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The Temple
In The Temple, Michael Bazzett has created a testament to inhabiting, for a while, a body in this world. It’s a book seeking glimpses of the great beyond, a heaven fashioned out of earth and questions, in the here and now.
“Of poets writing today, I can’t think of any whose metaphors are more satisfying than Michael Bazzett’s—and The Temple is his best work yet. These poems are strange-making and surprising, full of wry humor and unexpected turns, but so wise, so eerily just-right, I take them as truth.”
—Maggie Smith
“Michael Bazzett’s poems are winsome with a little bit of wicked. In The Temple, Bazzett’s poems narrate old stories—of belief, of ageing, of the body—through new openings. His gods have regrets, cigars, and departures. His angels have bawdy senses of humour and are as immediate as they are intimidating. These poems are cinematic—a mouse watches a burning city, people travel tunnels the wrong way, a man spies his older self on a street but doesn’t interrupt him. You can milk a stone in the world of these poems, and everybody is conversational, chatty, full of grief and longing. Lurking in the corners of The Temple is time, looking at all that’s changing: where once he could bound, a dog now ambles, writing poetry.”
—Pádraig Ó Tuama
“The Temple invites readers to drop their bodies and sink into a realm of strangeness so breathtaking, so alive with mystery and mysticism, that the place begins to feel enchanted, even holy. Recognizing that we often crave more space for the imagination and more certainty about our worth as living things, Michael Bazzett pushes us to seek out an imperfect God, not as a source of answers, but as a mirror in whose reflected presence we can find acceptance, solace, and light.”
—Faisal Mohyuddin
“Of poets writing today, I can’t think of any whose metaphors are more satisfying than Michael Bazzett’s—and The Temple is his best work yet. These poems are strange-making and surprising, full of wry humor and unexpected turns, but so wise, so eerily just-right, I take them as truth.”
—Maggie Smith
“Michael Bazzett’s poems are winsome with a little bit of wicked. In The Temple, Bazzett’s poems narrate old stories—of belief, of ageing, of the body—through new openings. His gods have regrets, cigars, and departures. His angels have bawdy senses of humour and are as immediate as they are intimidating. These poems are cinematic—a mouse watches a burning city, people travel tunnels the wrong way, a man spies his older self on a street but doesn’t interrupt him. You can milk a stone in the world of these poems, and everybody is conversational, chatty, full of grief and longing. Lurking in the corners of The Temple is time, looking at all that’s changing: where once he could bound, a dog now ambles, writing poetry.”
—Pádraig Ó Tuama
“The Temple invites readers to drop their bodies and sink into a realm of strangeness so breathtaking, so alive with mystery and mysticism, that the place begins to feel enchanted, even holy. Recognizing that we often crave more space for the imagination and more certainty about our worth as living things, Michael Bazzett pushes us to seek out an imperfect God, not as a source of answers, but as a mirror in whose reflected presence we can find acceptance, solace, and light.”
—Faisal Mohyuddin
- GenresPoetry
39 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2020
About the author
Michael Bazzett
13 books19 followersMICHAEL BAZZETT is the author of five books of poetry: You Must Remember This, (Winner of the 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry); Our Lands Are Not So Different (Horsethief Books, 2017); The Interrogation (Milkweed Editions, 2017); The Temple (Bull City Press, 2020); and The Echo Chamber (Milkweed, 2021). His translation of the creation epic of the Maya, The Popol Vuh, (Milkweed, 2018) was named one of 2018's best books of poetry by the New York Times. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Ploughshares, The Sun, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, & The Iowa Review. A longtime faculty member at The Blake School, in Minneapolis, Bazzett has received the Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 20, 2020
Bazzett’s task, even if he brought it on himself, was almost up there with creating a universe in 7 days: cover everything in the universe in just 20 (not very long) poems, including questioning God and what he, she, we, or they is, are, or were, if anything but myth. Then have the audacity to show God your first draft. In “Cain & Abel, Revisited,” God “poured a little more cognac and said / he’d probably do some things differently / given the chance.”
While most of the poems have some relationship to religion, looked at from an alternate universe, he manages to bring dogs into the mix more than once. Of course, God spelled backwards is… In “A Confession,” he tells us, “When my dog started rewriting my poems, / they got better….”
One way to speed up the discussion of everything is to immediately discuss one thing, then it’s opposite. His first poem, “The End,” starts, “In the beginning.” In “The Tunnel,” he comes out of a tunnel to discovered he walked through it backwards. People are lined up to pay $100 to walk through AMNESIA, but he’s going to have an opposite result.
Drawing some parallels between our bodies and temples as enclosures, symbolic of the complex, intangibles that don’t concern the structures themselves, lets us leap over most discussion. Mission accomplished. He provokes some heavy thinking and soul searching, as much as you feel comfortable taking on, or you can just sit there with a big grin on your face and admire his creativity. I only wish I had another 50 poems to go.
