Songs and Letters

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 Main Page Author’s Note Background Notebook A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation E-mail & Parting Thoughts Flippantly Answered Questions
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