Songs and Letters


I’m tempted to call Songs and Letters an autobiographical novel in poetry and prose, but since it is an unplanned work in progress, that might be a bit premature. I am also tempted to refer to it as my Odyssey or Leaves of Grass, but writers who say things like that are usually laughed at and brushed aside, so I won’t. What I will say, though, is that this is, or these will be, my Songs and Letters. It’s meaningless, but at least I will be on solid ground.

Like two of my previous books, One Hand Clapping and No Time to Cut My Hair, this work will be presented in installments as soon as each is written, keeping me but half a step ahead of the reader — and, in some cases, I’m sure, half a step behind. Since I write at a naturally quick pace, I expect Songs and Letters to be a restless, steadily expanding work. And since I have no idea where the book will lead or when it will end, I expect it to be a journey every bit as harrowing, challenging, and gratifying as Life itself. Come to think of it, I would be disappointed if it were anything less.

That said, as Songs and Letters grows and takes on a life of its own, I also encourage you to open the book at random and see if its pages do not speak to the moment, and help you remember something beautiful, poetic, and inspiring about yourself that you had forgotten or set aside in a time of difficulty or despair. It might sound like a lot to ask of a book, but the way I see it, if I had lesser expectations, I shouldn’t write it or expect it to be read at all.

— William Michaelian, Salem, Oregon, March 18, 2005



——— Songs and Letters ———————————————

Volume 1
Van Gogh’s Mad Cypresses
Hymn to the Sun
Highway 99, San Joaquin Valley, California
The Sunlight on My Mother’s Face
Letter to a Friend
I’m Only Sleeping
The Okie Cotton Pickers, 1963
The People, Yes
Ash Leaves Fell Around Them
A Brief History of the World
Le Moulin de la Galette
The Day I Photographed Lincoln
James Joyce Singing
I Tell Myself No Stories
A Symphony on Wheels
Letter to Myself
Do Not Be Crippled by Reason
Evening Prayer in an Orange Grove
Letter to Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman’s Reply
A Dramatic Intermission
Woman at the Café du Tambourin
The Library Card in My Rabbie Burns
An Introduction to Creative Writing
To the Hermit with the Mahogany Leg
Grocer, Have You Any Books?
Country Sketches: Grandview School, 1967-1968
To My Father After a Dream
Letter to the Future
Letter from the Future
Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg at the Library of Congress
I Count the Bricks in Buildings
At the Bus Stop with Gustave Doré
Let My Verse Be Strong
A Poet’s Song in the Marketplace
Early Morning, Waiting for a Train
Letter to My Grandfather
Village Song
Along a Stony Path
Grains of Sand
Letter to My Grandmother
A Tiny Piece of Fresno, Another Part of Me
To Ali Baba and the Shepherd on the Hill
L’Absinthe
I Met My Spirit
Poets

Volume 2
The Big Yellow Bus
Epitaph for a Poet
Bridge Across the Bay
A Stranger Looking In
Grief’s Exile
The Sinews and the Bones
Fresno Onions
My Next Life
The End of the Rainbow
Lemon Sun, Pomegranate Blood
Crows over a Cornfield
Farewell to Rocinante
Roads
Letter to My Father on His Birthday
The Clock on the Wall
The Chipmunk Ranch
A Country Blacksmith
Forever All My Life
Rooms
Morning Notebook
A Captain’s Tale
Send Them Up
Rotten Cucumber Blues
Remembrance Rock
Going Home
Shadows on the Sidewalk
The Hat on Someone Else’s Head
In Shades of Dusty Green
Crossing the Desert
Music in a Minor Key
Not Dying
August Days
The Train through Texas
Our Old Back Door
Let There Be Light
Go Gently, Sunday Morning
The Ocean Says Yes
Che Gelida Manina
The President Rides a Bicycle
The Woman with Long Black Hair
My Box of Notes
Another Kind of Poem
Polliwogs
So Strange to Say Good-bye
Eternal Flames and Spectral Colors
These Changing Times

