a poet lives…

August 19, 2006 by p00ky.

“If your poetry is killing you, stop writing.”  Words spoken in friendship and love, and without a blink, for all their complexity.  “extant in memory of the blue juanita.”

Enter Michael Jose Morales Arriola http://othervoicespoetry.org/vol7/arriola/index.html

with a voice, while still in discovery, that sings life and of life in the chorus of Whitman, and Neruda, and, well, critics be damned… Ginsberg.

Michael has been visited in the night by Cesar Vallejo, wrestling demons, and kissed on the brow in the morning by Gabriela Mistral, embracing the shadows naked in the sunlight… and he has emerged refreshingly cleansed of the coded language that sometimes haunts contemporary poetry, genuine in the sticky residue of a common kiss, and less nostalgic than random perusals of photographs of advertising executives in drag

This post is not meant to be a critique of Michael’s work, but rather a portal to the words as they are, with original Spanish following each poem…. Perhaps we live in the spaces lost in translation…. A poet lives among you.  Thank you for your words, Michael.

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