etude / chorus
instantly a shadow teaches the frivolity of will. longing laughs at no thing. shadows
constantly alter direction length and duration only to return again. ambiguous permanence.
no shadow authors change. change casts along lines that arc and pearl toward. likewise
thought whose arrival in the clean new air of any given day will soar climbing the rampant
currents of gusts and lifts small birds passing through until the world interjects. this is the
Plot. pilot of my heart. whose end awakens water sight memory plight.
-expert from The Book of The Night Sky A BOOK OF MEASURE Vol. II SIXTH CIRCUMFERENCE
by Michael Franco
In honor of Poetry Month, interview with poet Michael Franco as told to Seth Garcia
What texts have you been reading recently? Any new wellsprings of inspiration?
I am always nursing a number of books …..recently moving between a marvelous new biography- Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade, Susan Howe’s Penitential Crisis (simply breathtaking) Chloe Garcia Roberts’ Fire Eater and Antonio Ochoa’s Small Sargasso Mountains ……at bed time I am working though The Odyssey again…. for the simple pleasure of it and as prep for working my way back across the final Volume of my A Book of Measure ……which arrives at a newly discovered Book from The Odyssey.
You curate the Xit the Bear at the Press Room. Can you give a brief history of how this came about?
I am rarely brief: every history seems to become a story which in turn needs to be told…. I recently wrote this account:
The new reading series [Xit the Bear: Readings in The Press Room] was planned before we started looking for a home in the late 90’s. I wanted to create a space …away from a campus, library or bar, that might be inviting for writers to read in and so then to Respect the readers and their work and the audience as well.
I ran the Word of Mouth Series in Cambridge for close to ten years (in the Henderson Carriage Building beneath Tapas restaurant at 2067 Mass Ave.[1987-95 & then at various locations until ‘97]): Originally with artist Katha Seidman who lured the artists, (who were shown with each reading) and Andrea Stover who read manuscripts with me and dealt with the bar. [Over the years Joseph Torra and Angie Mlinko would follow her on the bar]: each in their way essential to the atmosphere created. But it was always by the generosity of Polly Guggenheim and Glen Matsura who handed me the downstairs bar to use for free on Sundays. We had a great run: Readers from Bill Corbett to Diane di Prima & Robin Blaser, Nathaniel Tarn, Lee Harwood, David Rattray, Kenward Elmslie, CD Wright & Forrest Gander, Fanny Howe of course, Nate Macke, Ken Irby & Robert Creeley; basically every one I could hope for in between. I did afternoon readings of Stein and Spicer texts which I scored for the voices of poets whom I admired, plays, a text built from the combined correspondence between Olson, Creeley and Cid Corman (Bill Corbett reading the Olson part) held benefits and hung art by local artists .. I even convinced Mike Mazur to hang reproductions of his Dante prints when Robert Pinsky read (& wonderfully) from his then new Translation. Bill Corbett recorded his grand book On Blue Note for Cambridge’s Zoland Books & Roland Pease down there… but it all hinged on the restaurant and when they closed up we got maybe two weeks notice. The last reading was a jazz band made up of Clark Coolidge and David & Tina Meltzer with Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman the week before…it was a grand place to stop… but it left a lot hanging & I vowed a better place if there was a next time where only I could pull the plug.
In projecting a new series I wanted to both continue my original proposal for Word of Mouth [which I kept calling “an Oral Magazine” which I was editing and a “A Place to Practice”]. But I wanted now to be in control of the space & to make it a Place in the imagination where one might actually want to read sans Saturday Night’s stale beer overtones! So the Press Room was built in our former Somerville Garage (slightly delayed by the joyous intrusion of our son’s birth & life) & I started putting away $25.00 a week from tips so that eventually I could actually pay the readers, and from that the Xit The Bear reading series emerged which takes place there along with other events (Somerville poet and filmmaker John Mulrooney recently brought his Rusty Doves band in for a small & wonderful show & I have the occasional writer in residence out there. In between I continue with my restoration of a 19th C Hand Press & attempt to relearn 19th C printing techniques or do my work in collage. When I am done with this interview I am heading out there to pull proofs on what I hope will be a small broadside of an H.D. poem and a short text by Robert Duncan.)
All of this I have to say (to get back to yr actual question) was grounded by Bill Corbett (who I describe nowadays as a silent partner to the first Series (a concept which would make him flinch I think) but Bill sent people my way whom I would not have been in touch with and Bill respected what I was doing (even if he disagreed with it) because he sensed my Intention at work… and he Never complained if I took a pass on a writer.) He was indeed Word of Mouth’s and Xit’s first reader: Solo at Word and then for the Xit reading I paired him with Gerrit Lansing as an Opening.
