Even If I Gave This a Really Intriguing Title, You Probably Wouldn’t Remember It: Guest post by Matt Mauch, #BLauthor7

"Cyan and Wheat," by Sheri L. Wright

We asked #BLauthor7 Matt Mauch to write a guest post for us, and he delivered in a big way, as he is prone to do.

Mauch's essay touches on the personal, political, and universal in poetry. It's a long read, and we were going to post it in two or three parts, but screw that because there are footnotes, and it has to be some sort of crime to cut this particular poet off in the middle of his thoughtful critique of the state of po things.

Basically, Mauch can have our mic for has long as he wants it. And damn if he doesn't drop it at the end, but not before elevating poets to god status.

Pour a brew or two, settle into your comfy chair, and enjoy Mauch's words, plus art by Sheri L. Wright: 

"Even If I Gave This a Really Intriguing Title, You Probably Wouldn’t Remember It," by Matt Mauch

Let’s start with Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman: poet, essayist, journalist, debater, teacher, American, transcendentalist, realist, trashy, profane, obscene, government worker, deist, democrat, champion of free-verse, sexual explorer, nurse, obsessive-compulsive reviser, self-publisher, who said in the preface of his great gift to the rest of us, Leaves of Grass, “This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.” Or he said that if the black sans serif letters, on a white background, no caps (because ‘no caps’ is either (a) chic or (b) it emulates electronic communication and by doing so says things about its own coolness that hover below language itself), on the 3-inch by 3-inch magnet on my oven can be believed. Makers and sellers of this magnet, whose content is in the public domain, and no longer protected by copyright, have joined with the makers and sellers of t-shirts and posters, upon which you can also purchase portions of the famous preface, or if you’re more bold, more inclined to permanence, you can emulate the many who have had excerpts tattooed to their very own very flesh, images available via Google search.

#BLauthor7: Matt Mauch

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#BLauthor7 is Matt Mauch.

Matt Mauch is the author of If You’re Lucky Is a Theory of Mine and Prayer Book, and the chapbook The Brilliance of the Sparrow. He hosts the annual Great Twin Cities Poetry Read, co-hosts (with Paula Cisewski) the Maeve’s Sessions readings, and edits the anthology Poetry City, USA, an annual collection of poetry and prose on poetry.. Mauch teaches in the AFA program at Normandale Community College, and lives in Minneapolis.

We've published Mauch before, in BL #20, and are thrilled to do so again.

Here are two new untitled Mauch poems from a longer series in progress, and check back next week for a guest post by the poet:

Mauch's is a new poetry, is a theory of mine: Review of Matt Mauch's "If You're Lucky Is A Theory of Mine," by Stacia M. Fleegal

If You’re Lucky Is a Theory of Mine is Matt Mauch’s second full-length collection of poetry, and it just slays me. Mauch has the delivery of a comedian—not Dane Cook, but an actual comedic genius (sorry Cook fans...sort of). The hyper-specificity, the virtuosic phrasing, the ability to relate to nearly anyone on a universal level—it’s all working for him, and doing the quiet work of his poems, which is to say, showing off verbally.

But where there would be ego in the conversational acrobatics of others, Mauch has inserted humility, a thoughtfulness about and for his subjects that doesn’t let up even in poems about, I presume, himself and his experiences. So in a completely different way, he slays me again, with his generosity and big old heart.

His reflections aren’t always cozy. There are funerals, there are “awful years,” there is a keen awareness of mortality. In “From the owner’s manual,” there is fear of becoming “some nobody who believed it when they said / (girls) you were a princess, or that you could grow up // (boys) to be the President of the USA” (p. 43). A poem ending that way can make me so angry with its truth, but then, I flip around and read a title like “Every view is oceanic if you focus on the sky” and think, I can handle that truth from this poet. Mauch is the kind, gracious bearer of bad news who will emotionally clobber you, then take you to a dive bar to fund your co-commiseration.