Michael Blumenthal

Michael Blumenthal (1949- ) was born in Vineland, New Jersey. A poet, essayist, novelist, and translator, Blumenthal began his career as a lawyer. Blumenthal once commented: “Like many poets, I came to my vocation, one might say, through the back door, having struggled through years of seemingly desirable yet (to me) unsatisfying jobs, while ‘stealing’ the time for my true work. The original impetus for my writing, perhaps, was best reflected in a statement made by Robert Mezey - I am a man, a Piscean, and unhappy, and therefore I make up poems’- but I feel, now, that my work derives from the healthier (and happier) desire to tap the sources of my own inner wisdom, and to make music of it.”

Not merely because Henry James said

there were but four rules of life —

be kind be kind be kind be kind — but

because it’s good for the soul, and,

what’s more, for others; it may be

that kindness is our best audition

for a worthier world, and, despite

the vagueness and uncertainty of

its recompense, a bird may yet wander

into a bush before our very houses,

gratitude may not manifest itself in deeds

entirely equal to our own, still there’s

weather arriving from every direction,

the feasts of famine and feasts of plenty

may yet prove to be one, so why not

allow the little sacrificial squinches and

squigulas to prevail? Why not inundate

the particular world with minute particulars?

— Michael Blumenthal from ‘Be Kind’