Mostly Clearing
Description
If Michael Gottlieb's language is familiar, it is because he places his voice in conversation with generations of New York's poets, pop culture, and commercial branding. Everything from O' Hara-esque exclamations and Ashberian experiments with syntax to Looney Tunes and commercial airliners' rehearsed landing speech-- " all the honeyed demarches/ adoring our table talk" -- is filtered through a dynamic and utilitarian optimism. Addressing the ills of our contemporary moment, he frames poetry as " a current coursing through the crowd" and poets themselves as vital engineers of utopian thinking.
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Person
Michael Gottlieb is the author of twenty books, most recently What We Do: Essays for Poets and Dear All (Roof). Memoir and Essay, an account of the early days of the Language school, remains the most divisive writing on that poetic tendency. We Will Never Speak of This Again and The Dust, his poem about 9/11, have been adapted for the stage. He lives in Connecticut.