The HyperTexts

Michael R. Burch Bio and Curriculum Vitae



Michael R. Burch is one of the world's most-published poets, with over 9,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. This does not include self-published writings; if self-published writings were included Burch's total publications would be well over 10,000. To read his best poems, please click here: The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (per Google and in his own opinion).

Mike Burch, as he is known to family and friends, is an American poet, translator, essayist, editor, publisher and logician who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth, their son Jeremy, two outrageously spoiled puppies and a talkative parakeet. Burch's poems, haiku, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, song lyrics, quotes, epigrams, puns, jokes, literary criticism and letters have appeared around the globe in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Guardian, The Hindu, The Telegraph, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post, The American Dissident, Journal of Arts and Humanities and hundreds of literary journals, websites and blogs.

If you would like to contact Mike Burch for more information, to collaborate, or to obtain permission to republish his poems, translations or other work, he can be reached via email at mikerburch@gmail.com (email is preferable to other methods such as social media and please be sure to note the "r" between his first and last names). He strives to reply in person to all serious, civil inquiries.

Burch's original poems and translations have been published by the universities of Athens, Arizona, Auburn, Connecticut, Gdansk, Hiroshima, Houston Baptist, Kenyatta, Pennsylvania, Salford, Salu Ghotki, Virginia and Yaroslavl, and by major book publishers such as Penguin Random House and Harper Collins.

Burch is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, a former columnist for the Nashville City Paper, and, according to Google's rankings, a relevant online publisher of poems about the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Trail of Tears, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba.

Burch's poetry has been used in human rights courseware by the Anti-Defamation League and Amnesty International; published by the UN Refugee Agency; taught in high schools and universities; translated into 19 languages; incorporated into three plays and four operas; set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 57 times by 31 composers; recited or otherwise employed in 100+ videos; quoted and/or cited in numerous scholarly papers; and used to provide titles and/or epigraphs to eight authors, two composers and one documentary filmmaker.

Because so many of his poems have gone viral, it has been said that Burch is "ubiquitous on the Internet." Evidence is given in "Career Highlights." A number of Burch's early poems appear in the career Timeline below, where he reveals some of the early influences on his poetry such as William Blake, Robert Burns, e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson.

If you're an archivist, anthologist, biographer or scholar, there are notes at the end of this page that may be of interest.

If you are a student or scholar considering a paper, you can find Burch's analysis of some of his most popular poems here: "Auschwitz Rose" Analysis, "Epitaph" Analysis, "Something" Analysis, "Will There Be Starlight" Analysis, "Davenport Tomorrow" Analysis, "Neglect" Analysis, "Passionate One" Analysis, "Self Reflection" Analysis, "In The Whispering Night" Analysis, "Pale Though Her Eyes" Analysis, "Thin Kin" Analysis, The Best Poems of Michael R. Burch (in his own opinion), Early Poems with Analysis, What is Poetry?

For information about how he translates, please click here: Michael R. Burch Translation Notes, Methods and Credits to Other Translators

"Burch has set the standard for translation of the greats. No contest." — David Gosselin, editor of New Lyre and The Chained Muse

"Not enough appreciation has been shown to Michael R. Burch, who will have left an unparalleled record of living poetry written during his lifetime. His name will be quoted and remembered long after the names of many poets have been forgotten. — Janet Kenny, an accomplished Australian poet and opera singer

Awards, Achievements and Career Highlights:

• Winner of 68 awards in writing contests including 15 first places.
• Winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest.
• Five Pushcart Prize nominations.
• Burch is, somewhat ironically, best known for his love poems and horror poems.
• Burch has created new poetic forms, including the "Dabble Dactyl," the "Less Heroic Couplet," the "Less Heroic Limerick," the "Trinelle/Triplenelle," and the "End-First Curtal Sonnet." He has also created numerous unnamed nonce poetic forms.
• Burch's translation of "Plumegrass Wilts" by O no Yasumaro is the first poem on the EnglishLiterature.net poem definition and example page; the poem returned 619K Google results at its peak.
• "Pale Though Her Eyes" is the #4 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems, after "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Vampire" by Conrad Aiken, and "Ghost" by Cynthia Huntingon. It is also one of the eight best vampire poems, along with Burch's poem "Vampires" and poems by Charles Baudelaire, Ernest Dowson and William Butler Yeats, according to Pick Me Up Poetry.
• Burch's translation of "The Love Song of Shu-Sin" is one of the 10 best ancient love poems according to Literary Devices and was the first poem listed.
• "A True Story" is the #10 baseball poem of all time, according to SonicSpot.
• "See" is a top 10 short poem according to Short Quotes and Poems, and a top 100 love poem according to the Love Me Knots anthology.
• "Thin Kin" is the #11 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems.
• "Solicitation" is the #13 monster poem of all time, according to Aesthetic Poems.
• Michael R. Burch is one of the world's most-published poets, with over 9,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral (this does not include self-published writings). Some of his poems have been published multiple times; the number of individual poems published was 2,021 as of late fall 2023.
• Burch has been published by hundreds of literary journals, magazines, newspapers, news services and sundry publications, from A-Z, including American Dissident, Amnesty International's Words That Burn, Angle (Australia), Anti-Defamation League, Author's Guild "Fourteen Days" Anthology, Bewildering Stories, Black Kos, Black Medina, Borderless Journal (Singapore), ByLine, Cafe Dissensus (India), The Chained Muse, The Chariton Review, The Chimaera, Daily Kos, Daily Sun (Bangladesh), De Volksrant (Holland), Dissident Voice, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), The Ekphrastic Review, Eurasia Review, Everyman's Library (Penguin Books), First Things, The Flea, Graeco Music (Greece), The Guardian (UK), Haiku Universe, Hibiscus (India), The Hindu (India), Iambs & Trochees, Irish Blog, Jewish Letter (Russia), Journal of the Arts & Humanities, Kashmir News, La Luce Che Non Muore (Italy), LIGHT, Lighten Up Online, Linh Vu (Vietnam), The Lyric, Measure, Nashville City Paper, Nebo, The New Formalist, New Lyre, Opera News, Pennsylvania Review, Poem Today, Poet Lore, Poezzi (Romania), Potcake Chapbooks (UK), Pride Magazine (Nigeria), Promosaik (Denmark/Germany), Qingdao News (East Timor), Reader's Digest (website), Romantics Quarterly, Southwestern Review, Sagar Behere (Sweden), Sans Titre (France), Snakeskin (UK), Sonety (Czechoslovakia), Sri Lanka Guardian, Stermez (Macedonia), Sydney Review of Books, The Telegraph (India), TIME, UNHCR (the UN refugee agency), Ulita (Russia), Unlikely Stories, USA Today, Uyghur Times, Verse Libre, Verse Weekly, Voices Israel, Washington Post, Whale (Tonga), Writer’s Digest-The Year’s Best Writing, Writer's Gazette, Writers' Journal, Xymphora, YouTube (100+), Zen Haiku, and many more.
• Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The HyperTexts with over 16 million page views.
• Librettist for The Children of Gaza, A Look Into Paradise and An Ardent Love Affair.
• Former editor of International Poetry and Translations for Better Than Starbucks.
• Currently on the board of the International literary journal Borderless Journal.
• Currently a guest editor for Poetry Nook.
• Former columnist for The Nashville City Paper until it ceased publication.
• Marquis Who's Who Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement honoree.
• Alpha Lambda Delta and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies.
• "First They Came for the Muslims" was published by Amnesty International in its Words That Burn anthology and was also published by The Hindu and other major newspapers; at one time the poem returned an astonishing 823K Google results.
• "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" at one time returned 92K Google results.
• "Bible Libel," an epigram written by Burch as a preteen, at one time returned 78K Google results.
• Burch's epigram "A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or are the others crazy?" at one time returned 34K Google results and is now being used to sell t-shirts and coffee mugs! The quote went viral after Pharrell Williams retweeted it.
• "Elegy for a little girl, lost" at one time returned 21K Google results.
• Forty-two poems written by Burch in his teens have been published by literary journals and several have been set to music by composers, including "Earthbound," "Frail Envelope of Flesh," "The Last Enchantment," "Lay Down Your Arms," "Moon Lake," "Styx" and "Will There Be Starlight."
• BBC Radio 3 published Burch's translations of 14 poems by the immortal Sappho of Lesbos which were recited by the actresses Diana Quick and Sophie Ward.
• "Goddess" was the first poem published in the first issue of Romantics Quarterly and Burch had the first five poems in the first issue of RQ.
• Burch also had the first five poems in the first issue of New Lyre.
• Burch has served as a judge in poetry contests for The Lyric, Better Than Starbucks, Poetry Nook and the Net Art and Poetry Competition (all contests were free to enter and the judges were unpaid).
• The Anti-Defamation League used Burch's Fadwa Tuqan "Enough of Me" translation in a series of seminars.
• Burch is a longtime peace activist and the author of the Burch-Elberry Peace Initiative, also known as the Fair Courts Resolution (FCR).
• On October 21, 2010, Burch presented the Burch-Elberry Peace Initiative to Aziz Mekouar, the Moroccan Ambassador to the United States, at a reception held in the Grand Ballroom of Nashville's Vanderbilt Plaza hotel.
• Theo Horesh discussed the Fair Courts Resolution in his book The Holocausts We All Deny (pg 174-175).

Books (9):

Violets for Beth (White Violet Press, 2012)

O, Terrible Angel (Ancient Cypress Press, 2013)

Auschwitz Rose remains in the chute but has been long delayed.

Editor of Have Pool Cue Will Travel by Mark C. O'Brien.

Editor of Book of Desire by Martin Mc Carthy and also wrote the Introduction.

Translator of Hebrew poems by Adi Wolfson, the 2017 winner of Israel's prestigious Levi Eshkol Prize for Literature, in two books: I Am Your Father and Oikos.

Editor of The Fascism This Time by Theo Horesh.

Benjamin Jones used extensive excerpts from a Burch article in his book Pete Rose Unforgiven Forever and credited Burch prominently on the book's second page.

Anthologies and Other Poetry Collections (30+): Words That Burn (Amnesty International), Blood to Remember (Holocaust poetry), Uyghur Poems, Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Amerikai költok a második ("American Poets at the Turn of the Second Millennium"), Famous Poets & Poems, Life & Legends, Writer's Digest—The Year's Best Writing 2003, Potcake Chapbooks, The Bible of Hell, How Sweet the Night (CD), Velvet Avalanche, Love Me Knots (love poems), Crimson Leaves (love/romance), Voices Israel, Washing the Color of Water Golden (Hurricane Katrina), The Best of The Eclectic Muse, Poems for Big Kids, A Bouquet of Poems for children of all ages, Liberty's Vigil (Occupy Wall Street), A Fancy of Formalities, Captivating Poetry, Monalisa No Longer Smiles published by Borderless Journal, WORDS going places, Troubles of the World (an online anthology with poems by Dickinson, Frost, Yeats, et al), and several other poetry collections.

Burch's translations of "My Feelings" by Dolqun Yasin and "Traces" by Abdurehim Otkur are scheduled to published in Uyghur Poems, an anthology edited by Aziz Isa Elkun (Everyman’s Library, Penguin Books/Random House).

Burch has six poems scheduled to be published in the anthology Crimson Leaves: Celebrating Romance, curated and edited John Donovan Lambert, who wrote in his introduction that he "searched the world for the very best love poems." Burch's original poem "Let Me Give Her Diamonds" appeared on the opening pages after "How Do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and "Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning. In his  Acknowledgments, Lambert thanked "Michael R. Burch, for his poems and translations" and went on to say, "I would also like to thank Mike Burch for his kind friendship and camaraderie in our correspondence ranging over many topics about poetry, from the industry in general to details as fine as whether an additional syllable in a particular line of a particular poem would enhance or diminish the meter of the poem."

