Description
Neoteny: Poems
by Emily K. Michael
$14.99, paper
978-1-64662-083-8
2019
Emily K. Michael is a blind poet, musician, and writing instructor from Jacksonville, FL. Since 2016, she has worked as the associate poetry editor for Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Wordgathering, The Hopper, Artemis Journal, The South Carolina Review, The Deaf Poets Society, Nine Mile Magazine, Bridge Eight, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog, Barriers and Belonging, and AWP Writer’s Notebook. Her first chapbook manuscript Natural Compliance won Honorable Mention in The Hopper’s 2016 Prize for Young Poets.
Emily’s work centers on ecology, disability, and music. She develops grammar workshops for multilingual learners and delivers poetry workshops for writers at all levels. She regularly reads at Jax By Jax, a yearly literary festival celebrating Jacksonville writers. Emily is passionate about grammar, singing, birding, and guide dogs. Find more of her work at http://emilykmichael.com.
Jill Khoury –
Emily Michael’s debut collection deserves your careful and close attention. These poems are lyrically adept, precisely because they satisfy immensely while refusing to prioritize visual imagery, the “sense that always takes precedence.” Neoteny weaves together a Dickensonian garden of sensual details. We are invited to inhale “mint…dewy and sharp,” to cross a “hard / humid plateau,” run fingers over “braided honey wood,” taste “chicken, onion, sumac, drips [of] fragrant oil,” and listen for the “sound of the earth / creaking with the burden of revolution.”
But this collection is more than a biosphere of pleasure. The blind body is centered in many poems, as is Michael’s frustration when blindness is not “convenient, popular” and “I have come to represent / anything but myself.” This makes Neoteny political as well. But where other political poets get loud, Michael gets soft, and where other political poems explode, these poems smolder.
A vital magic occurs when Michael folds the bloom of young romance into the intimacy of care and care-taking that people with disabilities do for each other. It’s a powerful statement in a culture that prioritizes “wellness” and cannot tolerate the concept of a disabled body in a relationship. This collection has a quiet intense power. The poems will sneak up on you. They don’t shout. They spread “like wandering roots / to set the world reeling for rebirth” and burn like “a warm half moon settling on [the] tongue.”
Howard Denson –
Emily Michael provides the reader with a pleasant afternoon as we get immersed in a provocative perspective.
Stephen Kuusisto –
Robert Frost said We love the things we love for what they are. The poems in Neoteny are steeped in the richness of the true. In this way each poem is a love poem to occasions, intimates, strangers, animals and streets. If poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen Emily Michael’s poems are canvases.
Cheryl Camardo (verified owner) –
While I did not expect this little book to teach me about blindness, I felt more exacted by the precise recollections of awkward childhood with new sensibilities. These are the descriptions I had hoped I’d be able to write – sounds reverberating and the ability to touch with such intensity those of us only wish to capture or experience. In Neoteny: Poems, I lived harder than I have in the past. As I read, I felt more like a child exploring a new world. Each piece reaching deeper into depths I either forgot I possess or just let go lax. On days I need a little more life, I’ll again browse these pages. Heartfelt and galvanizing.
Nicole –
The 34 poems in this collection are all impressive, no duds or fillers! Emily covers daily life, shares anecdotes, features her guide dog York, and family tales.
I especially enjoyed the various poems about her love story. We can all relate to the beautiful moments & feelings her poems evoke.
I now NEED her to write a screenplay or fun sweet romantic comedy novel!
JJ –
Wonderful, unique poetry! Each poem tackles a slightly different subject than the one before, but all poems in this book form a coherent idea of the poet and what is important to her. Michael is extremely descriptive in unexpected ways and I felt immersed in each poem and felt myself wanting to re-read them as soon as I was done (and many times I did). Highly recommend purchasing this lovely book of poetry for your collection! You won’t find another collection like it.