Mostly Clearing

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.