I also wish the publisher had used larger type.
While most of the poems have some relationship to religion, looked at from an alternate universe, he manages to bring dogs into the mix more than once. Of course, God spelled backwards is… In “A Confession,” he tells us, “When my dog started rewriting my poems, / they got better….”
One way to speed up the discussion of everything is to immediately discuss one thing, then it’s opposite. His first poem, “The End,” starts, “In the beginning.” In “The Tunnel,” he comes out of a tunnel to discovered he walked through it backwards. People are lined up to pay $100 to walk through AMNESIA, but he’s going to have an opposite result.
Drawing some parallels between our bodies and temples as enclosures, symbolic of the complex, intangibles that don’t concern the structures themselves, lets us leap over most discussion. Mission accomplished. He provokes some heavy thinking and soul searching, as much as you feel comfortable taking on, or you can just sit there with a big grin on your face and admire his creativity. I only wish I had another 50 poems to go.
I also wish the publisher had used larger type.
December 24, 2024
"I will say to the architects:
Make my temple beautiful
the way it was when I was a boy
and thought that God,
even if he did not actually live there,
might occasionally wander in
to check out the acoustics
and maybe lift his voice
in a song of praise
to something other than himself---"
"Afterward we crept back to where
our bodies lay tangled in the grass,
still as two steamed fish on a plate,
and we peering into our empty eyes
then climbed back into our skins
and felt heavy at first and too thick,
and sometimes you would even cry
a little on the way home and when
I'd try to comfort you, you'd say,
No its okay, sometimes it just hits
me this way, living inside a body."
"In the incremental stew
of the souterrain, we settle
into ourselves so profoundly, we disappear.
First, dirt
then root then pollen and wing then
aloft into nothingness. Every burial becomes
a sky burial, if you wait."
The relationship/non-relationship found with God in this book is really cool. Talking to Jesus like he is a casual friend, sitting down for a glass of wine that he inexplicably turns into water from your grandparents' well, while he tells you that the opposite miracle was just a favor for his mom, that it was "more of a young man's miracle." Sitting with God, who you don't believe in and who doesn't believe in you, in your bedroom and he eats a stale prayer found leftover and "It's kind of like chewing tinfoil, he says. All that naked aching hope." God is selfish, he's just a guy like the rest of us, and a guy is just dirt in the making.
Make my temple beautiful
the way it was when I was a boy
and thought that God,
even if he did not actually live there,
might occasionally wander in
to check out the acoustics
and maybe lift his voice
in a song of praise
to something other than himself---"
"Afterward we crept back to where
our bodies lay tangled in the grass,
still as two steamed fish on a plate,
and we peering into our empty eyes
then climbed back into our skins
and felt heavy at first and too thick,
and sometimes you would even cry
a little on the way home and when
I'd try to comfort you, you'd say,
No its okay, sometimes it just hits
me this way, living inside a body."
"In the incremental stew
of the souterrain, we settle
into ourselves so profoundly, we disappear.
First, dirt
then root then pollen and wing then
aloft into nothingness. Every burial becomes
a sky burial, if you wait."
The relationship/non-relationship found with God in this book is really cool. Talking to Jesus like he is a casual friend, sitting down for a glass of wine that he inexplicably turns into water from your grandparents' well, while he tells you that the opposite miracle was just a favor for his mom, that it was "more of a young man's miracle." Sitting with God, who you don't believe in and who doesn't believe in you, in your bedroom and he eats a stale prayer found leftover and "It's kind of like chewing tinfoil, he says. All that naked aching hope." God is selfish, he's just a guy like the rest of us, and a guy is just dirt in the making.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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April 1, 2021My introduction to Michael Bazzett and I believe I'll read more. I really dig the wry, contemplative, humble tone and the way he speaks about dogs and God. Favorite poems:
The End
The Ones Who Aren't Mentioned
I Had a Little Trouble Believing in God
A Confession
The End
The Ones Who Aren't Mentioned
I Had a Little Trouble Believing in God
A Confession
September 25, 2021
An on and off dialogue between a quirky speaker and a no less quirky g/God. It made me laugh out loud at times. I'm still chuckling about one line or other. The poems vacillate between metaphorical landscape and remembered landscape. There is an ease to their lines that comes from great expertise.
March 25, 2024
I enjoyed the humor in this chapbook, especially when it comes to Bazzett’s portrayal of God. Lots of things I agreed with, especially in the religious poems. Lots of engaging imagery and ideas. There did not seem to be much of a narrative arc within the poems, but ideas of religion, dogs, and parenthood were apparent throughout. Might enjoy more when i’m older
October 17, 2020
I don't know how he does it, but I'm glad he does—each new book by Bazzett is a small miracle. Carefully poised but playful, these are unassuming poems that stay with you long after you put them down, and are full of legitimately breathtaking moments.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews