Wildflowers for The Bullies by Michael Rothenberg
Advance Praise for Wildflowers for The Bullies
There is energy in these poems by Michael Rothenberg, fueled by deaths in war, the police killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, and the deaths of mind and spirit within the malaise of present-day capitalist realities/complexities/obscenities. If truth in ideas and feeling are rare in the official discourse, let these poems ride like galloping horses to break free the truths trapped in the hi-def synthesized madness.
—Luis J. Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and author of My Nature is Hunger
Michael Rothenberg has long been a tireless organizer--for poetry and with poetry--to make the world a kinder place. In Wildflowers for the Bullies, Rothenberg utters a cri de coeur against the viciousness that is in us and around us, slathered with imperial static. His words pour over the brim of the page, both funny and scary. Rothenberg writes in the key of Ginsberg, if Ginsberg had lived to see Moloch win.
—Philip Metres, activist and author of Sand Opera (Alice James, 2015)
It's not often that a collection of poetry grabs and grips the reader like Wildflowers for the Bullies by Michael Rothenberg. In it, he bravely and beautifully places squarely before us the ugly realities of the world we live in. His words bring a stark clarity and slow down that world to a slow crawl from day to agonizing day.
– Jawanza Dumisani, author of Black Raising Cane Over Red (Glover Lane Press, 2014).
In Wildflowers for the Bullies, Rothenberg takes energetic poetic aim at some of the most glaring political issues of the day, including racism, economic injustice, police brutality, and our overly commercialized culture industry with its “zombie billboards” and “sponsored straightjackets.” In his deeply moving poem, “War,” Rothenberg uses varied and inventively phrased perspectives (“We imagine the shark a killing machine / We become the killing machine”) to note how thoroughly the idea of war has infiltrated Americans’ daily lives, offering “love as the answer.”
—Eliot Katz, author of Unlocking the Exits (Coffee House Press) and The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg (Beatdom Books).
Michael Rothenberg is a poet, editor and publisher of the online literary magazine BigBridge.org, co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (www.100tpc.org), and co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c), assisting poets in crisis.
Born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, Rothenberg moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1975 and co-founded Shelldance Orchid Gardens in Pacifica, which is dedicated to the cultivation of orchids and bromeliads. While in Pacifica, he helped lead local environmental actions that stopped major coastal developments that would destroy wildlife habitat.
He has published 20 books of poetry including Nightmare of The Violins, Favorite Songs, Man/Woman (a collaboration with Joanne Kyger), Unhurried Vision, Monk Daddy, The Paris Journals, Choose, My Youth As A Train, and Murder. His most recent books of poetry include Sapodilla (Editions du Cygne-Swan World, Paris, France, 2016), Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016), Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017), and a bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story (Varasek Ediciones Madrid, Spain, 2017). An Arabic edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story, translated by El Habib Louai, was published in Cairo, Egypt by Arwiqa Publishers in 2020.
His work has been published widely in literary reviews and included in anthologies such as Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street (Trinity University Press), 43 Poetas por Ayotzinapa, edited by Jesús González Alcántara and Moisés H. Cortés Cruz (Mexico), Saints of Hysteria, A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry, edited by David Trinidad and Denise Duhamel (Soft Skull Press), Hidden Agendas/Unreported Poetics, edited by Louis Armand (Litteraria Pragensia), and For the Time-Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals, edited by Tyler Doherty and Tom Morgan (Bootstrap Productions).
His editorial work includes several volumes in the Penguin Poets series: Overtime by Philip Whalen, As Ever by Joanne Kyger, David’s Copy by David Meltzer, and Way More West by Edward Dorn. Rothenberg is also editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen published by Wesleyan University Press (2007).
In 2016, Rothenberg moved back to Florida where is Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence. He lives on Lake Jackson in Tallahassee, Florida, with his partner Terri Carrion and their two dogs, Ziggy and Puma.