For Prescott writer and teacher Michael McLaughlin, “the function of an artist is to bear witness to truth.” Poetry is “personal, but it only works if it’s also universal. I want to find the essence of something, its emotional truth. Such is where the real poetry lies.”
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Michael worked for many years as an artist in residence with incarcerated youth and adults. “Teaching poetry, screenplay and fiction writing in prisons, juvenile detention centers and mental-health facilities has been one of the highlights of my life. I wanted to creatively help people who seemingly needed help the most. It was an enormous privilege to be working with them.” There too his emphasis was on enabling students to find personal truths they could share with others. “It’s not easy to craft an honest poem, to get up and read it in front of a group of strangers. What resulted was a sort of fearlessness that I learned to draw from and embolden people with.”
In his own poetry Michael draws from a range of inspiration: “the conflicts and incongruities I encounter, the incredible amount of injustice in the world, the nature of all creatures, including human, and, as I grow older, the repositories of wisdom in the world’s religions.” He also credits diverse poets and authors as having profound influence on his work: “Keats, Vallejo, Sexton, Whitman, Lorca, Plath, Bishop, the novelist Celine, to name a few.”
For Michael, poems are “usually spun out of a catchphrase or an experience or a journal entry.” While he enjoys the practice of writing — “It’s great fun tinkering away in one’s little word factory” — he acknowledges that poems can often take their own surprising paths. He describes himself as “just a victim of enthusiasms, always caught between seeing where poems will take me and reining them in. I’m both standing my ground and surrendering to experience.” When a poem works, it’s almost a transcendent experience for him. “Every once in a while you’re gifted into a kind of understanding. And if you’re open to the call, you may be able to articulate it. Beyond meditation and therapy, poetry is the only real-life way I know of making peace with perplexity.”
Michael and his wife moved to Prescott in 2019. He currently teaches English and creative writing at Yavapai College, including a Poetry Writing Workshop coming in August. He’s written two novels, Western People Show Their Faces and Gang of One, and three books of poetry, Ped Xing, The Upholstery of Heaven and Countless Cinemas. His accomplishments include being named Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo County, California, and hosting a long-running poetry and performance series in Santa Maria, California. Pre-pandemic Michael also did poetry readings all over the country. “I love reading out loud, the sound, sense and suggestion of poetry — it’s both a thrill and a surprise when you can pull a poem off and move people a bit.”
The poems here demonstrate Michael’s keen ability to tackle complex themes through subtle imagery. Isolation, loneliness, fleeting moments of both clarity and loss populate his thoughtful lines, culminating in realizations that enlighten. Michael says, “In awe as I am of the different eastern and western wisdom traditions, all the mind-bending platitudes and maxims, what always strikes hardest and truest is poetry.”
To find out more about Michael, visit mycalmac.us/poet.
Countless Cinemas
with thanks to Donald S Lopez Jr.
the yogacara speak
of a form of consciousness
where all the seeds
of past deeds
are deposited.
one by one these seeds
come to fruition
simultaneously
creating a person
and a private world.
a universe of closet sized cinemas
each occupied by a single person
eternally viewing a different film.
everything is of the nature of consciousness
the product of one's own projections.
ignorance and suffering
believe the yogacara
result from feeling
the movie to be real.
Summer Eve South of Stockton
the yogacara speak
of a form of consciousness
where all the seeds
of past deeds
are deposited.
one by one these seeds
come to fruition
simultaneously
creating a person
and a private world.
a universe of closet sized cinemas
each occupied by a single person
eternally viewing a different film.
everything is of the nature of consciousness
the product of one's own projections.
ignorance and suffering
believe the yogacara
result from feeling
the movie to be real.
Summer Eve South of Stockton
One hundred well-behaved right lane trucks.
Fast Lane I-5. 80 mile per hour
twilight toasting the minds of bugs.
Phone pole hawk. Beak tucked.
Crop duster Christmas time green. Envying
the guy whose first kiss must
have just taken hold in rich rye
of such an instant just passed.
Ah, the heat of it! We’re no more than bread!
Back seat my son, you’d think
Asleep on
the upholstery of heaven.
For an instant so righteous
I’m entrusted with so much.
Night’s just a nestMy job’s just to driveFor an instant so righteous.
Dee Cohen is a Prescott poet and photographer. deecohen@cox.net.
