Woman and the Sea: Selected Poems

Michael Mott's words are more like music than music. His eyes and ears receive the world and he filters it into song for the rest of us.

I was a student of Michael Mott's, so let it be said that my views are biased. I am not ashamed of this. Actually, I am very proud that I was a student of his because it exposed me more to the essence of the man, the essence of the poet, and what I was exposed to, I liked. Michael Mott, according to his biography, "was born in England in 1930. His mother was an American, his father English. He was educated in America and England and left England in 1966 to teach at Kenyon College. His first collection of poetry, The Cost of Living, was published in London in 1957." He went on "to publish seven more books of poetry, two novels, two children's novels," and what he is most famous for, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, which according to the back jacket of that book, "was on the New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and won the Christopher Award for excellent achievement." I was exposed to Michael when he taught at Bowling Green State University. I studied Techniques in Fiction with him as well as work in a Graduate School Poetry Workshop under his direction. What I most remembered about him was that he demanded that the writer not put the reader to sleep with vague, unclear writing. He compared a writer as putting a reader in a trance or dream, and any writing that was not clear would wake the reader up and make him or her stop reading. For a writer, that was the unpardonable sin. In Michael's latest book of poems, Woman and the Sea, Selected Poems by Michael Mott, edited by Walton Beacham, and published by Anhinga Press, the writer is kept in a trance or dream, and he does not awaken or come up for air until he works finish. George Garrett, in his introduction at the beginning of the book, describes Michael the poet very well: "As a reader, I place him among a baker's dozen of living and working poets in our language who are truly masters, those precious few without whom our lives and our language would suffer irreparable injury." Mr. Garrett writes that "(t)he qualities of Michael Mott's poems, the things which serve to define them as altogether his own. . .are paradoxical. In one sense, for example, (Mott) is a traditionalist. . . At the same time you will also find . .a gracious plenty of prose poems, `experimental' poems . . .and superbly realized poems in free verse." Garrett goes on to explain that what makes Michael Mott's poetry his own is Michael's "mastery of technique, demonstrating that the ancient and honorable tools of the trade. . .shine like new-minted coins." I would add that what makes Michael Mott Michael Mott is that he did what he tried to teach: He wanted the writer to take you there: For example, in a section of poems on "The Civil War" from "America, The Haunted Landscape," Mott writes, in "Kennesaw Mountain," Here was the Killing Ground for clear-eyed farmers' boys. Tumult and forming blue, misted by rain-soaked

If there is an ear more finely tuned to the music of the English language, or an eye more keen to find the shining crystal truth in the moment, or a mind more apt to summon the perfect allusion to bring that truth forward, please find it for me. Until you do that, I will read this book again. This is wondrous work from a master poet.