Mostly Clearing

If Michael Gottlieb’ s language is familiar, it is because he places his voice in conversation with generations of New York’ s poets, pop culture, and commercial branding. Everything from O’ Hara-esque exclamations and Ashberian experiments with syntax to Looney Tunes and commercial airliners’ rehearsed landing speech— “ all the honeyed demarches/ adoring our table talk” — is filtered through a dynamic and utilitarian optimism. Addressing the ills of our contemporary moment, he frames poetry as “ a current coursing through the crowd” and poets themselves as vital engineers of utopian thinking.