Volume 3
Letter from the Last Man on Earth
Adam and Eve Have Bacon and Eggs
Song Far in the Evening
The Poet Tree
Autumn Song
A Beggar’s Sigh
I My Own Blind Shepherd
Whittleweecumble
Upon Waking, a Lonely Cloud
Death and the Scribe
The First to Die, the Last to Understand
Burn it Down!
Dance of the Hours
Bells
The Tennessee Waltz
I Love You, Whoever You Are
Is There a Doctor in the House?
The Book
After the Fall
Mother and Son
Keeper of the Bones
My Old Age
The Evening News
Fable Wind
If These Are My Fingers
Ben Johnson’s Horse
The Sun Rises Everywhere
Honeysuckle and Lemon
The Mad Artist
For the Record
I See Myself Working
Common Objects, Hidden Dreams: A Daily Journal
A Lesser Poet
To Pour the Wine, But Not to Drink
The Painting of You
Now You’re Home
Remembrance
What Happens Again
Into a Strange Land
Dream Sequence
Wolves

Volume 4
Listen and You Shall See
Snow on the Battlefield
Spirits
After Thirty Years
December Poems
The Voice
In a Wide Birch Forest
The Actor
So Much Like Now
Winter Lullaby
I Am Redeemed
Daylight Journal
It’s Still a Long Walk to Christmas
A Thimbleful of Ash
My Eyes Bleed Like Crocuses
Maybe on a Summer Day
Madness Revived in Distance Born
No Man is an Island
Anonymous
The Grand Executioner
The Word
Poor Man’s Song
Absolution
A Fond Farewell
Cemetery Blues
Common Words
Genocide
Preface to the First Edition
Marginalia
Weeds
Visions of Spring
Hymn
A Bedtime Story
Deliverance
Remember Me
Notaléymé
Two in the Morning
The Waiters (Long Live the Revolution)
Wild Flowers Imagine the Rain
Blood and Flowers
It Might Be Scripture
Little Children
Dawn is the Distance
Fallen
One More for Finnegan

Volume 5
They Come and They Go
A Closed Mouth Catches No Flies
A Thousand Miles
Death Treads Softly
Present Tense (I Am Not Resigned)
In an Ancient Land
Hands
A Poet Making Scrambled Eggs
I Will Go On Singing
Here Lies
Faces
A Blank Page
A Chamber Pot and Van Gogh’s Ear
A Letter to the Girls
A Letter to the Boys
One Man’s Work Is Another’s Pain
The Overcoat
What Others See
I Call Out Across the Lake
The Juggler
According to Legend

Volume 6
A Letter Home
Painting by Numbers
The First Day of Spring
A Blossom to the Wind
Odysseus
Your Love’s Return
Back from the Abyss
As Plain as the Nose on My Face
The Mysterious Stranger
A Laughing Matter
The Infinite Night
Such is Luck
Whispers
Morning Song
The Living and the Dead
Real Time
Peace
Questions
Not as a Stranger
Crucified
I Sang a Song
A Dreamer Dreamed
Primitive
The Family Tree
Each Morning the President
Danny Boy
There But For the Grace
The Community Water Glass
The Calling
I Think of the Sun
The Pose
Face to Face
The Ox Cart
It Might Have Been the Wind
Borders
Which Way the Breeze
My Father on Sunday Morning
No One’s Fool
Please Stay
Alone in a Dream

Volume 7
A Place for Everything
Miracles
Seeds
Changes
Beauty
Love
Sorrow
Pain
Music
Doors

Volume 8
Fifty Times Around the Sun
Companions
Coffee
Clouds
Sisters
Lies
Somewhere Along the Way
I Can Imagine
Spiders
Chairs
Clocks
Even So
Things
A Girl Walking in the Wood
The Shepherd
Where Was I Then?
Mist
Noah
Early
Now
Death
Fishing
Observation
Dust
All I Need to Know
A Visitor
Rain
Echoes
Thunder
After the Storm
Alone, My Mother Still in Bed
The Document
Softly
When Some Memories Rise
The First Sweet Thing Today
A Star in Her Upturned Palm
Early Morning Conversation
A Broken Poem
Listening
A Wonderful Day
Into the Night
I Would Love to Know
Suffering
Farewell
Exhaustion
Who
How Long?
That Alone

