Michael R. Burch is one of the world's most-published poets, with over 11,500 publications (not including self-published poems). Mike Burch is an American poet, editor and translator who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and their son Jeremy. Burch is also a longtime editor, publisher and translator of Jewish Holocaust poetry as well as poems about the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima, Ukraine, the Nakba and school shootings.
Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
LINKS
Michael R. Burch Expanded Bio
The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (per Google and in his own opinion)
The Best Translations of Michael R. Burch
Michael R. Burch Critical Writings and Miscellanea
After the Poetry Recital
by Michael R. Burch
Later there’ll be talk of saving whales
over racks of lamb and flambéed snails.
Burch began writing poetry around age eleven and became a "serious poet" at age fourteen. This is one of his earliest poems:
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still …
all men have passed this way,
or will.
Poems written by Burch as a teenager have been published by literary journals like The Lyric, The New Lyre, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nebo, Blue Unicorn, Better Than Starbucks, Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Trinacria. This is one of the first poems, written as a teen, that made Burch feel like a "real poet":
Infinity
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your heart sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity … windswept and blue.
Mike Burch, as he is called in the real world, is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper and a former editor of international poetry and translations for Better Than Starbucks.
I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch
I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.
I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.
I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.
Burch has two published books, Violets for Beth (White Violet Press, 2012) and O, Terrible Angel (Ancient Cypress Press, 2013). A third book, Auschwitz Rose, is still in the chute but long delayed.
Enigma
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night, or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior …
Burch's poems, epigrams, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, puns, jokes and letters have appeared in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, Writer's Digest—The Year's Best Writing and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs.
Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?
And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?
Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?
And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?
Burch's poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to opera, 74 times by 33 composers.
Moments
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
His poem "First They Came for the Muslims" has been adopted by Amnesty International for its Words That Burn anthology, a free online resource for students and educators. According to Google the poem at one time appeared on a staggering 823,000 web pages. That's a lot of cutting and pasting!
The Harvest of Roses
by Michael R. Burch
I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme …
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.
If you're a student, teacher or poetry lover who would like permission to use his poems, you can email Mike Burch at mikerburch@gmail.com (please note the "r" between his first and last names).
A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, poetic interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sunset
by Michael R. Burch
This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt, who died April 4, 1998.
Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.
The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,
and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.
What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.
Originally published by Contemporary Rhyme
Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch
a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.
Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.
And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.
Something
by Michael R. Burch
for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.
Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.
Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which denial has swept into a corner … where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.
Originally published by There Is Something in the Autumn (anthology)
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Michael R. Burch Related Pages: Viral Poems, Early Poems, Early Poems Timeline, Children's Poems, Family Poems, Best Translations, Poems for Poets, Nature and Animal Poems, Light Verse, Doggerel, Less Heroic Couplets, Dabble Dactyls, Epigrams and Quotes, Epitaphs, Haiku, Limericks, Sonnets, Villanelles, Romantic Poems, Love Poems, Erotic Poems, Free Verse, Prose Poems, Experimental Poems, Parodies, Satires, Rejection Slips, Song Lyrics, Sports, Time and Death, Critical Writings, Literary Criticism, Poetry by Michael R. Burch, Auschwitz Rose Preview, Did Lord Bryon inspire the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley?, Dante Translations, The "ur" poems, Why I Am Not A Christian by Michael R. Burch
You can find Burch's self-analysis of his poems here: "Auschwitz Rose" Analysis, "Epitaph" Analysis, "Something" Analysis, "Will There Be Starlight" Analysis, "Davenport Tomorrow" Analysis, "Neglect" Analysis, "Passionate One" Analysis, "Poetry" Analysis, "Self Reflection" Analysis, "Pale Though Her Eyes" Analysis, "Thin Kin" Analysis, Understatement Examples from Shakespeare and Elsewhere
Michael R. Burch poems about: Icarus, EROS and CUPID, Ireland, Ancient Egyptian Harper's Songs, Time, Aging, Loss and Death
The Best Translations of Michael R. Burch
Michael R. Burch: Porn Poet? Sorry Mom!
The HyperTexts
