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Michael Klein on Writing the Ecstatic Poem Without Fear or Cliché
by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Before Michael Klein was a poet with five collections and two Lambda Literary Awards to his name, he worked on the racetrack, where he groomed a Kentucky Derby winner named Swale. He wrote about that life in his memoir Track Conditions, and the same close, animal attention runs through his poems: a refusal to look away from the thing in front of you, whether it is joy or dread. That attention is the engine of Days of Wonder: Reading and Writing Poems of Ecstasy, his three-week online workshop at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
In our Meet the Teaching Artist interview, Klein makes a case that staying in the practice matters more than getting into print, and that the real work is learning to dig deeper for the truth without fear or shame. Over three Monday evenings on Zoom, you will read ecstatic poems by masters like Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton, and Rilke, write five to ten new poems of your own, and pick up concrete revision strategies, including reading your drafts aloud so you can hear what the poem is actually doing. You will also learn to write about the spiritual life without sliding into vague, new-agey language. Klein's new book of essays, Happiness Ruined Everything, just arrived from Galileo Press. This class is your chance to study with him while the wonder is fresh.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Michael:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Michael. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Michael Klein: Hi! I've been doing a lot of remote teaching lately and sending copies of my new book out to people I admire— something I always do with a new book, as reviews can't beat word of mouth!
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Michael Klein: That in a lot of ways there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing. Rules are meant to be broken. I always tell students, it's all in the writing, i.e., the sound of the sentences, the beauty of adventurous syntax, the heart breaking
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Michael Klein: They'll know how to dig deeper for the truth without fear or shame or confusion. They will learn what is meant by intention.
"They'll know how to dig deeper for the truth without fear or shame or confusion. They will learn what is meant by intention."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Michael Klein: He then proceeded to tell me his every thought, about the emergency appendectomy he had performed before arriving, about what the food on our plates was doing to our livers, about starlight.
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Michael Klein: Someone wrote a poem about his lover dying of AIDS and in the end describes sitting at his bedside and singing a very famous Mexican song— the lyrics of which are all about the longing and loneliness that happens after someone you love is gone. I told him to take the meaning of that song and apply it to his own situation— something he never considered even though it was all there in the poem.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, a small, specific technique.
Michael Klein: Interrupting yourself in a sentence— as in William Maxwell's, "I am not—I think I am not—afraid of dying.
If a poet's small, surprising moves like that make you want to try your own, there's a seat for you in Michael's workshop. Enrollment is capped at ten writers.
Enroll in Days of Wonder →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Michael Klein: So Long, See You Tomorrow, again, William Maxwell. It's gorgeously written and radical in terms of telling a fairly straight ahead story in completely surprising ways. At one point, a dog takes over the telling of the story.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Michael Klein: Write what you know.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Michael Klein: Publishing is not as important as finding a way to stay in the practice of writing.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Michael Klein: Ariel by Sylvia Plath
"Publishing is not as important as finding a way to stay in the practice of writing."
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Michael Klein: I teach tangentially and talk a lot about other art forms.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Michael Klein: I groomed a Kentucky Derby winner named Swale.
From the racetrack to the workshop, Klein has always paid attention to the overlooked and the ecstatic, and that is exactly what he is offering writers this fall. In Days of Wonder, you will spend three weeks learning to face the biggest subjects, joy, dread, mystery, soul, with craft instead of cliche, and you will leave with a portfolio of new poems and a revision practice you can keep. Enrollment is capped at ten writers, so the room stays intimate. If you are ready to write toward wonder, claim your seat now.
Three Monday evenings, ten writers, and a roomful of ecstatic poems. Come write the ones only you can write.
Save Your Seat in Days of Wonder →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