Volume 9
This Cool August Morning
Laughter
Wild Carrots
Dust to Dust
Remnants of a Dream
What Did You Find?
Some Mornings the Silence
Another Song I Know
When My Turn Comes
Ask Yourself
A Penny I Have Found
When I Close My Eyes
Imaginary Cigarettes
The Disease
A Room With Many Doors
A Song for the Mountains
I Write My Name
I Am Wise, I Am Blind
Two Sighs Unheard
The Ghosts at Yaquina Bay
The Thunder and the Crow
The Sweet Hereafter
Maybe
The First Day of Autumn
Sometimes I Think of Dawn
I, Leonardo
Still Standing
The Secret
A Meaningless Reply
The Fall of the Ten Thousand
What Happens to the Moonlight?
A Basket Case
The Observer Observed
Epitaph
Colors
A New Pair of Shoes
Forever
Mother Ocean, Sister Breeze
Let It Be Folly, Let It Be Prayer
Taking Stock

Volume 10
The Myth I Am
Ham and Cheese on Rye
Tenderly
Three Blind Chairs
Blessing
November Sky
Walnut Leaves
Morning Rain
The Deep End
How Will You Know Me?
Restless Mind, Restless Fingers
A Moment Alone
Abandoned
Almost the Same
The Private Lives of Saints
A Weary Angel
Physician, Heal Thyself
Mardi Gras
The Day After Thanksgiving
Between Poems
November Song
So Begins December
The Raisin Pie Contest
Two Graves
Someday
Half Past Ten
Beyond
Long Gray Train (I Pay the Porter)
War
Collage
To the Spider Outside the Kitchen Window
The Spider Replies
Man in Black
A Logical Conclusion

Volume 11
Changing of the Guard
The Beard, the Nose, and the Sourdough
The Seagulls
Christmas Notebook
A Rose and Other Matters
The Pond
Left Behind
A Toast

Volume 12
Benediction
The Painter
Winter Kills
A Flower for Marian
No One Knows
Bohemia Is Boiling
Up in Smoke
Let Us Say
Frozen
Don’t Go
In Light of What I Know
The Blues
Upon the Mossy Green
Reflection
Gathering
My Father’s Shoes
After Hours
Inheritance
Messenger
In Passing
Opposite Windows
Welcome to the Real World
I Remember Other Things
Dare
Piano
Knots
Bridge
Party
Awakening
Our Old Farm Remembers Us
Thin Ice
Burying a Bone
Shall We Go See the Old Man?
News from the Front
If You Gather When I Die
Setting the Clock
Morning Sounds
Sanctuary
The Rain and the Dead
Morning Coffee
For My Mother’s Sister, Lois
Beggar on the Steps
A Working Arrangement
Curious
Ashamed
Cold Brick Alley
Instead of Words

Volume 13
Sixes and Sevens
The First Three Words Said by Man
I Remember My Father Walking
As I Recall
The Old Steam Engine
How Should I Paint My Mother?
Dear Soldier
More Than I Pretend
The Old Life
Experiment
First Light
A Hymn of Grace
A Fair Trade
Hello Again
Adrift
What Does It Mean?
May Morning
The Second Act
Aria
Fresh Air
Quota
Someone I Know
Awake She Smiles
Great and Small
If, When I Was a Child
To the Dead on My Birthday
Inside Out
Death Knocks Twice
Obituary
Love Affair
The Secretary
The Loveliest Night of the Year
Sunday Morning in June
The Troubadour
I Think It’s Going to Rain Today
Ghosts
Street Scene
Our Garden

Volume 14
Look Again
For Luck
Sunshine’s Bride
Full Circle
Fireworks
Through My Fingers
How Do I Feel?
Genesis, 1962
As Summer Burns
Mortuary Blues
Precious
Love Letter to the Universe
Closing Time
Summer Song
The Ghost and the Mirror
Three Poems from the Oregon Coast
Among Other Things
Dawn
Along the Way
Three Haiku
Holding the Door
Dear Diary
What I Heard and What I Saw
Our Maple Is Still ~ Three Haiku
The First Day of School
The Second Day of School
The Third Day of School
The Fourth Day of School
The Fifth Day of School
Behind the Building
Autumn Haiku
Sunday Morning Haiku
Grace
The Old Wilson School ~ Five Haiku
Kitchen Window Haiku
Sharing a Room
Another Epitaph
Recovery
The Old Road
San Joaquin Valley Haiku
Autumn Orchard
Suppertime
Peeling Potatoes
Making Bread

