Book Review: Michael Burch—Our Very Own English Goethe

Every now and then a writer comes along who makes us confident enough to say: “This is a real poet!” Such is the case with Michael R. Burch who started writing in his teens, while still attending high school in Nashville, Tennessee. Burch is the kind of a poet whose collections should be easily accessible in any retail-chain book store or any mom and pop book shop, or any library for that matter.

Burch may rightly be called our very own English Goethe. He is able to craft poems of exquisite beauty and sublime sensuousness, while using only a few lines or stanzas, in many cases. When we read Burch’s poems—even many of his shorter strophic pieces, of which there are many—we encounter the kinds of beautiful sentiments and enticing ironies, which in the words of Robert Frost leave, “An immortal wound.”

The hope of this author is that an able review of Michael Burch’s poetry may give readers a sense of why Burch’s verses are the “the real deal.”

Considering the success of poets like Rupi Kaur…