Burch had six poems in the bilingual Hungarian poetry anthology Amerikai költok a második ("American Poets at the Turn of the Second Millennium"), which has been described by reviewer András Tarnóc as Dr. István Bagi’s "ambitious effort focusing on the lyrical production of the past two decades in the United States." According to Tarnóc this effort "enriches the discipline of American Studies in Hungary, and contributes to translation studies as well." Dr. Bagi chose 25 American poets to translate, including such well-known names as former poet laureates Billy Collins, Louise Gluck, Charles Simic and James Tate. Pulitzer winners included Gluck, Simic, Tate, Stephen Dunn, Jorie Graham and Sharon Olds. Other familiar names were Wendell Berry, Mark Doty, Erica Jong and David Lehman. Burch was the only poet with six poems in the anthology.

Reviews, Literary Criticism and Commentary:

• "One can actually feel the intensity of emotion bleeding through the pages." (Jim Dunlap, poet)
• "That poem ['Epitaph for a Palestinian Child'] made me feel cold, like a ghost touched me!" (Maida Mohammed-Brown, poet and peace activist)
• "Very, very touching, like suffocating my chest." (Tri Raden Raden, commenting on the same poem)
• "Your love poems to your wife—how beautiful, how beautiful—even a poet's word fail me." (Helen Bar-Lev, artist, poet and editor of the Voices Israel anthologies)
• "Your contributions are a touchstone for me. (Vera Ignatowitsch, poet and editor of Better Than Starbucks)
• "The poems you sent me are astonishingly beautiful. I really love them." (Karen Shenfield, poet)
• "This is a truly magnificent poem ['Love Has a Southern Flavor']." (Dr. Joseph S. Salemi, poet and editor of Trinacria)

"I am discovering Michael R. Burch for the very first time, a good five years after this splendid post [Burch's translation of 'How Long the Night' on the Society of Classical Poets website], and can only say that what I am finding here and there on the web is superlatively good, some of the finest lyric poetry I have ever had the privilege of reading. And people know that I'm the sniffiest, most unforgiving snob that ever lived. But this is classic verse such as the world has always understood it." (Joseph Charles Mackenzie, poet, in a post on the Society of Classical Poets website)

"This one poem [Burch's ars poetica poem 'Poetry'] surpasses any other contemporary I have read. This is the restoration of la poésie classique! ... This is classic poetry in the grand manner!" (Joseph Charles Mackenzie, in two posts on the New Lyre website on Dec. 21, 2020)

"English lacks words strong enough to properly praise his poem [Burch's poem 'Poetry']." (Edward C. Hayes II, poet, in a July 3, 2021 post on the New Lyre website)

"Your poem 'Poetry' is really quite something ... [it] has a Promethean quality ..." (David B. Gosselin, editor of The Chained Muse and New Lyre)

David Gosselin has called Burch an "American Goethe" and wrote a review titled "Our Very Own English Goethe" in which he said: "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 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.'"

"Not many poets in this current era can write great love poems, but Michael R. Burch certainly can, based on the evidence in Violets for Beth. All the poems included here are passionate, lyrical, musical—and, at times, feel as if they are burning on the page. A truly stunning collection of love poems!" (Martin Mc Carthy, an accomplished Irish poet)

"In this collection, the poet Michael R. Burch writes with love, passion and affection about the human, earthly angels who sometimes inhabit our harsh, real worlds of pain, and somehow manage—through constant small acts of kindness and caring—to make them more tolerable and wondrous than they actually are. O, Terrible Angel is no less than passionate, realistic love poetry at its very best. I highly recommend it." (Martin Mc Carthy)

Michael R. Burch's Violets For Beth is an exceptional collection, compromised mostly of formalist poems that seem so fluid and natural that it's easy to forget they are rhymed and metered. Mr. Burch's technical virtuosity is not what makes this collection memorable, however. These poems, all of them, possess an extraordinary emotional depth and tenderness, and resonate in the heart as well as in the mind. Consider the sonnet "Water and Gold," one of my favorite pieces in a cornucopia of gems. The poem is flawless from start to finish, but its exquisite concluding couplet is positively breathtaking:

"I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
Then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs."

There are no subpar poems anywhere here, and more than a few would truly be worthy of Yeats or Rilke in their prime. Other favorites of mine include "Redolence" and the gorgeous "Infinity." Mike Burch is a true poet in the very best sense of the word, and this haunting little book is a treasure to be read, reread, and savored for generations to come. (Robert Lavett Smith, an accomplished American poet)

For more reviews of the poetry of Michael R. Burch, including full-length reviews, podcasts and interviews, please click here: Reviews of Books and Individual Poems by Michael R. Burch.

Magazines (22): TIME, The Oldie (UK), Writer’s Digest The Year’s Best Writing (2003), Journal of the Arts and Humanities, Writer’s Journal, Writer’s Gazette, ByLine, First Things, The American Dissident, Poet’s Forum Magazine, FreeXpression (Australia), The Alberta Science Teacher (Canada), Certification Magazine, Emotions Literary Magazine, Verses Magazine, GloMag (India), MahMag (Iran), Ancient Heart Magazine (UK), Boston Poetry Magazine, Poetry Renewal Magazine, Silver Stork Magazine, Dusk & Shiver Magazine

Podcasts (including at least 14 original poems and translations): Burch's original poetry and translations have been featured in podcasts by The Burnt Notebook (Yosa Buson translations), The New Lyre ("The Timeless Poetry of Michael R. Burch" with nine poems recited and discussed), and a Lusty Literature podcast (to be recorded at the University of Virginia by Julia Robertson) with "The Deflowering," "An Ancient Egyptian Love Lyric" and "Are You the Thief?" Also, "I, too, have a dream" was read during a podcast by Mitali Chakravarty, the editor of Borderless Journal.

Librettos/Operas (4): The Children of Gaza with music by composer Eduard de Boer; A Look Into Paradise with music by Eduard de Boer (an opera in one act based on Jura Soyfer’s play Der Lechner-Edi schaut ins Paradis); An Ardent Love Affair with music by Eduard de Boer (a Cantata for tenor, baritone and symphonic wind orchestra inspired by the the Rockefeller Foundation's scenario LOCK STEP, which envisions a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback); Summoning the Spirit: Poems of Komachi with music by William Salmon (a multimedia opera based on the Noh play Sotoba Komachi performed by Open Gate Theatre and filmed in the Pasadena Arroyo).

Oratorios (1): Eduard de Boer will be using Burch-written lyrics for the fifth movement of Oratorium Toward a Golden Future, an oratorio he's writing for soloists, choir and wind orchestra, on commission from the Dutch Fund for Podium Arts. The project has an October 24, 2024 deadline.

Titles and/or Epigraphs (11):

"Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" was used as the lead epigraph in Genocide: A Political Discretion by Nagendram Braveen and published on Academia.edu.

"Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" was used to lead off an article in Eurasia Review by K. M. Seethi, a director, dean and professor at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala.

The Australian poet Felicity Plunkett took the title of her poetry collection A Kinder Sea from Burch's translation of an epigram attributed to Plato and credited Burch in her book.

Julian Smith took the title of his collection of short fiction, The World of Dew, from Burch's translation of an Issa poem.

Burch's translation of Su Shi’s rose/candle poem was used as an epigraph for his poem "the unsunken arose" by Dave Garbutt.

Burch's translation of Issa’s "world of dew" haiku was used by Julian Smith as the epigraph to his short story collection The World of Dew and Other Stories.

Burch's translation of Ouchi Yoshitaka’s "dewdrops" haiku was quoted in The Last Dead Man by Conor Barnes.

The composer Daniel Brinsmead used A Kinder Sea as the title of one of his compositions.

The composer Joshua C. DeLozier used Burch's translation of the Issa poem "Admiring Flowers" for the title of one of his compositions and to accompany the music.

Zander Smith, a maker of documentary films, intends to title his forthcoming documentary of the plight of Uyghur refugees The Grave Is Wide after Burch's original poem "Epitaph for a Uyghur Child."

Terry Trafton used Burch’s translation of “The Seikilos Epitaph” as an epigraph in his introduction to the short story collection Night Fevers.

Poems Set to Music and/or Interpreted as Music (57 songs, instrumental interpretations and/or other uses, by 31 composers):

• "Lay Down Your Arms" by the Brazilian musician Eduardo Agni
• A musical interpretation of the Sappho translation "Sing, my sacred tortoiseshell lyre" by Ahornberg
• "Epitaph for a Homeless Child" was published by Armand Amar with his composition "Home"
• The lyrics of Children of Gaza by composer Eduard de Boer including "Frail Envelope of Flesh," "Mother's Smile," "Where Does the Butterfly Go?" and six other Burch poems
• A Look Into Paradise with music by Eduard de Boer, an opera in one act based on Jura Soyfer’s play Der Lechner-Edi schaut ins Paradis.
• An Ardent Love Affair with music by Eduard de Boer, a Cantata for tenor, baritone and symphonic wind orchestra inspired by the the Rockefeller Foundation's scenario LOCK STEP, which envisions a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.
• The fifth movement of Oratorium Toward a Golden Future, an oratorio by Eduard de Boer for soloists, choir and wind orchestra, on commission from the Dutch Fund for Podium Arts. The project has an October 24, 2024 deadline.
• "I Pray Tonight" by composer Mark Buller
• "Willy Nilly" and "Indestructible, for Johnny Cash" by Gary Deslaurier of the swamp-blues band Old Dog Daddy & The Dagnabbits
• Joshua C. DeLozier used Burch's translation of the Issa poem "Admiring Flowers" for his title and to accompany the music
• Native American translations by composer Paula Downes
• "Cherokee Travelers' Blessing II" by Patricia Falanga
• Poems to be selected by Jerry Gerber (forthcoming)
• "Will There Be Starlight," "The Tapestry of Leaves," "Moon Lake," "I Pray Tonight," "Such Tenderness," "Midnight Lullaby," "Sing for the Cool Night," "We Came Together," "The Singer," "Liebes-Lied," "Moments," "Fascination with Light," "We Came Together, Holding Hands,"  "Distances" and "The Effects of Memory" by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton
• "For a Ukrainian Child, with Butterflies" by Pauli Hansen
• Burch's translation of "The Song of Amergin" was to be included in a book of musical compositions by the Irish composer Anne Harper.
• A cello interpretation of "The Wife's Lament" by Jenny Jackson
• "For a Palestinian Child, with Butterflies" by Estonian composer Helena Loorents (forthcoming)
• "The Blobfish" by Mariah McDonald and Sam Perrott
• "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful" by Carmen Garcia Perez
• Burch's translation of the Ber Horvitz poem "Der Himmel" ("The Heavens") by composer Ella Roberts
• "I Pray Tonight" by Kyle Scheuing
• "Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust" by Sloane Simon
• "Earthbound" by Cedomir Stanojevic and the Serbian band About Lorca (forthcoming)
• "Styx" was set to music by the Russian composer Ekaterina Steppe aka Kotik Ptic.
• "Indestructible, for Johnny Cash" by Mike Strand
• John Sturt requested permission to use Burch's translation of "Deor's Lament" to help audiences follow the Old English/Anglo-Saxon lyrics which he set to music, and also for his dissertation on his composition.
• Voices of Hope choir recital of my translation of Fadwa Tuqan's "Enough for Me"
• "I Have a Yong Suster" by Sigrid Vipa in a YouTube song with a 12-string Celtic harp
Voices of Hope choir recital of my translation of Fadwa Tuqan's "Enough for Me"
• "Caedmon's Hymn" by composer Dawn Walters
• "A Kinder Sea" by Devan Wardrop-Saxton
• "How Long the Night" by composer Seth Wright
• Zou Meicheng set "Autumn Day" to music.
• "The Last Enchantment" was musically interpreted in a Martins Garden SoundCloud piece.
• "Stonehenge" was musically interpreted in a Martins Garden SoundCloud piece as "Where the Druids Stood."