Volume 15
Rain at the Asylum
Peace at the Asylum
Letter from the Asylum
View from the Asylum
Cold at the Asylum
Dream at the Asylum
Sleep at the Asylum
Remembered at the Asylum
Bells at the Asylum
Mirror at the Asylum
Supper at the Asylum
Bath at the Asylum
Train at the Asylum
River at the Asylum
Visitor at the Asylum
Distance at the Asylum
Bread at the Asylum
Ghost at the Asylum
Gone from the Asylum
Miracle at the Asylum

Volume 16
The Annotated Proverbs of Hell

Volume 17
The Oldest Poem
The Newest Poem
The Poem My Mother Wrote
The Poem My Father Wrote
The Poem My Grandfather Wrote
The Poem My Other Grandfather Wrote
The Poem My Grandmother Wrote
The Poem My Other Grandmother Wrote
The Poem My Best Friend Wrote
The Poem My Uncle Wrote
The Poem My Hometown Wrote
The Poem My Piano Teacher Wrote
The Poem My Neighbor Wrote
The Poem the Sky Wrote
The Poem the Tree Wrote
The Poem I Wrote
The Poem You Wrote

Volume 18
New Year’s Day
In Sanity Is Insanity
Birthday
Not a Romance, 1974
I Built a Fire
A Sad Mistake
Non Compos Mentis
Eulogy
A Surprise Ending
Monuments
Omen
Crossroads
Irony
Water Blessing
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Winter Music
Silence
Winter Postcard
Pictures, Tables, Walls
Inspiration
Inscription
Birds
Farm Boy
Winter Sketch
Up for Air
Between the Lines
Heart Trouble
To Be a Pill on a Day Like This
On the Eighth Day
Christ at the Old Age Home
Lunar Eclipse, February 20, 2008
February Haiku
Daybreak and One Small Flower
Five Poems of Two Words, One Poem of Ten
An Orange Question
An Orange Answer
Sore Feet
What One Tree Said to Another
Haiku View
Something Missing
Largesse
And Man
The Unsent Letter
Yin and Yang
No One Asks the Soldiers
Watercolor
Hazelnut
Elegy
Memorandum
Prologue
Monday’s Child
Full Sail
Reply
Meditation
The Blind

Volume 19
Heaven
Novice
Sunday School
Judgment Day
In the Garden
Religion is a Funny Thing
Lord Have Mercy
Eastern Philosophy
Chorus
Bible Study
Summer Service
Misunderstood
Time for Church
Light Cannot Pass
Sermon
Prayer
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Give Us This Day
Marriage Vow
Custom
Knowledge
After Church
Conscience
Jasmine
Epiphany
Why Noah Drank
The Sacrifice
God’s Calendar
In the Vernacular
Saved
Hail Mary, Mother of God
Faith

Volume 20
Under Our Hats
Unto Distance as Distance Decrees
Cherry Blossoms
Summer Postcard
Art Lesson
Morning Walk
Inland Dream
Thoreau
Lincoln Memorial
Grandson
To Be a Crow This August Morning
Making Stew
Nightmare
Planting Time
Flowers
Still Life
August Rain
August Rain, Day 2
Dreaming of Books
Twice Removed
At the Flower Show
Desire
The Oak on 32nd Street
Cold Jeans
Another Question
Fall
Fragment
Crossing
Diary
Brushstrokes
Until We Meet
The Ghost in You
Guilt
Progeny
Eye Talk
The Dead
Poet’s Lament
Time Piece
Afternoon Visit
Clue
Fall Postcard

Volume 21
Impasse
Reckoning
Philosophers
November Postcard
Traveler
Page One
Self Portrait
Discovery
Early December, Before a Storm
One
December Notes
Solstice
Cold Days
Snowflakes
Christmas Dream
The Gift
Rural Route
Mirror
Pantheon
Chamomile Tea
After the Move
In This Light
Drought
It Would Not Be What It Is

Volume 22
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 1
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 2
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 3
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 4
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 5
A Case in Blind Poetics, Letter 6

Also by William Michaelian

POETRY
Winter Poems

ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4
52 pages. Paper.
——————————
Another Song I Know
ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1
80 pages. Paper.
——————————
Cosmopsis Books
San Francisco

Signed copies available



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