Michael Field's Blog

  Poetry Is . . . Anti-Poem by Michael Field   Poetry is florid prose stuttered, poetry is lurid lines uttered! Poetry is words the muse muttered in my ear that long, lonely night when I couldn’t sleep.  

  And Write Your Way Home   And write your way home Everybody spends their life trying to find their way home. I have been searching all my life for what home should have been, but wasn’t. And now I am trying to write my way home. And write your way home I write to hear my own voice – not in a narcissistic way, but rather in a search for my authentic voice, the personal in the stories I write which resonates with the universal. It is Home I am searching for, not my home. And write your way home What is home anyway? The Old White Farmhouse I grew up in is such a character in my stories that I capitalize it like a proper name. But, in the end, it is just a collection of wood and stone that has been remodeled by the new owners to be unrecognizable to me. The home I search for is a sense of belonging, not a place. And write your way home Thus, writing my way home is my path to being human. I seek to trap in my words universal truths - not to possess them but to speak them

  New York City – As Seen Through Three Sets of Eyes   New York City has always had a mythical presence in my life. Growing up, it was El Dorado, a place of endless excitement with the trappings of unimaginable wealth. My otherwise dour grandmother was imbued with its aura simply by living there. Later, it was the center of commerce I commuted into. I saw the rats in its subway stations and stepped over the homeless on its sidewalks. Now that I am retired, NYC is both a beckoning tourist attraction and home to our son and his fiancé; luster thus restored, it again gleams. Across the decades, I have experienced the city, seen it through three different sets of eyes, observed its mystery, misery, and majesty. As I looked south from my childhood home in Maine, the towering skyscrapers of New York City loomed in my psyche. One of my earliest toys was a set of Lego-like building blocks which, when assembled, made a two-foot-tall model of the Empire State Building. The bounty of Thanks

  I Hear the Symphony   There are no hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico this time of year, but a passing cold front has spawned a squall that is buffeting the shallow water into frothing waves. I have come to this beach for no other reason than to be here. Two hours earlier, I arrived at the beachfront restaurant behind me to dine on the harvest of the sea. Now, physically sated, I have wandered down to the shore with no great purpose in mind. The wind whistles in my ears and tousles my hair as, instead of illuminating a sparkling glow on the blue-green water, the sun sinks into the bank of rain-filled, mottled gray clouds scuttling along the leading edge of the front. The dark, angry waves crash into the unyielding concrete pilings as the pier atop them stretches out in front of me like a single arm raised to the sky in supplication. Its silent prayers are answered only by the wind’s howl and the water’s repeated pounding. I stand there listening in the fading light. A sea bird

  The Lake Abides Flash Creative Nonfiction Essay submitted to the Chautauqua Literary Journal 9/23 There is a lake in upstate New York that calls to me no matter where I am. For the past decade, I have trekked each summer from North Carolina to a certain cherished, cloistered, Victorian village nestled on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. I have published essays and buttonholed scores of people to describe at length the intellectual and cultural stimulation to be found there. An engineer at heart, I get into details about the number of pipes in the magnificent Massey organ and the tone of the carillon as its notes float over the campus. Yet, each time I am there, I find myself inexorably drawn to the lake and I drink deeply of it to replenish my spirituality. By ‘drink deeply’, I mean quaffing it metaphorically although I have often swum in the lake and have inadvertently drunk directly from it. I have traversed its length borne over miles of gentle, lapping waves on the vintage

  As published in CP Connections December 2023 Chautauqua – My Happy Place -  Part 3 - The Lake Abides There is a lake in upstate New York that calls to me no matter where I am. For the past decade, I have trekked each summer from North Carolina to a certain cherished, cloistered, Victorian village nestled on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. I have published essays and buttonholed scores of people to describe at length the intellectual and cultural stimulation to be found there. An engineer at heart, I get into details about the number of pipes in the magnificent Massey organ and the tone of the carillon as its notes float over the campus. Yet, each time I am there, I find myself inexorably drawn to the lake and I drink deeply of it to replenish my spirituality. By ‘drink deeply’, I mean quaffing it metaphorically although I have often swum in the lake and have inadvertently drunk directly from it. I have traversed its length borne over miles of gentle, lapping waves on the vintage p

  American Chop Suey From the “Insights into American Life” collection of essays by Michael Field   The other day, my wife, Lenora, reminded me that I needed to up my game in terms of doing my share of the cooking. She was right, of course. She was doing practically all the actual meal planning and preparation; I was, at most, the sous chef helping on the periphery with side dishes, table setting, and cleanup. Meal planning is not one of my strong suits, so I had to stop and think. What meal was I hankering for? When home, we are not exotic eaters; however, we do have a large collection of standards spanning multiple cuisines that we rotate through. So, what hadn’t we cooked up recently? Then it came to me. There was a dish that I hadn’t had for decades. It was a staple in my house growing up, but I hadn’t eaten it since leaving home over fifty years ago. I need to explain that I was raised in very modest circumstances. To support the family, my mother worked outside of the

  Chautauqua – My Happy Place, Part 2   In Part 1 of “Chautauqua – My Happy Place”, I talked about all the reasons to spend a week or more at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Here, in Part 2, I will discuss some of the logistics associated with planning and executing a trip to Chautauqua. Lenora and I have been five times, each time different as there is no ‘right’ way to proceed. I will describe some of the factors to enable you to make choices that suit you. Big picture, Chautauqua is summer camp for adults seeking a combination of mental stimulation and release from the everyday hustle and bustle. The physical setting is a Victorian village on the shores of a picturesque lake in a tranquil corner of rural America. In practical terms, it is not near anything but that is a large part of its charm. It is not a day trip; it is an ‘unpack and stay in the same place for a few days’ trip. The first step in planning a Chautauqua visit is picking a week(s). The summer

  Semi-finalist  in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition. The Artist Paints My Story   I don’t know the artist as she is the friend of a friend, and, for reasons not fully explained, I have been invited to her studio to watch her work. She opens the door with a smile and, stepping back, wordlessly beckons me to sit in the one uncluttered chair. Her demeanor makes it clear that her art is her focus and conversation would be a distraction, so I settle into the silence – eyes and mind open to whatever will happen. I look around trying to glean some hints as to why I am here. The artist looks like a hippie who never left the commune and, for a wistful moment, I am taken back to my college days and the bohemian lifestyle I gave up for corporations and conventionality. The studio is a comfortable space, tastefully, yet not overly, decorated. Whimsical objects from foreign travels intermingle in disorganized fashion with the trappings of daily living. No one theme stands out in t