The Talking Day

Not only the most erotic cover I've seen on a poetry collection, but some of the fastest-talking, most intimate and generous poems I've read in a long time.

I've had this book in my possession for nearly a year now and have passed it up on several occasions. I think it's the fact that the cover communicates with me so directly I wasn't at "that place" yet to be able to read it. I shouldn't have been so reluctant.Obviously, from what I know now, I should have dived right in. This is a well known gay poet, with a strong track record that spreads over the last 25 years. His style is even handed, mature. He knows to wrap his work in the minutiae of the everyday, to pull the reader into the "conspiracy of letters" with him. The trap having been set and sprung, he turns out to be a passionate and compassionate huntsman, revealing the spirit of his work to be the sorts of abstracts and conjectures lesser poets are warned against. I think the sum total of his craft is trust. I trust him to say anything. And he trusts me.I am particularly glad for the poem, "What it was like to have written." This a perfect summary of the connundrum of all poets I've worked with, and of all poets I've enjoyed as a reader. In a step away from the strong narrative of his other poems, he tackles the question of who, in a poem, is the writer, and to whom is that writer addressing the poem. Is it literally autobiographical, about me and you? Or is it purely imaginative? He writes the poem as a beautiful knot, which is what the problem is, always turning on "always" "isn't always" "unless of course" "some other examples" and such which complicate things--just as the writer's life is complicated.My gratitude to this poet for sharing himself, and for Sibling Rivalry Press for sharing his writing.

After reading Michael Klein's "The Talking Day" two things become irrefutable truth: Klein has reached sage stage with his latest work, and Sibling Rivalry has become the preeminent home of serious gay poetry. There's a satisfying richness to this book and I felt compelled to take it a few poems at a time. Klein's disarming ability to write to record, to honor the diurnal while revealing the universal...I kept thinking of James Schuyler in these poems -- that way of focusing in on the seeming mundane to make larger points about our daily lives and about our very existence. One more thing. This volume reminds me of how great it is to see a poet at his work and to observe the changes and internal lineage, from that early volume 1990 to The Talking Day, we are reminded that this is a poet who gives life its due with craft and grace. It's a rich gift.