Guitar

I built this guitar from our double bed
every morning before I dressed for work,
as darkness grained into light. I worked
outdoors: I loved the dew-soaked quiet
and the songs of the first birds. I tore that bed apart
slowly, remembering the nights my wife
and I had slept there hugging, and the nights
our small children filled the space between us,
when that bed was a raft we delighted to float
wherever the currents ran—
I thought if I built it carefully enough
my guitar might retain
the hum of that contentment.

The bed was a wedding gift. My grandmother told us
her grandfather had made it, from trees he’d cut
from his own land and milled with his bare hands.
She told us she thought she’d been conceived there.
She said her own daughter, my mother, had too,
as I had, and our children. It would make a good guitar.

Someday, I promised, I would learn to play
and prove to my family I hadn’t been wasting
my life, ruining their most valuable possessions
for nothing. Someday I’d finish building
my instrument, and sing so beautifully everyone
would understand. Until then, we’d sleep on the floor
and I’d sing a capella, and I’d get up before
the birds, every morning, to whittle and nuance
dark wood in the dark, and wonder what possessed me.

ISBN 0-9745909-0-8
59 pages $15
Bio

Michael Hettich was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953, and grew up in New York City and its suburbs. He attended Hobart College, where he began to write poetry and where he studied with Anselm HolIo, who introduced him to such writers as George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, and Frank O’Hara, among many others.

After college and a year as a runner on Wall Street, Hettich moved to Colorado, where he studied poetry with Burton Raffel at the University of Denver and met his lifelong friends, the writers Alan Davis and Karen Osborne, as well as his wife, Colleen. After the death of their good friend, the poet Carol Dragone, he and Karen Osborne started Moonsquilt Press, dedicated to publishing outstanding young American poets. The press was active until 1985.

He and Colleen were married in 1981. They moved to North Florida for a teaching job, and the next year to Brattleboro, Vermont, where they started a gallery/art space and small press book store. In Vermont they found a compatible community and they made many lifelong friends, the painter Gib Taylor and the poet Bob Arnold and his wife Susan in particular. The death of their first child at birth, though, combined with financial difficulties, forced them to leave Vermont after only one year and to move to Miami, the last place either of them would have expected to move, again for a teaching job. They’ve lived in Miami ever since.

In 1985, their son, Matthew, was born, and in 1987, their daughter, Caitlin. In 1991, Hettich earned his Ph.D. in English and American literature from the University of Miami. That year he began teaching English and Creative Writing at Miami-Dade College, where he has taught since, receiving an Endowed Teaching Chair in 1996.

Since the early 1980s, Hettich’s poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Literery Review, Witness, Poetry East, New Letters, The Indiana Review, The Midwest Quarterly, TriQuarterly and many others. He has published two full collections of poetry and a number of chapbooks, including three from March Street Press. He has also published academic and personal essays, and numerous poetry reviews for The Miami Herald. He is currently working on a book of essays about a wide range of subjects, including poetry, hearing and place. He has received various grants and awards, including a State of Florida Individual Fellowship in poetry in 1999.

SWAN SCYTHE PRESS/ RELEASE
James DenBoer
515 P Street #804
Sacramento CA 95814
jimzbookz@yahoo.com

2011 SWAN SCYTHE PRESS CHAPBOOK CONTEST WINNER

SACRAMENTO, CA, JULY 10, 2011—Swan Scythe Press announced today the winner of the 2011 Swan Scythe Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. The winning manuscript is The Measured Breathing by Michael Hettich of Miami Shores, Florida.

Hettich's manuscript will be published by Swan Scythe Press in Fall 2011, and he will receive a cash award for his work. According to Swan Scythe Press editor, James DenBoer, the contest winner was selected because of on Hettich's distinct voice. "His work stood out immediately from the large number of competent and interesting poets who entered our contest," DenBoer said. "I was particularly impressed by his ability to write a book of lyric poems without using the word I and by his startling images of transformation and transcendence." Hettich's poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cake, Hamilton Stone Review, International Literary Quarterly, Poetry East, and many other literary journals. His most recently published book of poems is Like Happiness, from Anhinga Press; a new book, The Animals Beyond Us, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Hettich now teaches at Miami Dade College.

Swan Scythe Press was founded in 2000 by poet Sandra McPherson, and is now edited by James DenBoer, also a poet. The Measured Breathing was chosen as the contest winner from among 165 entries, from 34 U.S. states and four foreign countries. DenBoer made the final selection of the winner with the help of a group of volunteer readers. Mr Hettich's book will be the 32nd book of poetry published by Swan Scythe Press. Its authors have won many awards and prizes, and have distinguished themselves as artists and educators throughout the U.S. and abroad.

For more information on Swan Scythe Press itself, please see the Press's website at http://www.swanscythe.com, email the editor directly at jimzbookz@yahoo.com, or write to the press at 515 P Street, #804, Sacramento CA 95814.