Performances of Note with Links when available:

This multimedia opera incorporates Burch's translations of the poetry of Ono no Komachi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoa5a7fTlg

The song cycle Children of Gaza, a potential opera if the money ever materializes, has been performed at multiple venues in Europe by the Palestinian soprano Dima Bawab, accompanied on the piano by composer Eduard de Boer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlqOsaJGhiQ&t=279s

Composer Mark Buller used the lyrics of "I Pray Tonight" in his musical composition Erasure, a song cycle for baritone, clarinet and piano on the theme of gun violence (sung at minute 9:15 of the hyperlinked performance). "I Pray Tonight" was later performed as "Elegy" at the Hurricane Harvey Relief Concert by the Apollo Chamber Players in partnership with Musiqa Houston and Jazz Forever @ the MATCH (Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston), on September 8, 2017. All proceeds (over $8,000) went towards the Hurricane Harvey Relief Funds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKylMoh6kaM

"Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust" was set to music and used in an original composition by Sloane Simon, a talented 14-year-old Jewish-American girl, after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Sloane later appeared on American Idol 2021 and made it to Hollywood.

This is a cantata by composer Eduard de Boer with Burch's lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1eq8zA1iI&t=106s

Ben E. Smith reads three of Burch's poems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJOXsoNaaUU

"For a Ukrainian Child with Butterflies" was set to music by Pauli Hansen and performed by a choir in a concert at the Nordic House in Torshavn, Faroe Islands.

https://youtu.be/-F_52RI0uAk

"The Tapestry of Leaves" was set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton and performed by a choir in Taiwan in April 2021, as part of the song cycle Childhood.

"Night Watch" with music by David Hamilton was third in the mixed category of the 2021 Fifth Choral Composition Competition sponsored by the International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM). There were 93 total contest entries from around the globe.

"We Came Together" was performed by the Pakuranga Choral Society on Nov. 12, 2022 at the Saturday civic/ecumenical service at Howick’s All Saints Anglican Church as part of Howick’s 175th anniversary events.

"Moments," "Fascination with Light" and "Midnight Lullaby" were set to music by David Hamilton and performed by the Jade String Quartet with a mezzo-soprano on February 17, 2024.

The rose in the video below was painted by the poet/artist Mary Rae, and the video was created by Lillian Y. Wong, so this was a collaboration with two talented artists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-oBMn32vaw&t=31s

"Ali's Song," a tribute to Muhammad Ali, was turned into a video by Lillian Y. Wong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHOs4kFVj24

"At Wilfred Owen's Grave" was turned into a video by Lillian Y. Wong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVrdPQob6tQ&t=5s

"Something," a poem for the children of the Holocaust and Palestinian Nakba, was turned into a video by Lillian Y. Wong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVtL3WpFoOA&t=103s

"Survivors," a 9-11 poem, was turned into a video by Lillian Y. Wong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7BP3sYjmTY&t=106s

"Are You the Thief" was turned into a short, sweet and cute video by Reaction Romance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK7zcJrQOtM

Theater (3): Poems and translations by Burch have been included in the following operas, plays and stage productions: Lysistrata by Aristophanes (translation of "Lament to the Spirit of War" by Enheduanna, incorporated by Flavia D'Avila, director, Edinburgh, Scotland); translations of poems by Ono no Komachi were incorporated as a focal point into the mixed media play Summoning the Spirit: Poems of Komachi created by playwright William Salmon; A Look Into Paradise (a play-based opera with music by composer Eduard de Boer).

Visual Art (24): Burch's poems have been incorporated into and/or coupled with works of visual art by Mahryn Rose Barron (Burch's translations of Sappho 147), Marie Bortolotto (Takaha Shugyo "Rowboat" translation), Cultura Collectiva (Burch's translation of Sappho 155 paired with erotic paintings), Peter Delahaye ("Dawn" excerpts, forthcoming), Malika Favre ("Les Bijoux" in Kama Sutra A-Z), Murals by Georgeta (Burch’s translation of Martial’s elegy for the child Erotion plus the original poems "I Pray Tonight, for the Parkland Survivors," "Epitaph for a Parkland Student" and "For a Parkland Student, with Butterflies"), Jordi Fornies ("Piercing the Shell"), Wouter Vande Koot (three paintings with titles taken from the Burch translations "Oft in My Thought," "He Came Also as Still" and "Whan the Turuf is Thy Tower"), Dodie Messer Meeks (art for "The Desk" and "The Aery Faery Princess" in A Bouquet of Poems for Children of All Ages), Mary Rae (cover art for Auschwitz Rose and O, Terrible Angel), Saatchi Art Gallery (four Basho translations and the original haiku "Water Breaks"), Brenda Levy Tate (cover art for Violets for Beth), and Patricia Watwood (Burch's translation of Rumi's "The Field").

Textbooks: Several Burch poems and translations have been included in high school and college courseware, including a high school textbook published by National Geographic Learning and a book titled Reading Medieval English Literature published by Yaroslavl State University (Russia) with Burch's translations of "Deor's Lament" and "The Wife's Lament."

Letters: Hundred of Burch's letters, articles, opinion pieces and poems have been published by major newspapers, news services and magazines which include TIME, USA Today, The Guardian (UK), The Hindu (India), The Telegraph (India), Daily Indonesia, Daily Sun (Bangladesh), Eurasia Review, De Volksrant (Holland), Promosaik (Denmark/Germany), Uyghur Times, Pride Magazine (Nigeria), Qingdao News (East Timor), The News International (Pakistan), Kashmir News, Sri Lanka Guardian, Colombo Telegraph (Sri Lanka), CNN.com, BBC Radio 3, Daily Kos, Black Kos, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Tennessean, The Nashville City Paper, The Knoxville News Sentinel, The Columbus Dispatch, Amnesty International, The Anti-Defamation League, UNHCR (the UN refugee agency), European Union Erasmus Project (for exceptional students), American Dissident, Dissident Voice, Writer’s Digest-The Year’s Best Writing, Writer's Gazette, Writers' Journal, ByLine, and many others.

Literary Journals: Angle, Asses of Parnassus, The Aurorean, Better Than Starbucks, Black Medina, Blue Unicorn, Borderless Journal, Boston Poetry Magazine, Brief Poems, Byline, The Chained Muse, The Chariton Review, The Chimaera, Contemporary Rhyme, The Eclectic Muse, Erosha, First Things, The Flea, Icon, Journal of the Arts and Humanities, Light Quarterly, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, Measure, Nebo, New Lyre, Penny Dreadful, Poem Today, Poet Lore, Poetry Super Highway, The Raintown Review, Romantics Quarterly, Southwest Review, Writer's Digest, Writer’s Gazette, Writer’s Journal, Unlikely Stories, Verse Weekly, and hundreds more.

Human Rights: Burch's poems and translations have been published and/or used in human rights activism by Amnesty International ("First They Came for the Muslims"), the UN Refugee Agency aka UNHCR ("Neglect"), and the Anti-Defamation League in partnership with the Aspen Institute (Burch's translation of "Enough for Me" by Fadwa Tuqan).

Poems published by Major Newspapers and News Services: The Hindu ("First they came for the Muslims"), The Telegraph ("Peace Prayer" cited), Thanal Online ("Brother Iran"), BBC Radio 3 (several Sappho translations), The Brunei Times ("For a Child of Gaza, with Butterflies"), Germany's ProMosaik (interview and Gaza poems), Holland's de Volkskrant ("Auschwitz Rose" and "Neglect"), South Africa’s New Age Newspaper ("Mandela!"), Nigeria's Vanguard Newspaper ("Neglect"), Kashmir News ("Epitaph"), Sri Lanka's Colombo Telegraph, Sunday Observer and Tamil Free Thoughts ("Epitaph"), Gabon's Aiboja News (Sappho translation), Nashville's The Contributor ("For a Homeless Child, with Butterflies"), The Columbus Dispatch ("Pity Clarity"), The Lewiston Tribune ("Ass-tronomical," a limerick about Albert Einstein and relativity), European Tribune (Who, US?), Sindhu News (14 poems)

Quora: On Quora where he writes primarily about poetry, politics and sports, Burch has over 37 million page views, more than 300K upvotes, nearly 100K comments, 16K shares and 6.4K followers. He has 50+ Quora articles with over 100K views, including: Was Babe Ruth Black? (742K), The Notorious Tallulah Bankhead (592K), Kobe vs. Clyde (532K), Trump Relocation (314K), Trump Stature (303K), Trump Post-Presidency (287K), Sandy Koufax (253K), Melania Hand-Slapping (251K), Best Outfield Arms (159K), Poetry Couplets (39K), Rock Poetry (39K), Pablo Neruda Translations (7.5K), "Abide" (4.2K), Naughty Limericks (3.8K), Poems about Adam and Eve (3.4K), "Chrysalis" (2.7K), "Sometimes the Dead" (2.6K), and "something of sunshine attracted my i" (2.6K, a poem Burch wrote in high school), Song Lyrics (1.7K), "Having Touched You" (1.6K), Epigrams III (1.5K), Epigrams I (1.4K), Ancient Mayan Translations (1.3K), "The Better Man" (1.3K), Charles Baudelaire Translations (1.2K), Poems For and After William Blake (1.2K), Urdu Translations (1.2K), Oldest Haiku (1.1K), "Polish" (1.1K), Gaza Poems (1.1K), "The Making of a Poet" (1K), "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful" (1K), "Polish Those Talons!" (1K), "These Hallowed Halls" (1K), Poems About Flight (1K), "Laughter's Cry" (1K), Most Popular Poems (1K)

Viral Poems with Google results/viewable pages: "First They Came for the Muslims" (823K/287), "Epitaph" (92K/317), "Bible Libel" (78K/199), Einstein "Hazy/Crazy" epigram (34K/271), "Elegy for a little girl, lost" (21K/315), Sappho "Your lips were made to mock" translation (20K/135), "Survivors" (12.1K/75), Sappho "Eros harrows my heart" translation (3.6K/319), "The Harvest of Roses" (3.6K), Bertolt Brecht "The Burning of the Books" translation (1.5K/285), "In the Whispering Night" (1.6K), "Something" (1.5K/323), "The Greatest of These" (1.5K), "Frail Envelope of Flesh" (1.4K/311), "Safe Harbor" (1.4K/304), "Piercing the Shell (1.4K), Robert Burns "To a Mouse" translation (1.4K/270), "Mother's Smile" (1.3K/312), "Autumn Conundrum" (1.2K/322), "Haunted" (1.2K), "How Long the Night" translation (1.2K/322), "I Pray Tonight" (1.1K), Yamaguchi Seishi "Where Does the Butterfly Go?" (1.3K), "Grasses wilt" translation (1.1K/200), Glaucus "Does my soul abide" translation (1K/189), William Dunbar "Sweet Rose of Virtue" translation (731/232), Sappho "That enticing girl's clinging dresses" translation (685/90), Plato "A kinder sea" translation (647/267), "Child of 9-11 (645/145), "Like Angels, Winged" (585/191), "Saving Graces" (568/244), "Einstein the frizzy-haired" limerick (549/145), "Neglect" (540/114), "How Long the Night" translation (529/227), Basho "Awed jonquil" translation (495/176), "Auschwitz Rose" (435/156), Matsuo Basho "Kiri tree" haiku translation (413/180), Takaha Shugyo "Fallen camellias" translation (363/147), Matsuo Basho "Frog leaps" haiku translation (346/183), "escape!" (336/192), Fukuda Chiyo-ni "Ah butterfly" translation (292/136), "Pale Though Her Eyes" (276/117), Vera Pavlova "Shattered" translation (253/103), Sappho "She keeps her scents" translation (233/62), Miklos Radnoti "Postcard 4" translation (232/101), O no Yasumaro "Plumegrass wilts" translation (206/123), "Ali's Song" (191/112), "Nun Fun Undone" (169/95), Ko Un "Speechless" translation (149/79)

NOTE: Google results fluctuate and the figures above are merely "snapshots" taken at random times. The second figure is the number of individual pages that can be accessed and viewed directly via Google. 

