Poet Michael Dechane explores loneliness and transformation in his debut collection

Local poet Michael Dechane may have waited until his fourth decade to formally study poetry at Seattle Pacific University, but as far back as he can remember, he has always written.

“My mom unearthed some early poems from her archives that made me laugh,” he says. Among the items in the stack was Dechane’s first love poem. Its final line reads:  “Yellow, blue, pink, and crimson/oh how I love you, Angie Simpson.”

These days, the poet is busy promoting his debut collection, The Long Invisible, which came out in September. The works examine broken relationships, individual transformations and starting anew. Many of the pieces are set in Florida, where Dechane grew up, as well as Western North Carolina, where he now resides.

“I hope anyone who spends time with my work finds at least one poem to love — one poem to break something good open inside them, a poem that touches some loneliness they carry, a poem that helps them come more alive in a place that feels dead or raw or too tender to let other people see,” Dechane says.

Xpress recently caught up with Dechane to discuss his work, including the poem “Black Bear,” which is featured here.

Black Bear

by Michael Dechane

I told you about the bear
how it came padding through
the tall grass along the fence line
sundown last night. Its dark bulk
like a perfect absence, animate.
I tried to describe what it felt like
to be unseen. Still. Caught between
impulses to keep safe, to see more.
When you called me, I told you
how much these nights you’re gone
hurt me in ways it’s hard to say.
And you said you didn’t know
when you might be coming back.
We let a silence bloom between us.
I’m writing to say what I could not.
How I trailed it, downhill, trembling
to the treeline tracing the creek bed.
How the bear paused to scent the air
as I was caught, exposed on open ground.
It swayed in a sprawl of yellow crocuses
growing dim in the blossoming night,
like a greater darkness, claiming candles.
Everything melted in a moment, beyond sight.
I was afraid. It was there, then it wasn’t.

Xpress: “Black Bear” is one of my favorites in the collection. This poem has so many layers, and those final two sentences in the last line kill me every time. I’d love to hear you talk about the poem’s origin and inspiration and share with readers how this particular piece is in dialogue with the others in the opening section.  

Dechane: By the time I wrote it, I had two brief, failed marriages to reflect on. This poem was actually one of the last to be written and included in the book. For me, it does feel like a summary poem about fear, loss and those fragile, final conversations with someone you’ve been very close to and are losing — or have already lost.

Where did this poem come from? Well, dozens of bears-in-the-yard encounters from our place in Swannanoa before we bought the old Stackhouse place and moved to Madison County (where we never see bears). And the candles in the closing image are a nod from me to C.P. Cavafy’s poem “Candles,” which haunts this poem.

Another standout poem is “Pier 60.” I’m going to describe elements of it here for readers. It is September 1965 — a group of teenage surfers are enjoying the crashing waves that precede Hurricane Billion Dollar Betsy, which, as you note in the poem, will go on to kill 73 people in New Orleans. By the poem’s end, these boys are facing down the storm clouds; meanwhile, in a matter of a few lines, you project the violent futures that await them: the Vietnam War, a suicide, a drunk driver on Christmas morning. The poem is brutal, but it plays with time in a fascinating way. Could you speak to the way you were exploring time within this poem and how it shaped the piece?

I found this amazing article in the Tampa Bay Times archive by Martha Asencio-Rhine as I was writing. And that led me to another article about the history of Clearwater, Fla., and Pier 60.

All those old photos and questions about my dad’s stories and growing-up years put me in a huge, internal time warp. I was intensely curious about inheritance — how to talk about what gets imprinted and passed on.

I never know what my poems are really about or where they’ll take me when I start them. “Pier 60” became an exercise in imagination about my dad, that generation, that area, all of it. Now, as he and his last friends are in their age and passing on, it feels like a tribute poem to me as well.

I have this theory that some people are intimidated by poetry because they think a poem has a definitive meaning and they worry they won’t “get” it. So I think it’ll be refreshing for some to read your own experiences with the “meaning” of your work. What advice would you offer to those who avoid poetry because of this false notion that a poem is supposed to lead readers to a single interpretation or understanding of a given piece?

The sad reality is that a lot of today’s poems are not made to encourage or support compelling, multiple meanings. It’s not very satisfying to return to them, and when we do, we don’t get much for our time and trouble. Even more sadly, I have to include myself and many of my poems in this critique.

My advice for others is the same I’m working to take as I’m making new work: Look for better poems — those with richer language that opens the poem and something inside you. And trust, really trust, that your ideas, feelings, intuitions, questions, all of it, are not only good and valid but also profoundly valuable. Those kinds of poems are helping you learn something about yourself in what comes up, in what it leads you to. Who cares what the egotistic bookworm who made the damn thing meant? If it’s a truly great poem, they don’t own the meaning.

Is there another local poet whose work came out within the last year whom you’d recommend people check out? Why?

Several come straight to mind, but if I have to pick just one, I hope folks will look at Doug Ramspeck‘s work. His latest collection, Blur, is just tremendous. I heard him read from it at the Malaprop’s Poetrio/Quartet reading series last year. These are wildly imaginative, believable poems that happen to be complete fiction. It’s an amazing example of what can happen when a poet reaches way past their own life and experiences to truly make something creative, unexpected and unforgettable.

Finally, tell us something that might surprise readers about your writing habits. 

My dear friend Cat lost her husband, Austin, very quickly last August after some brief, ugly cancer. He was only 41 years old, and he died two weeks after their third child was born. More than just about any other, Austin’s death has affected me deeply and daily, ever since. If there’s something I need to do or to say, I’m faster and faster to go and do or say it, now. One of the oddest, most unexpected things that’s happened is that I’ve started writing my poems standing up. The first drafts are all coming out faster, on legal pads, standing at a window. There’s an urgency now, with death in the room in a way it didn’t seem to be for me before Austin died.