Review
In her third book-length collection,Bitting (Notes to the Beloved, 2012,etc.) converses with fellow poets, both classic and contemporary.If Louis C.K. is a comic's comic,and Benoît Violier was a chef's chef, readers might think of Bitting as apoet's poet. While she displays her wares for all to see--and admire--there is alevel of excellence in her verse that should provide numerous pleasures for theconnoisseur. In her new collection, she is often in conversation with poets, includingDante Alighieri, Wendell Berry, James Merrill, and Frank O'Hara. "Immanent,Purgatorio" is subtitled "(with Dante Alighieri)," and the poem--like theItalian master's Divine Comedy--reflects on the afterlife as both realityand metaphor: "the world being a jagged heaven my soles learn / to tread moretenderly. My head of red clouds / and wounded distortions: bells and satanicflutes heard / at hyper-pitch by the flea-bitten crowd." Yet "Immanent" doesn'tmerely recall Divine Comedy; written in terza rima--the verydifficult verse form that Dante made famous--Bitting's piece could be acanto in the Purgatorio. By contrast, "Thoughts Jotted in a Vicodin Hazeon a Line by Wendell Berry" features a more confrontational reworking of thefamous farmer-poet's work. In Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things," the authorimagines that untamed nature might be a succor "when despair for the worldgrows." Feeling the gnaw of the same despair, Bitting turns instead to "a pillin my dresser / wrapped in layers of Chinese silk / [that] I down / with a swigof pink lemonade / On an empty stomach / it's pure." That Bitting replacesBerry's peace of wild things with pharmaceuticals is either playful or totallyprovocative, but in either case, the poem is a worthy, inventive homage to theelder writer. Near the heart of her book, the author gives readers in "When theSky Makes a Certain Sign" one of those lines that might sneak into her obituarydecades in the future: "Every poem's a love poem." And in every one ofBitting's diamond-sharp verses, there is something to love. Readers shouldcount themselves lucky if this sublime volume falls into their laps.
With this poetry collection, the author firmly establishesherself as a powerful contemporary voice in American letters. ~ KIRKUS (STARRED) REVIEW
From the Back Cover
In a multi-directional "one shape" of voices, time, people, spacesBitting takes us in and out of her all seeing third eye poetics. We gointo an orb of family, love, then we swoop out into the delight ofhumanity. And, in a sense, these refractions are the "the self's / shady daguerreotype coming to surface / through exposure to light." Inday-to-day terms we find enlightenment and paradox--" of death andpeppermint," of "birth and strange beauty," of "Elysium nothingness" and "mythmaking machinery." I find Michelle's cosmic mechanics fused withhistorical platforms akimbo and the "sheen" of personal meditations, arare accomplishment. A unique treasure of visions and voice.
-Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States
There's delirious beauty tumbling down every page of The Couple WhoFell To Earth. Michelle Bitting's poems deal with the domestic and theferal; I'm caught up in "Eden-scorched mouths," and "a sea of furrowedmanes and exoskeletons," and I never want to leave. She confrontspersonal history, the familiar body, the spiritual world, and the humancondition in rich, wildly original language.
-Bianca Stone, Author of Someone Else's Wedding Vows
Michelle Bitting is a poet of the natural world but in a completelyTranscendental sense. Like Emerson, her poems seem to claim that, evenin the face of all kinds of traumatic loss, "beauty breaks ineverywhere." The Couple Who Fell to Earth holds things of the world upto the eye in an effort to glimpse heaven, or as Bitting herself says,"Accept me. I love the dawn. / The sun is a sea / I throw myself into..."
This book is all heart.
-Jericho Brown, Author of The New Testament
About the Author
Michelle Bitting has work published in The American PoetryReview, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, diode, the Paris-American, L.A.Weekly, Linebreak and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and as the Weekly Feature on Verse Daily. Her book Good Friday Kiss won theDeNovo First Book Award chosen by Thomas Lux and Notes to the Belovedreceived a starred Kirkus Review. A new title The Couple Who Fell toEarth is due out in 2016 from C & R Press. Michelle has taughtpoetry in the U.C.L.A. Extension Writer's Program, at Twin Towers prison with a grant from Poets & Writers Magazine and is an activeCalifornia Poet in the Schools. She holds an MFA in Poetry from PacificUniversity, Oregon and is completing a PhD in Mythological Studies atPacifica Graduate Institute. Visit her at: michellebitting.com