Most Popular Online Articles: Early Poems; Rejection Slips; Epigrams and Quotes; No Hell in the Bible; The Most Beautiful Poems in the English Language; The Best Erotic Poems; The Best Limericks

Most Published and Awarded Poems: "Epitaph," "Frail Envelope of Flesh," "Tremble," "See," "Ali's Song," "Ordinary Love," "Isolde's Song," "In Flight Convergence," "Neglect," "Something," "Auschwitz Rose," "Abide," "Bible Libel," "Child of 9-11," "Flight 93," "Salat Days," "Passionate One," "Redolence," "Love Has a Southern Flavor," "Discrimination"

The epigram below has been published by AZquotes as one of the "Top 17 Very Witty Quotes" along with quotes by Shakespeare, Groucho Marx and other luminaries. The epigram has also been published, along with hundreds of other Burch epigrams, by CrackSpy, FamousQuotes, GreatSayings, Idlehearts, JarOfQuotes, LetUsQuote, MoreFamousQuotes, MyQuotes, PictureQuotes, QuoteFancy, QuoteMaster, and other quote sites.

Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!

Most Popular Translations, Interpretations and Modernizations: Basho, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Burns, Caedmon, Paul Celan, Thomas Chatterton, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Dunbar, Ahmad Faraz, Atilla Ilhan, Allama Iqbal, Ono no Komachi, Primo Levi, Plato, Miklos Radnoti, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sappho, Sir Thomas Wyatt, "Bede's Death Song", "Caedmon's Hymn," "Deor's Lament," "Fowles in the Frith," "Lament for the Makaris," "Sweet Rose of Virtue," "Whoso List to Hunt," "The Wife's Lament," "Wulf and Eadwacer," Native American blessings and proverbs, Urdu love poems

A Note about Translations: Burch subscribes to the idea of les belles infidèles: Like women, translations should be either beautiful or faithful. Of course women can be both beautiful and faithful, but the most faithful word-for-word translations seldom if ever result in poetry in a second language. As the great Rabindranath Tagore explained, he needed leeway when translating his own Bengali poems into English, if he wanted the result to be poetry. Therefore, Burch calls his translations "loose translations" and "interpretations" and does not attempt to translate word-by-word with complete fidelity. Rather, he attempts to "grok" the poet and the poem to the best of his ability, then create poetry based on his interpretation of the original work and its author's intentions. For more information please click this link:

Michael R. Burch Translation Notes, Methods and Credits to Other Translators

BBC Radio 3: A number of Burch's Sappho translations were read on BBC Radio 3 by Diana Quick and Sophie Ward. Diana Quick is an English actress best known for the role of Lady Julia Flyte in the television production of Brideshead Revisited. Sophie Ward is an English actress who played Elizabeth Hardy, the love interest of Sherlock Holmes, in the film Young Sherlock Holmes.

Other Translations: The poems of Michael R. Burch have been translated into 19 languages by 26 translators: (1) Arabic by Nizar Sartawi and Iqbal Tamimi; (2) Bengali by Jewel Mazhar/Majhar; (3) Chinese by Chen Bolai, (4) Croatian by Teodora "Tea" Pecarina; (5) Czech by Václav Z J Pinkava; (6) Farsi by Dr. Mahnaz Badihian, Farideh Hassanzadeh Mostafavi and RahelYahia; (7) Gjuha Shqipe (Albanian) by Majlinda Bashllari; (8) Greek by Γεράσιμος Κομποθέκρας (Gerassimos Kombothekras) and published by the University of Athens; (9) Hungarian by István Bagi; (10) Indonesian by A. J. Anwar; (11) Italian by Comasia Aquaro and Mario Rigli; (12) Macedonian by Marija Girevska; (13) Romanian by Petru Dimofte; (14) Russian by Yelena Dubrovin and Vera Zubarev; (15) Turkish by Nurgül Yayman; (16) Vietnamese by Linh Vu (there are around a hundred Vietnamese translations of Burch's original poems and English translations of Oriental poetry); (17) Punjabi by the translators of the Literary School of Education; (18) Polish by Inga B. Kuzma; (19) Bulgarian by Iveta Kraleva

Public Readings (125+ including YouTube and other Online Readings):

"The Effects of Memory" was read as part of the Candlelight Reading Series, on Valentine's Day in 2006.
Fourteen (14) of Burch's Sappho translations were read on BBC Radio 3 by Diana Quick and Sophie Ward.
Two (2) of Burch's Sappho translations (odes to Anactoria #31 and #94) were to be read on radio station KMUN in Astoria, Oregon in 2023.
David Gosselin has done public recitals of "Love Has a Southern Flavor" and "Something."
Robert Davidson read "Something" at Somers High School after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings.
Burch read four (4) of his poems for the How Sweet the Night poetry CD published by Romantics Quarterly in 2002: "Ordinary Love," "Goddess," "Circe" and "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful."
"I, too, have a dream" was read during a podcast by Mitali Chakravarty, the editor of Borderless Journal.

YouTube Readings and Other Videos (100+):

"For a Ukrainian Child with Butterflies" was set to music by Pauli Hansen and performed by a choir at the Nordic House in Torshavn, Faroe Islands
YouTube readings (3) by Ben Reads Poetry (Ben W. Smith): "Moments," "Infinity," "Will There Be Starlight"
YouTube videos (7) by Lillian Y. Wong: "Ali's Song," "Something," "Survivors," "At Wilfred Owen's Grave," "Auschwitz Rose," Miklos Radnoti "Postcard 1" translation
YouTube readings (7) by 3-Minute Buddhism of Issa translations by Michael R. Burch: Snail, Cricket, Skinny Frog, World of Dew, Tardy Moon, Wild Geese, Tomcat
YouTube videos (5) of musical performances by Dima Bawab and Eduard de Boer: "The Children of Gaza" (song cycle)
YouTube reading (5) by Alice Ho: Burch’s translations of Native American poems
YouTube readings (3) by Jasper Sole: "Moments," "Something," "Enigma"
YouTube readings (17) by David Gosselin: "To Have Loved," "Sappho Fragment 16," "Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite," "Sappho's Ode to Anactoria," "Love Has a Southern Flavor," "Something," "Pan," "Daredevil," "Free Fall," "Besieged," Li Bai "Spring Breeze" translation, "R.I.P.," "In the Whispering Night," "Insurrection," "Resurrecting Passion," "Righteous," "Violets"
YouTube video by Leandros Corieltauvorum of a Burch translation of Sappho fragment 52 "Pleiades"
YouTube video of the mixed media play Summoning the Spirit: Poems of Komachi features several Burch translations of Komachi poems
YouTube recording of the music to An Ardent Love Affair with lyrics by Burch
YouTube reading by Vaishali Paliwal: a Burch translation of Mirza Ghalib's "Not the blossomings of songs"
YouTube reading by Vaishali Paliwal: a Burch translation of Mirza Ghalib's "It’s time for the world to hear Ghalib again!"
YouTube video by Shila Roshid: a poem Burch wrote as The Child Poets of Gaza, "I, Too, Have a Dream"
YouTube reading by G.M. Danielson: "Pale Though Her Eyes"
YouTube reading by Per Irma Video/Aurora G: "Ghost"
YouTube reading by Carmen Garcia with music (piano accompaniment): "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful"
YouTube reading by 1994wee: "Memory"
YouTube analysis of the ghazal by Anupam Mishra: used a translation of the Nasir Kazmi poem "What Happened To Them?"
YouTube Darfur video by Vallana88: incorporated "Neglect"
YouTube reading by Haunting Poems for Halloween/Charles: "All Hallow's Eve"
YouTube video by Sarah Ahmed of the Livingstone Sonnet Project: William Dunbar "Sweet Rose of Virtue" translation
YouTube video by Jenna Thiel and Jake Owens: rap/singing version of William Dunbar "Sweet Rose of Virtue" translation
YouTube reading by Jordan Harling: William Dunbar "Sweet Rose of Virtue" translation
YouTube reading/video: O no Yasumaro "plumegrass wilts" translation
YouTube musical performance by Devan Wardrop-Saxton: "A Kinder Sea" Plato translation
YouTube video by Book Feast, in English and Tamil: a discussion of Burch's translation of "The Burning of the Books" by Bertolt Brecht
YouTube video by Literally Yours (Malayalam): using Burch's translation of "The Burning of the Books" by Bertolt Brecht
YouTube reading by Bourbonnais Public Library: "Vampires"
YouTube musical performance by Sigrid Vipa: "I Have a Yong Suster" translation, singing with a 12-string Celtic harp
YouTube reading by Himel Khandakar Himu: "Deor's Lament" translation
YouTube cello interpretation by Jenny Jackson: "The Wife's Lament" translation
YouTube reading by PoemNeverDies of "Iz" by Abdurehim Otkur used my English translation as a reference
YouTube reading by SongofAndred: "Song of Amergin" translation
YouTube reading by Reaction Romance: "Are You the Thief"
YouTube reading by Filha de Hecate-Roseira: Burch's translation of "Temple Hymn 15" by Enheduanna
YouTube video by Shomoy Mahmud: incorporated Burch's translation of Masaoka Shiki's "Swat the flies" haiku
YouTube video by Armand Amar: "Epitaph for a Homeless Child" was published by Armand Amar with his composition "Home"
YouTube Poetry Life and Times: Anthology faces compilation
YouTube reading by Tadj Abdelhafid: Burch's interpretation of Albert Einstein quotes as the poems "Relativity" and "Solitude"
YouTube "kinetic type" video by Jeffrey Michael Miller: Burch's interpretation of Albert Einstein quotes as the poem "Imagination"
YouTube relaxation/meditation video "The Nature of Nature" by Asma Masooma: "The Leveler" was excerpted
YouTube relaxation/meditation video "Heartbeat" by Natures' ASMR: "Passionate One" was quoted in full
YouTube video by Ivana Jenaj: published "Epitaph"
YouTube video by Rosita Laroda: used Burch/Yayman translation of "You are indispensable" by Attila Ilhan
YouTube reading by World History Encyclopedia: Burch's translation of "Lament to the Spirit of War" by Enheduanna
YouTube video by ShareInspireQuotes: Albert Einstein "hazy/crazy" interpretation
YouTube reading by Sneha R: Burch's translation of "Deor's Lament"
YouTube reading by Bloodghoul Narrations: "Pale Though Her Eyes"
Vimeo video of a Bedales School reading of Burch's translation of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns
TikTok reading of "Christmas Wishes" by Charli Day
TikTok excerpt of "Frail Envelope of Flesh" by Sentient Pie Factory
YouTube video by Mahryn Rose Barron using Burch's translation of Sappho fragment #147 as the closing statement for a lovely and artistic film/video titled "My Sappho."
New Lyre and YouTube podcast of Dave Gosselin reading "Infinity" and discussing it with Adam Sedia.
YouTube reading by iswearenglish: "Wulf and Eadwacer"
YouTube reading by Delusion Love: "Poetry"
YouTube reading by Adelia Gracealla Tamba: "As Time Walked By"
YouTube video by Intro to Anthro (Episode 5) included Burch's translation of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns

Other Publications and Collaborations:

Burch had a weekly column in The Nashville City Paper for three years, until it ceased publication.

Burch served as an editor and translator of the book Hiroshima: Bridge to Forgiveness by Hiroshima survivor Takashi "Thomas" Tanemori (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Burch provided English translations of Hebrew poems by Adi Wolfson, the 2017 winner of Israel's prestigious Levi Eshkol Prize for Literature, in two books: I Am Your Father and Oikos.

Burch edited the book Have Pool Cue Will Travel by Mark C. O'Brien; the book is about the exploits of pool legend "St. Louie" Louie Roberts and other colorful pool characters.

Benjamin Jones used extensive excerpts from a Burch article in his book Pete Rose Unforgiven Forever and credited Burch prominently on the book's second page.

Burch edited the book The Fascism This Time by Theo Horesh.

Burch's translation of Minamoto no Shitago’s "autumn fields" haiku is slated not only to be published, but to play a somewhat pivotal role, in Fourteen Days, a collaborative work of fiction by world-famous authors like Margaret Atwood (also a co-editor), Diana Gabaldon, John Grisham, Erica Jong, Mary Pope Osborne, R.L. Stine and Scott Turow. Fourteen Days is being published by The Authors Guild Foundation, America's oldest and largest professional organization that advocates for the rights of authors, and Harper Collins. The haiku in question compares our world to a darkening field briefly lit by lightning flashes. Author’s Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger described the plot of one of the episodes as follows: "The story in the book takes place in a building on New York City's lower East Side at the beginning of the pandemic when the tenants meet nightly on the roof to share stories. The book weaves the stories together while reporting on the various goings-on among the tenants. Our just-past president, author Doug Preston, wrote the frame narrative that provides the background of the characters and introduces the stories each evening. One evening the residents come up to the roof to find a poem written on the wall – in Japanese and with your translation." The proceeds from Fourteen Days will go towards furthering the Guild's mission of "educating, supporting, advocating and protecting American writers to ensure that a rich, diverse body of literature can flourish."

Malika Favre requested permission to use the "cliff" stanza from a Burch translation of Baudelaire in her upcoming art book the Kama Sutra Project. "Malika Favre is a French artist based in London. Her bold, minimal style – often described as Pop Art meets OpArt – is a striking lesson in the use of positive/negative space and colour. Her unmistakable style has established her as one of the UK’s most sought after graphic artists." Malika’s publishers include The New Yorker, Vogue, Marie Claire and "many others."

Burch wrote the Introduction to From Pittville to Paradise by Felicity Teague.

Burch's translation of the poem "Let us Be Midwives" by Hiroshima survivor Sadako Kurihara has been published on a Hiroshima University Facebook page (seminar of Professor Mari Katayanagi, Department of Peace and Coexistence, IDEC, Hiroshima University).

Burch's poem "First They Came for the Muslims" has been published by Amnesty International in its Words That Burn anthology, which is being used to train young human rights activists. The poem returned 891,000 Google results for its most unique line, suggesting that the poem has "gone viral" in a big way.

Burch's translation of the Robert Burns poem "Comin' Thro the Rye" was published in the book Guide to Enjoying Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters by John P. Anderson.

Burch wrote the introduction to the book Pope Caesar's Wake by the Maltese poet Joe M. Ruggier. Burch also assisted with the editing and production of the book, as mentioned by Ruggier in his Acknowledgements (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Burch wrote the Foreword to Sunil Sharma's poetry collection What trees tell the mortals and other songs and was mentioned in Sharma's Dedication. 

In the notes to her poetry collection A Kinder Sea, the Australian poet Felicity Plunkett said the title was "inspired by Michael Burch’s translation of a poem attributed to Plato: ‘Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be, but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.’"

Australian composer Daniel Brinsmead requested permission to use A Kinder Sea as the title for one of his compositions.

The Canadian writer Julian Smith took the title of his book The World of Dew and Other Stories from a Burch translation of a haiku by Kobayashi Issa.

Australian writer Diana Jarman requested permission to use five Burch translations in her work of historical fiction, The Philatelist's Album. The translations requested were Burch's "night flies" and "wild geese" translations of two Masaoka Shiki haiku, his "bonfires" translations of an Issa haiku, his "victor" translation of an Ouchi Yoshitaka poem, and his "arrow" translation of a Tomoyuki Yamashita poem.

English artist Emma Burleigh requested permission to use Burch's translation of Basho's "chrysanthemum dew" haiku in her watercolor book Earth Color.

Burch's translations were quoted multiple times in Enheduanna: The First Author, a novel by Alatary.

Burch's translation of Ono no Komachi's "ill winds" poem was quoted in the novel I Am the Wild by Karpov Kinrade.

Jennifer Nicola, a photographer, interpreted Burch's vampire poem "Pale Though Her Eyes" with with model Megan Heatlie.

Peter Delahaye, an English abstract artist living in Venice, requested permission to use Burch's poems with his abstract painting series "Dawn."

Burch's original poem "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" appears in the book A Game with the Mind by John A. Fosse

Burch's poem "Floating" is forthcoming in Imagine the Erne (a book of photography and poetry by Richard Pierce).

Patricia Watwood, an American figurative artist, requested permission to use Burch's translation of "The Field" by Rumi in her book The Path of Drawing.

Burch's poems "Almost" and "Enigma" were published in a poetry collection, WORDS going places, by Chris Newlon Green.

Burch's translation of "Caedmon's Hymn" is to be published in a forthcoming book by Jason Marlowe.

Burch's translation of the Ouchi Yoshitaka "dewdrops" haiku was quoted in The Last Dead Man by Conor Barnes.

Burch's translation of "Lament to the Spirit of War" by the ancient Sumerian poetess-priestess Enheduanna was excerpted by William Sheehan and Sanjay Shridhar Limaye in their book Venus.

Burch's translation of "Lament to the Spirit of War" by the ancient Sumerian poetess-priestess Enheduanna was translated into Polish in the book Kobieta by Inga B. Kuzma and published by the University of Lodz, Poland.

Burch's translation of “My Very Gentle Valentine” by Charles d’Orleans was published by the University of Gdansk on its website.

Burch's translation of “Bede’s Death Song” was published by Houston Baptist University on its website.

"The Pictish Faeries" appeared  in Voiceless, a novel by Lunawritings.

“Earthbound” was published in the novel Fear the Shadow: The Invasion by Michael Wayne.

Burch's translation of a "Kinder Sea" epigram attributed to Plato is scheduled to be included in a memoir by Jennifer Joy Molter.

Four haiku translations are slated to appear in a forthcoming book by Marielle Dufva.

Burch's bio of Adah Isaacs Menken was requested by Richard Kostelanetz for his book AVANT-GARDE CLASSICS.

Burch sponsored and provided production funding for Zyskandar Jaimot's poetry collection Take Me Home to Pringus, as mentioned by Jaimot in his Acknowledgements (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Burch sponsored and provided production funding for Tom Merrill's poetry collection Outlaw's Retreat, as mentioned by editor Joe M. Ruggier on page II of the preliminaries and on the back cover (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Burch sponsored and provided production funding for V. Ulea's poetry collection Lunar Rhapsody, as acknowledged on the back cover (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Burch sponsored the poetry collection 42 Poems in Rhyme and Meter by Mary Keelan Meisel (published posthumously with the permission of her family) and assisted with the editing and publication as mentioned by chief editor Joe M. Ruggier on page II of the preliminaries (published by MBooks of BC, Canada).

Reviews of The HyperTexts:

Oxford University called The HyperTexts "dynamic and challenging" with a "different approach" to poetry, on its ARCH resource page for the Arts & Humanities.

"Some of the best poetry on the web."―Vera Ignatowitsch, editor-in-chief of Better Than Starbucks

"The HyperTexts reads like a Who's Who in contemporary poetry today."—Michael Morton, Director of the Net Poetry & Arts Competition

Published Interviews (14):

An asterisk means Burch was the interviewer, the lack of an asterisk means Burch was the interviewee.

A Long Story Short/Poet's Corner
ArtVilla
Better than Starbucks
Eternal Voices
Kajal Ahmad (*)
Tom Merrill (*)
Richard Moore (*)
On the Road with Judy "Joy" Jones
Poetry Life & Times
ProMosaik
Pressenza
Triplopia
Vallance Review
John Whitworth (*)

Poems by other Poets: Michael R. Burch has been mentioned in poems by other poets, including "For Michael Burch" by Vera Zubarev, "DEFINING POETRY —To Mike Burch" by Norman Kraeft, and "Go Visit the Tree…I Tell Myself" by Reta Lorraine Bowen Taylor.

Influences:

Michael R. Burch cites his major poetic and artistic influences as follows: Matsuo Basho (for saying so much in so few words), William Blake (the world's greatest poet/artist along with Michelangelo), Robert Burns (for melody), e. e. cummings (for breaking the rules in pursuit of better poems), A. E. Housman (for "no frills" direct statement), Langston Hughes (for evocative truth-telling), Tom Merrill (for individuality and uniqueness of voice), Michelangelo (for bringing angels to life), Richard Thomas Moore (for skepticism), Sappho (for passion), Mark Twain (for humor), Voltaire (for foxiness and outwitting his enemies), and Walt Whitman (for breaking the mold in so many ways).

Pseudonyms and Aliases: Michael R. Burch has, at times, published under the pseudonyms Kim Cherub (a rearrangement of the letters in "Mike Burch"), prophetically as Immanuel A. Michael (with the middle initial standing for "Archangel"), and as "The Child Poets of Gaza"

Holocaust Studies and Books about the Holocaust:

The original poems and translations of Michael R. Burch have been used in many Holocaust studies and student projects and presentations over the years. The original poems most frequently used in Holocaust studies include "Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust," "Frail Envelope of Flesh," "Something" and "Auschwitz Rose."

Michael R. Burch's translation of "Postcard 3" by Miklos Radnoti appeared on Academia.edu in the essay "Reweighing Genocide on an International Legal Scale" by Souryja Das (Indonesia).

Michael R. Burch's translation of "Postcard 4" by Miklos Radnoti has been published or is is scheduled to be published in:

The 1944 Crvenka Massacre by Caroline Mezger
The Fist Which Opens by Rati Saxena
Generations Shall Call Them Blessed, a book about the Holocaust for Christians by Dan Paulson
The Akron Beacon Journal
Also in literary journals and websites which include Poetry Super Highway, Better Than Starbucks, Boloji, San Diego Jewish World, Promosaik, Convivium, Pig Pen Poetry, Progressive Poetry Forum, Poemist, Romenu (Romania), Mae’r Byd (Hungary), Hungarian Cultural Center London, Australian Indigenous Perspectives, the Suffolk Poetry Society website, and a YouTube montage by LYW (Lillian Y. Wong)

Religious Services, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples:

"Peace Prayer" was published on the website of The Episcopal Church of St. Matthew (San Mateo, CA); the Holocaust poem "Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address" was published by Archbishop Michael Seneco on his Facebook page and personal website; the Holocaust poem "Something" was used by the Windsor Jewish Community Centre during a candle-lighting ceremony; "Something" was used by Park Hill Church during a Holocaust remembrance service; "Something" was read by Robert Davidson during a vigil with Rabbi Jason Nevarez of Temple Shaaray Tefila at Somers High School.

Colleges/Universities (28):

University of Arizona Poetry Center, US (Sappho fragment 113 honey/bee translation)

University of Athens, Greece ("She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful" translated into Greek by Gerassimos Kombothekras)

Auburn University, US ("Wulf and Eadwacer" translation)

Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine (Burch's translation/modernization of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns was excerpted in an essay by Karolina Galkina that was published on the university’s website. Karolina Galkina later published “The peculiarities of translating Robert Burns’ poetry into Standard English” in Scientific Horizons. Galkina's introduction began with a paragraph from Burch's introduction to the poetry of Burns and the essay’s first excerpted translation was a stanza from “To a Mouse.” A second excerpt was a stanza from Burch's translation/modernization of “A Red, Red Rose.” )

University of Connecticut, US ("Sandy Hook Call to Love")

C.U.N.Y., US  ("Wulf and Eadwacer" translation taught by Dr. Elizabeth Mazzola in an upper-division elective class, English 45401 "Roaring Girls")

University of Edinburgh, "Deor's Lament" translation to be used at a Medieval Literature conference by postgraduate student Rebekah Day

Evergreen College, US (Miklos Radnoti "Postcard 2" translation)

Grand Valley State University, US ("Caedmon’s Hymn" translation taught)

Hiroshima University, Japan ("Let Us Be Midwives" translation)

Icon, a publication of Kent State University, US ("The Poet")

Kenyatta University, Kenya (eight poems)

Leicester University, UK (William Blake citation)

Los Angeles Harbor College, US  ("Caedmon’s Hymn" translation)

University of Lodz, Poland, published Burch's translation of "Lament to the Spirit of War" by the ancient Sumerian poetess-priestess Enheduanna in a  Polish translation in the book Kobieta and credited Burch's English translation.

Nebo, a publication of Arkansas Tech University, US ("Reckoning")

Open University, UK (Takaha Shugyo translation being taught)

Oxford University, UK (a highly positive ARCH review of The HyperTexts)

University of Pennsylvania website (links to four Vera Pavlov translations)

St. John’s College, UK ("Caedmon’s Hymn" translation)

St. John’s College, UK, (Robert Burns "To a Mouse" translation/modernization)

Salford University, UK ("Auschwitz Rose")

Salu Ghotki University, Pakistan (Bertolt Brecht translation)

Southern Methodist University, US ("Ebb Tide" published in Southwest Review)

University of Virginia, US ("Are You the Thief")

Wichita State University, US (Robert Burns translation/modernization in a lesson plan)

Yaroslavl State University, Russia ("Deor’s Lament" and "The Wife’s Lament" translations)

Education:

The poems and translations of Michael R. Burch have been taught, recited, published and/or otherwise used by secondary schools, high schools and universities in the following countries: Canada (Alberta Science Teachers Association, Albert Einstein "Solitude" translation), England (Salford University, "Auschwitz Rose," Southend-on-Sea Borough, "Neglect," and several others), France (secondary school, "Vampires"), Greece (University of Athens, "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful" as translated by Gerassimos Kombothekras), Iran (secondary, "Brother Iran" in a Farsi translation), Italy (high school, "Orpheus" and other Blakean poems), Japan (Hiroshima University, "Let Us Be Midwives" translation), Jordan (Jo Academy, "To a Mouse" translation), Kenya (Kenyatta University, eight poems), Pakistan (Salu Ghotki University, Bertolt Brecht translations), Russia (Yaroslavl State University "Deor's Lament" and "The Wife's Lament" translations), Serbia (Kosovo middle school, "Where Does the Butterfly Go"), Ukraine (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, "To a Mouse" translation), and the United States (Auburn University "Wulf and Eadwacer" translation, "Sandy Hook Call to Love" was to be published by the University of Connecticut in Public Speaking: A Bridge to Success as an example of emotive writing, Kent State University, SMU, Wichita State University, Tennessee Technological University, and many others).

Burch's translations of "Bede's Death Song," "Caedmon's Hymn" and "Wulf and Eadwacer" have been used in courseware by the Classical Latin School Association and Memoria Press.

Burch's translation of Takaha Shugyo's "rowboat" poem is slated to be used in courseware by Open University. Open University is the UK's largest university by number of students, and one of the world's largest, with over 175,000 students.

Burch's most popular poems with educators and students are his "Epitaph," "Auschwitz Rose" and other Holocaust poems and translations, and his Robert Burns translations.

Quoted and/or Cited in Scholarly Works (400+):

According to the Academia.edu search engine, the exact name "Michael R. Burch" (in quotation marks) appeared in 404 papers as of 8-31-2022. There are many more occurrences of the name "Michael Burch" but some of those pertain to other writers with the same first and last name.

Burch's translations of "Wulf and Eadwacer" were used in an essay "Venus sans furs" by Elizabeth Mazzola, a Professor of English at The City College of New York. Dr. Mazzola commented: "I wanted to share with you the final proofs for my essay on women and wolves, which features your exquisite work on 'Wulf and Eadwacer.' Your scholarship is outstanding and provocative and has made all the difference to my reading of this poem, and I hope you enjoy the essay."

Burch was the first contemporary writer mentioned in Katarzyna Poreba’s dissertation THE LEGACY OF WILLIAM BLAKE IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE published by TARNÓW STATE COLLEGE, Poland.

Burch's translation of "To the Martyrs of Çanakkale" by Mehmet Akif Ersoy was used in the Routledge Studies essay "Reflections on the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkish Literature" by Safak Horzum

Burch's translation of "To the Martyrs of Çanakkale" by Mehmet Akif Ersoy was used in the essay "THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NATIONALIST AND JIHADIST NARRATIVES OF GALLIPOLI, 1915-2015" by Ayhan Aktar published in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2

Burch's translation of "Temple Hymn 7" by Enheduanna was quoted in "The Chronological Outline of the Scythians, Arattas, Ancient Persians, Cimmerians, Hittites, Hurrians (Mitanni), Romas (Gypsies), and Tokharins" by Vedveer Arya on Academia.edu.

Burch was cited three times in "American inaugural poetry: poetics and style" by Iryna Yakovenko, PhD, Taras Shevchenko National University, Chernihiv, Ukraine.

Burch's original poem "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child" was used as the lead epigraph in Genocide: A Political Discretion by Nagendram Braveen on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "The Burning of the Books" by Bertolt Brecht was used in War Machines by David Brian Howard on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "The Burning of the Books" by Bertolt Brecht was cited in The Aesthetics of Violence by Hans Jacob Ohldieck and Gisle Selnes

Burch's translation of "Postcard 3" by Miklos Radnoti was used in the essay "Reweighing Genocide on an International Legal Scale" by Souryja Das on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of Basho's famous frog poem was used in the essay "The Role of Language and the Significance of Primordialism in Nationalistic Rhetoric" by Elisa Vitali on Academia.edu

Burch's translations of Enheduanna were cited in the essay "Kobieta – przestrzeń konfliktów, pole walk. Szkice z antropologii politycznej" by Inga B. Kuźma and Edyta B. Pietrzak on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "Every Once in a While" by Amjad Islam Amjad was published in full and discussed in detail in the essay "Semantic, Pragmatic and Cultural Equivalence in the Source Text and Target Text of the Selected Poetry of Amjad Islam Amjad" by Ruqia Wazir and Muhammad Arfan Lodhi posted on rafaad.com and Academia.edu.

Burch's observation that to the mystics "[God] is the great sea of unity and each human being is like an individual wave arising from that sea and collapsing back into it" was quoted by Mahmut Kayaalti in CONTROVERSIAL REPRESENTATION OF GOD AND CHRISTIANITY IN WILLIAM BLAKE’S SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE published by Istanbul University, Turkey.

Burch's translation of "The Song of Amergin" was published by Heidi Hanley in her essay "Longfellow Was a Druid."

"Frail Envelope of Flesh" appeared in a Vietnamese translation in Tho Tru Tinh ("New Romanticism") by Ngu Yen on Academia.edu

Burch's "boneless" Anglo-Saxon riddle translation was used in "Los Aspectos Sonoros" by Celene Garcia-Avila on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "Comin Thro the Rye" by Robert Burns was used by Cavdar Tarlasinda Buyumek in an essay with the same title on Academia.edu

Burch was quoted and/or cited seven times in Accents and Paradoxes of Modern Philology published by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, edited by Svitlana Kryvoruchko, Doctor of sciences (Philology).

Burch was quoted in the essay "Carceral Christianization as a Religious Problem of Generations" by Robin Mitchell Stroud, PhD on Academia.edu.

Burch was cited twice in "The Existence – The Dimension of the Mind" by Anne Henriques on Academia.edu.

Burch's translation was cited twice in Translating "The Wife's Lament" to Modern English by Hussein Medlej on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "The Wife's Lament" was cited twice in a paper by Hussein Medlej on Academia.edu.

Burch was cited in the essay "Cledisat: un esempio d'inquinamento testuale" by Maurizio Perugi on Academia.edu.

Burch's translations of "Wulf and Eadwacer" were mentioned in a Hungarian essay about the poem by Julia Kepes.

Burch was cited in a German article about William Blake written by Jarkko Pylvas and published on Academia.edu.

Burch's original poem "See" was cited in "Examples of Figures of Speech" by Aysegul Safak on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "Caedmon's Hymn" was cited in "Famous Sonnets of English Poets" by Mohsin Mirza on Academia.edu

Burch's translation of "Fragment 42" by Sappho was cited in "Examples of Figures of Speech" by Aysegul Safak on Academia.edu

Burch's "Famous Insults" collection was cited in "Fundamental Values ​​of Language and Culture" by Аnna Proskurina.

An interview Burch did with Esther Cameron was cited in "Tracing the Journey of Paul Celan’s Poetry" by Jana Vytrhlik on Academia.edu.

Burch was quoted and his translations of Robert Burns were cited in "The Poet, the President, and the Preservationist: Robert Burns, Abraham Lincoln, and John Muir" by Walter G. Moss on Academia.edu

Syracuse University published the thesis "Antichrist in the Oval Office" by Meagan Bojarski on its website. The 88-page thesis is dedicated almost exclusively to The HyperTexts and to one THT page in particular, which questions how similar Trump is to antichrists as they are discussed in the Bible. The page makes no claim that Trump is the Antichrist or an antichrist, and leaves all decisions up to the reader. Bojarski’s thesis had the following word counts: Burch (11), The Hypertexts (62), the specific page (43).

Other Citations:

Burch's observations about his translation of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns were quoted by Hollywood Progressive.

Burch was cited as a prominent publisher of modern sonnets in the 21st century in the book Poetry Kaleidoscope by Nicolae Sfetcu.

Health and Wellness:

"Syndrome" was published by the National Association for Down Syndrome; "The Leveler" was excerpted in a YouTube relaxation/meditation video "The Nature of Nature" by Asma Masooma.

Clothing/Merchandise:

Burch's interpretation of Albert Einstein in his "hazy/crazy" epigram was turned into a t-shirt sold by the Communety Store.
Burch's interpretation of Albert Einstein in his "hazy/crazy" epigram was turned into a coffee mug being sold on Amazon.
Burch's translation of "An Ancient Egyptian Love Lyric" has been used to advertise Elixir D’amore on Etsy.com.
Burch's translation of "An Ancient Egyptian Love Lyric" has been used to advertise The Lovers Oil on Etsy.com.



Michael R. Burch TIMELINE and Extended Biography

The following timeline provides detailed information about Michael R. Burch's career and how some of his poems came to be written ...

Career highlights are bolded and underlined.

1958: Michael R. Burch was born on February 19, 1958 in Orlando, Florida. His English mother, Christine Ena Hurt, was a loving, compassionate and selfless mother and homemaker. Burch wrote the poem "Mother's Smile" in her honor; it placed first in a Penguin Books poetry contest in 2008. His American father, Paul Ray Burch Jr., was a 20-year man in the United States Air Force.

There never was a fonder smile
than mother’s smile, no softer touch
than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than "much."
—from "Mother's Smile" by Michael R. Burch

1959: Burch and his mother lived with her parents, George Edwin Hurt Sr. and Christine Ena Spouse, in Mattersey, England, while his father was stationed at Thule, Greenland. Thus Burch grew up speaking with an English accent (long since lost). Burch was talking nonstop at a very early age. In fact, his grandfather got in a fight with a co-worker who called him a liar, saying it wasn't possible for two-year-olds to say such things! But Burch was evidently just getting warmed up ...

alien
by michael r. burch, circa age 19

there are mornings in england
when, riddled with light,
the Blueberries gleam at us—
plump, sweet and fragrant.

but i am so small ...
what do i know
of the ways of the Daffodils?
“beware of the Nettles!”

we go laughing and singing,
but somehow, i, ...
i know i am lost. i do not belong
to this Earth or its Songs.

and yet i am singing ...
the sun—so mild;
my cheeks are like roses;
my skin—so fair.

i spent a long time there
before i realized: They have no faces,
no bodies, no voices.
i was always alone.

and yet i keep singing:
the words will come
if only i hear.

MRB: This poem was influenced by e. e. cummings. One of my earliest memories is picking blueberries amid the brambles surrounding the tiny English hamlet, Mattersey, where I and my mother lived with her parents while my American father was stationed in Thule, Greenland. England is free of dangerous animals, but one must be wary of the copious thorns and nettles. I seem to remember writing this poem as a college sophomore, around age 19, in 1977. According to my notes, I revised the poem nearly a quarter of a century later, in March 2001.

1960: When Burch's father returned from Thule, the family was reunited in Gainsborough, England. Burch lived in England for approximately five years. His sisters Sandra Jane Burch and Debra Leigh Burch were both born there. One of his earliest memories was going to the hospital to collect Debby after her puzzling appearance. Where did babies come from—storks, really?

1963: The family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Burch attended kindergarten. He still had an English accent, because his teacher criticized him for pronouncing "been" as "bin." But c'mon, who invented the language? There are memories of his mother weeping over President John F. Kennedy's televised funeral, and another little boy saluting his father's casket ...

1964: First grade in Lincoln, Nebraska. The first book Burch fell in love with was Charlotte's Web, which was read to the class by his teacher, one chapter per day. His favorite poem was "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, which his mother sometimes recited from memory to her enthralled children at bedtime.

1965: Second grade in Lincoln, Nebraska. The class practiced ducking under wooden desks for "protection" against Russian nukes. The desks were not very reassuring! Burch would later write an essay about this experience: "Of Men, Mice and Mincemeat (Me)."

1966: Third grade. The Burches moved to Nashville, Tennessee. They would live for a time with Paul Burch's mother, Lillian Lee, and her second husband, Eric Lee. The Lees owned a small grocery store on Sixth Avenue South, close to downtown Nashville. The Burches later moved into a house in Donelson, a suburb of Nashville. They were joined there by Paul Ray Burch Sr., who was unmarried at the time. Burch would later write "Salat Days" about his childhood discovery of the reason his grandfather went hunting a noxious weed that had to be boiled multiple times before it could be safely eaten! Grandpa Burch took the Burch kids to see their first movie: Sean Connery as James Bond in Thunderball.

Salat Days
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.

I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat—
how easy it was to find if you knew where to look for it ...
standing in dew-damp clumps by the side of a road, shockingly green,
straddling fence posts, overflowing small ditches,
crowding out the less-hardy nettles.

“Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin’s or lard.”

“Don’t eat the berries. You see—the berry’s no good.
And you’d hav’ta wash the leaves a good long time.”

“I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.”

He seldom was hurried; I can see him still ...
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace.

Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.

He never grew flowers; I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.

Years later I found the proper name—“pokeweed”—while perusing a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a weed.
I still can hear his laconic reply ...

“Well, chile, s’m’times them times wus hard.”

1967: Fourth grade. The Burches moved to Roseville, California, a suburb of Sacramento. It was very hot, so most time away from school was spent at the community swimming pool. Burch was a small, often-frustrated perfectionist. If he made a writing mistake, he would tear up the whole page and start over. He was bullied by an older girl named Sarjann, or something like that, and would later write a poem about the experience: "The sky opens wide / in a land of no rain, / and who are you to bring me such pain?"

Sarjann
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

What did I ever do
to make you hate me so?
I was only nine years old,
lonely and afraid,
a small stranger in a large land.

Why did you abuse me
and taunt me?
Even now, so many years later,
the question still haunts me:
what did I ever do?

Why did you despise me and reject me,
pushing and shoving me around
when there was no one to protect me?

Why did you draw a line
in the bone-dry autumn dust,
daring me to cross it?
Did you want to see me cry?
Well, if you did, you did.

"... oh, leave me alone,
for the sky opens wide
in a land of no rain,
and who are you
to bring me such pain? ..."

1968: Fifth grade. The Burches moved to Wiesbaden, Germany. They would live for two years in a tiny German hamlet, Bischofsheim, while waiting for USAF base housing. Because there were no American boys to play with, and no English-language radio or TV stations, Burch began to visit the base library, taking out the maximum eight books, reading them in a few days, then taking out eight more, and repeating. His English language skills zoomed far above the norm for his age. In the fifth grade Burch tested at a college sophomore reading level and was placed in a reading group of one, where he studied the classics while his fellow students perused normal fifth-grade fare. Around this time Burch read a comic book in which a super villain screamed "Frail envelope of flesh!" at a super hero. Burch was struck by the power of the words and never forgot them. His poem "Frail Envelope of Flesh," composed thirty years later in 1998, would become one of his more popular poems on the Internet.

Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 19

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...

Burch discovered poetry in a large green book of popular poems. Already a budding literary critic, Burch identified two poems in the book that he thought stood out: "Breathes there the man" by Sir Walter Scott and "My Grandfather's Clock" by Henry Clay Work, the latter for its musical qualities.

1969: Sixth grade in Wiesbaden, Germany. The Burches watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon at a friend's house (there was still no Burch TV set). Burch developed his first crushes on girls: CM and MC. He was also falling in love with music that would later influence his poetry: Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Aretha Franklin, The Zombies, Cream, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Animals, The Doors, Sly and the Family Stone, The Bee Gees, Aaron Neville, CCR, Jackie Wilson, Frankie Valli, et al.

It was in 1969 that Burch stumbled upon a lifelong passion when he read his father's copy of Who's Who in Baseball. His favorite baseball player was Pete Rose, the subject of a poem he wrote as a teenager:

hey pete
by michael r. burch, circa age 18

for Pete Rose

hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy's dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then you'll be a Superstar.

MRB: When I was a boy, Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather an ironic jab at the term "superstar."

Burch's first poem, "Bible Libel," was written sometime between 1969 and 1971.

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 11-13

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.

MRB: I read the Bible from cover to cover at age 11, at the suggestion of my devout Christian parents. But I was more of a doubting Thomas. The so-called "word of God" left me aghast. How could anyone possibly claim the biblical god Yahweh/Jehovah was good, wise, loving, or just? I came up with this epigram to express my conclusions. I never submitted the poem for formal publication, to my recollection, but I have used it in online discussions, so it is "out there." And other people seem to like it enough to cut and paste it, a LOT. At one time, according to Google results, the poem had gone viral and appeared on over 78K web pages! Those seem like pretty good results for a preteen poem. 

The first poems I wrote deliberately as poems, with the goal of becoming a poet, were "Happiness" and "Playmates." So I have often referred to them as my first and second poems. But "Bible Libel" came first, although I have always considered it more of an epigram than a poem.

Primary influences on "Bible Libel" include the King James Bible and the direct statement poems of A. E. Housman, who was highly critical of the Bible and the Christian religion it spawned.

"Bible Libel" has been published online by Boloji (India), Nexus Myanmar (Burma), Kalemati (Iran), Pride Magazine (Nigeria), Brief Poems, Formal Verse, Idle Hearts, AZquotes (in its Top 17 Very Witty Quotes), Quote Master, and numerous other quote websites.

Scorecard: age 11-13, one publication, not counting multiple publications of the same poem.

1970: Seventh grade in Wiesbaden, Germany. Burch is six-foot-two and thin as a rail at age twelve, and has added a new passion: basketball.

1971: Eighth grade in Wiesbaden, Germany. By this time Burch has read hundreds of books: Austen, Bronte, Chaucer, Dickens, Defoe, Joyce, Melville, Shakespeare, Twain, Verne, Voltaire, Whitman, Wilde, et al. He has also read extensively about subjects he finds of interest, such as nature, animals, dinosaurs, evolution, ancient history, the age of chivalry, warfare and modern science. He doesn't particularly like math, but is good at it.

1972: Ninth grade. The Burches moved to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where Burch found himself far ahead of his classmates. It was around this time, age 13 to 14, that Burch began to write poetry seriously. It quickly became an obsession. His first longish poem, never published, was titled "Happiness." It compared happiness to a bubble that is always in danger of bursting.

Happiness
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 13-14

Happiness is like a bubble,
What's fine now will soon be trouble...

MRB: "Happiness" was my first attempt at a longish poem. I don't count it in my rankings because it's not a very good poem, but I think I did show a good ear for meter from the very beginning.

Burch's second longish poem, "Playmates," was about boys who grow up not foreseeing the dark days that lie ahead. Ironically, that meant the young poet did foresee the future.

Playmates
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 13-14

WHEN you were my playmate and I was yours,
we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and the sorrows and cares of our indentured days
were uncomprehended ... far, far away ...
for the temptations and trials we had yet to face
were lost in the shadows of an unventured maze.

Then simple pleasures were easy to find
and if they cost us a little, we didn't mind;
for even a penny in a pocket back then
was one penny too many, a penny to spend.

Then feelings were feelings and love was just love,
not a strange, complex mystery to be understood;
while "sin" and "damnation" meant little to us,
since forbidden cookies were our only lusts!

Then we never worried about what we had,
and we were both sure—what was good, what was bad.
And we sometimes quarreled, but we didn't hate;
we seldom gave thought to the uncertainties of fate.

Hell, we seldom thought about the next day,
when tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things couldn't last.

Still, we never worried about getting by,
and we didn't know that we were to die ...
when we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and I was your playmate, and we were boys.

MRB: This is probably the poem that "made" me, because my high school English teacher, Anne Meyers, called it "beautiful" and I took that to mean I was surely the Second Coming of Percy Bysshe Shelley! "Happiness" was my first longish poem and "Playmates" was the second, at least as far as I can remember. I had written some shorter epigrams and puns, such as "Bible Libel," around the same time or a bit earlier, but at that time I wasn't really thinking of myself as a poet. "Happiness" and "Playmates" were the first important poems I wrote after deciding to become a poet. There were intervening minor poems, but they were lost forever when I destroyed all my work in frustration at my lack of progress. Fortunately, I was able to recover my better poems from memory, other than "Gone" and "The Seven Stairs." The former is mostly lost and the latter remains entirely lost.

"Playmates" was originally published by The Lyric.

Scorecard: age 13-14, two publications.

The novel Little Women was an influence on "Playmates."


Other poems from this period include "Time," "Am I," "An Illusion," "Have I Been Too Long at the Fair," and "Smoke" (the latter a poem inspired by an ad for the movie Summer of '42.) Burch's poems "Burn, Ovid" and "Sex 101" were written about his experiences at Faith Christian Academy in Goldsboro, although they were composed from memory later.

Burch was the starting center on the FCA junior varsity basketball team.

Smoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 13-14

The hazy, smoke-filled skies of summer I remember well;
farewell was on my mind, and the thoughts that I can't tell
rang bells within (the din was in) my mind, and I can't say
if what we had was good or bad, or where it is today.
The endless days of summer's haze I still recall today;
she spoke and smoky skies stood still as summer slipped away ...