At Xit putting him up with Gerrit Lansing was a conscious declaration of the poetics of the series: No Masters no manifestos, as indeed lift had quietly proposed: Just Poets of deep commitment, at work at the height of their capabilities… whose example was boundless Curiosity and Joy- Nothing more nothing less: But always Companions to the all rest of us trying to pop our heads out into View in the poetry world; they were Certainly not writers who were looking for power or position or to form a group or school. I am coming to see that period as a New Boston Renaissance with spiraling connections to San Francisco/Berkeley via myself Robin Blazer & Nate Mackey and a broad field of active deeply caring poets like Ms Howe, Robert Pinsky, Askhold Melnyczuk, Gerrit Lansing, Patrick Pritchett, Amanda & James Cook, David Rich (all up in Gloucester & still working in the glow of all that was Gerrit Lansing and so Charles Olson and Vincent Ferrini); Edward Barrett, Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno & Patricia Pruitt; Ros Zimmermann, Chloe Garcia Roberts …Peter Gizzi, Martha McCollough, Elliot Cardinaux out in the hinterlands …just to name but a few of the folks at work in the Field……. This, as I keep quoting Stein saying, is The Composition in Which We Live…..ever forming and dissolving with flashes of infamy or brilliant inspiration shimmering across it like a grand squall… But this Composition must be composed and that is what I am striving for and trying to encourage in others.
Generally, what artist projects have you been working on lately?
Not quite sure how you are defining “artist projects” ….in truth I don’t really differentiate forms of activity. I regularly move between writing and collage making & the activity feels xactly the same to me ….same impulse to form to work inside, that forming as best I can,
My “other” project has been the restoration and now use of a 19thc Washington Hand Press ….. I am Slowly gaining in learning …..studying 19th C manuals etc. last fall I issued my first proper edition from the Press (dromenon press) which was a Broadside of a poem by the marvelous poet /friend/teacher (my high school teacher actually!) Fran Claggett-Holland, which was issued for her 96th birthday.
For thirty-some years, you’ve been working on A Book of Measure, a lengthy epic of sorts you’ve described as “Composed Through Text” across (at least) three volumes. Has the process of writing this text changed over time for you?
Indeed! A Book of Measure was started in 1991 with the initial proposition that I would allow everything to flow into it….any form…..which I would follow. But what I did not suspect was that I would have to learn to do this… & it proved much more challenging than I ever expected: The ongoing feeling of “well this don’t belong here” was perpetual & a struggle to overcome and then to live with what got allowed in…. So there is that. But in a work that has stretched out over the years it was also Time that I wanted to allow into the work …. & that is marked of course by the change in myself. I keep saying that I want an actual depiction of existence: not a planned carefully crafted depiction but one that would include everything ….false starts diversions disasters wandering stories stories cut short stories that return to us (I always have in mind Robert Duncan saying that a crime is there to remind us that we have been here before).
So the process has hopefully changed just as I have and it is still (for the moment) forming.
You have been a fixture in the poetry scene for many years now, often as a curator of reading series, whether it be Word of Mouth or Xit the Bear. What does the value of these kinds of events mean to you?
I am certainly not a fixture! But A participant …..yes. and that participation allows me to find & at times to create community & that gives me a Life which is in fact what Poetry gives me ….Poetry took me to Portugal to do a reading, where I met my wife &from that an entire “Other” life flowed out …
In your mind, how does Somerville foster a sense of community?
Actually it doesn’t! (Although I deeply love and feel equally luck to be living and working here), But we create our own community …..Poetry is (& means in its origins) “a thing Made” and that to me is the task> to Make up a Life and an Art. No one gives us permission. Invitations are rare.
The initial reading series Word of Mouth came out of an exchange of letters with Cid Corman. I had complained that I could not get a reading in Boston…. that I had been doing readings since high-school and on & on. His response was “stop whining and start yr own reading series: You will meet everyone you need to meet and you will get to read.” A response that took me a week to stop being angry about. I woke up one morning and said dear god is he right and he was. The initial series took a year to actually start having its own energy…. but his predicating was beyond correct.
But that said …..one does need to look up and Place yrself & notice all the energy going on around you. Isolate is not alone.
Any upcoming readings or projects you’d like to plug?
I have a reading on the 18th of April at I AM BOOKS in the North End & my reading series kicks off on the 26th of April with Askold Melnyczuk and Nidia Hernández & a show of recent art by Katha Seidman {Xit the Bear takes place in The Press Room on Oxford St here in Somerville & will run through Late May
There is an Xit Face Book page (YouTube as well) & any further information or to make a viewing appointment for the Seidman show or to have a look at the press can be had via [email protected].
More Artists of the Month from 2026
Andrew Stearns & Stacy Friedman, May 2026 Artist of the Month
Archives
About the Artist of the Month
This program is inspired by the Nave Gallery’s “Featured Artist” program, which ran from 2005 to 2009.
SAC’s Artist of the Month program is a way for us to celebrate the enormous wealth of talent in our city, by shining a spotlight on a different creative Somervillian each month.
This program has been put together by a whole raft of people: Coordinators Jenn Harrington (2013-2014) and Kellie Veiga (2013), Gilmore Tammy (2017) and Somerville Arts Council board members Matt Kaliner, Tim Devin, Valeria Amato, and Michael J. Epstein, Bill House (2019-2020), Charan Devereaux (2019-2025), Tori Weston (2019-2025) and Andrea Read (2022-2025). Current coordinators, are Kerrie Kemperman (2019-), Seth Garcia (2025-), and Ben Cuba (2026-).
Know of a great Somerville based artist who should be recognized, please nominate the artist for consideration. We seek artists who contribute to the community through their strong work and community collaborations. Artist should either reside in the City or contribute to the City’s vibrant art scene.