls, and resonates in Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems.
It would not be unreasonable to assume that this new volume was intended for the novice connoisseur of poetry, and I would advise the poet’s poet to seek Harper in the solo format predominantly and often.
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February 20, 2009I love his poetry dedicated to great Jazz musicians
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews