About Michael Gottlieb’s Next! (page two)
Michael Gottlieb has been on a mission to unpack the life of the poet. The beautifully rendered poems of Gottlieb’s Next! do the hard work of reflecting and distilling for us these joys and struggles: heaping portions / of just what / we knew / we didn’t deserve… Keep these poems close by in case of emergency. — Rob Fitterman
Michael Gottlieb’s new collection of poems, Next!, begins with a rumble. It’s all here, from the law court to the capitol. “the difference/between pest/and pestilential”. Roman emperors, petty tech bros. “Everything Has To Go”. These metrically precise and chiseled poems carve a space that is needed in these times. Gottlieb is firing on all cylinders, at the top of his game. Go to these poems. They wait for you. — Vincent Katz
About the Selected Poems, Brenda Iijima wrote:
What does it mean to be a poet, citizen, resident of planet
Earth? Throughout his work, he probes all psychic and
theoretical valences. Gottlieb’s oeuvre is myriad – the forms
diverse… I am awed by the substantive meanings that
reverberate sonically in this collection.
About the Collected Essays, Brenda Coultas wrote:
While Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet are a touchstone for poets
at the start of their journey, Gottlieb’s Collected Essays is a guide
that touches all the bases… an argument for the writing life, for
the value of poetry…
About the Collected Memoirs, Kasey Silem Mohammed wrote:
A life in, of, and for poetry: Michael Gottlieb generously lays
bare the one he has led, putting in plain terms the measures by
which the discipline asserts itself as a constitutive force.