To Be Me

Imagine a road trip. Harry Chapin at the wheel. Emily Dickinson rides shotgun. The old VW van has room enough for Carl Sandburg and Studs Terkel. Jammed way back, buffeted by guitars, backpacks, and typewriters is Michael James Kaiser. He furiously takes notes all the while hearing whispers from Elizabeth Barrett in one ear and Townes Van Zandt in the other. This hodge-podge is too wistful - too ruggedly romantic - for words. Almost. Because someone took it all in.

It incubates for years as tentative poetic doodles before a confidence that comes from aging pours forth in poem after poem after poem. Slams. Social media. Submissions to publishers and musicians. But then it happens. A floodgate opens and Michael James Kaiser's first published anthology of poems, To Be Me, is here.