MRB: "Smoke" appeared in my high school journal, the Lantern, in 1976. It also appeared in my college literary journal, Homespun, in 1977. It has since been published by The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Fullosia Press and Better Than Starbucks, and translated into Romanian and published by Petru Dimofte. I had The Summer of '42 in mind when I wrote the poem. Ironically, I didn't see the movie until many years later (too young for an R-rated movie according to my parents), but something about its advertisement touched me. Am I the only poet who wrote a love poem for Jennifer O'Neil after seeing her fleeting image in a blurb? At least in that respect, I may be unique! In any case, the movie came out in 1971 or 1972, so I was probably around 14 when I wrote the poem. I think it's interesting that I was able to write a "rhyme rich" poem at such a young age. In six lines the poem has 26 rhymes and near rhymes: smoke-spoke-smoky, well-farewell-tell-bells-still-recall-still, summer-remember-summer-summer, within-din-in, say-today-days-haze-today-away, had-good-bad. There is another, somewhat longer, version of this poem later on this page, along with two other poems I wrote about the movie that touched me so strangely, long before I watched it. The other poems are addressed to Hermie, the movie's teenage protagonist who might have been my nebbish twin, or doppelganger. I wrote the other poems after seeing the movie as an adult, many years later. On an interesting note, one of my "youngest poems" was published by one of England's oldest publishing houses, Sampson Low, in the Lost Love issue of its Potcake Chapbooks series, edited by Robin Helweg-Larsen and illustrated by Alban Low.

Scorecard: age 13-14, three publications.

"Smoke" was influenced by ads for The Summer of '42, by the musical poems of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Tennyson, and by the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by the Platters.

Gone
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14

Tonight, it is dark
and the stars do not shine.

A man who is gone
was a good friend of mine.

We were friends.

And the sky was the strangest shade of orange on gold
when I awoke to find him gone ...

MRB: "Gone" is actually gone, destroyed in a moment of frustration along with other poems I have not been able to recreate from memory. At some point, probably in late 1972 or early 1973, I destroyed all the poems I had written, out of frustration. I was able to recreate some of the poems from memory, but not all. "Gone" is the poem that haunts me the most. I have resurrected a few lines, but the rest appear to be gone completely. Another poem I regret destroying was titled "The Seven Stairs" and was inspired by one of my favorite rock songs, "Stairway to Heaven."

The westerns of Zane Grey were the primary inspiration for and influence on "Gone."

Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.

But the barren and embittered trees,
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak November sky ...

Now, as I watch the leaves' high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may

have learned what it means to say—
goodbye.

Several of my early poems were about aging, loss and death. Young poets can be so morbid! As with "Death/Styx" this poem is the parings of a longer poem. Most of my poems end up being sonnet-length or shorter. I think the sounds here are pretty good for a young poet "testing his wings." This poem started out as a stanza in a much longer poem, "Jessamyn's Song," that dates to around age 14-16. "Leave Taking" has been published by The Lyric, Mindful of Poetry, Silver Stork Magazine and There is Something in the Autumn (an anthology). The longer version appears later on this page.

"Leave Taking" was influenced by the sadder poems of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

By age 14, I had written four poems that would later be published by literary journals: "Bible Libel," "Playmates," "Smoke" and "Leave Taking."

/bookmark/

(**) Am I, circa age 14-15, *P
by Michael R. Burch

Am I inconsequential;
do I matter not at all?
Am I just a snowflake,
to sparkle, then to fall?

Am I only chaff?
Of what use am I?
Am I just a flame,
to flicker, then to die?

Am I inadvertent?
For what reason am I here?
Am I just a ripple
in a pool that once was clear?

Am I insignificant?
Will time pass me by?
Am I just a flower,
to live one day, then die?

Am I unimportant?
Do I matter either way?
Or am I just an echo—
soon to fade away?

This seems like a pretty well-crafted poem for a teenage poet just getting started. I believe I was around 14 or 15 when I wrote it. The title is a reversal of the biblical "I Am."

(**) Time, circa age 14-15, *P
by Michael R. Burch

Time,
where have you gone?
What turned out so short,
had seemed like so long.

Time,
where have you flown?
What seemed like mere days
were years come and gone.

Time,
see what you've done:
for now I am old,
when once I was young.

Time,
do you even know why
your days, minutes, seconds
preternaturally fly?

"Time" is a companion piece to "Am I." It appeared in my high school project notebook "Poems" along with "Playmates," so I was probably around 14 or 15 when I wrote it. This seems like a pretty well-crafted poem for a teenage poet just getting started. "Time" and "Am I" were written on the same day, or within a short period of time, if I remember correctly. They were among the earliest of what I call my "I Am" and "Am I" poems.

(**) Bound, circa age 14-15, *L
by Michael R. Burch

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.

This poem appeared in my high school journal, the Lantern, in 1976. I seem to remember writing "Bound" in 1972 or 1973, around age 14 or 15. It was originally titled "Why Did I Go?" I have made slight changes but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.

I believe "Bound" may have been influenced by the Robert Frost poem "Acquainted with the Night" and the Paul Simon song "I Am a Rock."

(**) Have I been too long at the fair?, circa age 15, *L
by Michael R. Burch

Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown;
the Ferris wheel teeters ...
not up, yet not down.
Have I been too long at the fair?

This is one of my very earliest poems, written around age 15 when we were living with my grandfather in his house on Chilton Street, within walking distance of the Nashville fairgrounds. That was before my sophomore year of high school. I remember walking to the fairgrounds, stopping at a Dairy Queen along the way, and swimming at a public pool. But I believe the Ferris wheel only operated during the state fair. So my “educated guess” is that this poem was written during the 1973 state fair, or shortly thereafter. I remember watching people hanging suspended in mid-air, waiting for carnies to deposit them safely on terra firma again. In any case, this poem was published in my high school literary journal, the Lantern.

I believe A. E. Housman may have been an influence here.


An Illusion
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15-16

The sky was as hushed as the breath of a bee
and the world was bathed in shades of palest gold
when I awoke.

She came to me with the sound of falling leaves
and the scent of new-mown grass;
I held out my arms to her and she passed

into oblivion ...

This little dream-poem appeared in Burch's high school literary journal, the Lantern.

1973: Tenth grade. Paul Burch Jr. retired from the Air Force and the Burches relocated permanently to Nashville, Tennessee. There Burch attended Maplewood High School, where he was once again far ahead of his classmates. It was at Maplewood that Burch began flipping through his English literature textbook, reading poems independently. He found some of the poems to be quite magical and decided that he would try to produce similar magic himself. Poets he found especially magical included William Blake, e. e. cummings, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, A. E. Housman, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas and W. B. Yeats. While at Maplewood, Burch included some of his poems in an English project notebook. His teacher, Anne Myers, wrote "This poem is beautiful!" beside "Playmates" and she also complimented "Time." Other poems in the notebook included "Paradise" and "I Remember You." Around this time, in a moment of frustration, Burch destroyed all his poems. The ones in his project notebook were saved, along with others he was able to recreate from memory. The rest were lost forever or remain incomplete. Burch had his first dates, with MB. 

1974: Eleventh grade. The first poem that made Burch think he might be a "real" poet was "Observance" (originally titled "Reckoning"), which he wrote in the break room of the McDonald's where he worked to make spending money for college. It would be published by TC Broadsheet Verses in 1998, earning a whopping ten dollars, and also by Nebo and Piedmont Literary Review the same year. "Leave Taking" was originally a stanza in a longer poem, "Jessamyn's Song," written around this time. "Canticle" was written surreptitiously in Ms. Davenport's class while her back was turned. Burch was MVP of the Ewing Baptist church league basketball team. Tricky Dick Nixon finally resigned, due to Watergate.

1975: Twelfth grade. Burch had a number of poems published in Maplewood's literary journal, The Lantern, including "An Illusion," "Why Did I Go," "Have I Been Too Long at the Fair" and "Smoke."  Burch also wrote his first "cummings-ish" poem, "i (dedicated to u)" during an English class. Burch was MVP of the Ewing Baptist basketball team for a second time. Meanwhile, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft.

1976: College freshman. Burch graduated near the top of his class despite working 40+ hours per week his senior year and thus not studying or turning in homework assignments consistently. He still managed to earn the highest ACT and CLEPT scores in Maplewood's history, with a perfect score on the latter. He also earned two academic scholarships and decided to study computer science at Tennessee Technological University (TTU) in Cookeville, Tennessee, which at that time had a top-ten computer science program. At TTU the dean of the English Department, Dr. Warren, had Burch pulled out of the freshman pre-registration line and brought to his office, where he tried to persuade Burch to major in English or Journalism. However, not wanting to be a starving writer, Burch stuck to his plan to major in computer science. At TTU, Burch skipped a lot of classes and focused his energies on mastering pool (pocket billiards), pinball machines and video games, including the original Space Invaders. He won TTU's straight pool tournament, qualified for the NCAA regionals, but then partied, got drunk for the first time in his life, and missed the bus to the next tournament! The girl of his dreams got mad at him for being too drunk to perform, and he lost her to a slightly more sober graduate student. Ouch! He later won Cookeville eight-ball and Space Invaders tournaments. Poems from this period include "Infinity" (the second poem that made Burch feel like a "real" poet), "Death/Styx" and "These Hallowed Halls." The latter was written from his freshman dorm window, as he watched students returning from rush week fraternity parties. "Something" was the first poem Burch wrote that didn't rhyme; it came to him "out of blue nothing." He also earned membership in the Alpha Lamda Delta and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies. As a freshman Burch had six poems published in TTU's literary journal Homespun: "Smoke," "Stryx," "Gentry," "Jack," "When Last My Love Left Me" and "With My Daughter, By a Waterfall."

1977: College sophomore. A highly Romantic poem from this time period is "Floating," which would be published by Romantics Quarterly in 2002. Another is "Impressions of Darkness in the Aspects of Light," a long poem Burch disguised as prose by removing the line breaks for a creative fiction writing assignment. "A Pledge for Ignorance" was the first poem published in Homespun. "In Jerusalem" was also published by Homespun.

1978: College co-op. Burch won TTU's R. H. Moorman Award and a cash prize (well, actually a bond) for having the highest grades in the TTU Math/Computer Science/Physics department. He was the brightest of the bright, the nerdiest of the nerds!  Burch chose to co-op for a year, which he did with South Central Bell, in Nashville. At the time SCB was a division of AT&T, the largest non-government organization in the world. Burch wrote a manual on IBM Binary Synchronous Protocol for SCB. He also designed and wrote a network outage tracking system on a Cromemco Z-28 CP/M computer system. This was one of the first multi-user microcomputers. John Palmer, a division manager at SCB, was impressed and hired Burch to work for Surya Data Systems, where he designed and wrote a Property Management software package. While working for SCB, Burch met some serious pool players and started gambling with colorful sharks like Andrew "the Gent" Gentry, Doug "Preacher" Almy, and players known to him only as "Jew Baby," "Catfish," "Chicken Man" and "Mole." There were days when Burch made more money hustling pool than programming. He used the winnings from one pool match to buy a $700 pool cue. A highly Romantic poem from this time period is "The Communion of Sighs." While working the midnight shift at SCB, Burch put together a typed poetry collection, Just a Dream. Some of the poems included were "Reflections on the Loss of Vision," "Shadows," "An Obscenity Trial," "Sailor's Dreams" (later re-titled "Sea Dreams"), "Sanctuary at Dawn," "There Is Peace Where I Am Going" and "Jessamyn's Song." (These were mostly poems written during his teens.) Burch wrote his bleak poem "Premonition" after attending an SCB office party. "Shadows" was published by Homespun.

1979: Burch returned to TTU for his junior year. He joined the Kappa Alpha fraternity but it was not officially recognized at the time and was mostly an excuse to have a frat house and keg parties. After completing his junior year, Burch dropped out to start his own computer software company, Alpha Omega Consulting Group. He earned over 11K. That was not bad money in those days, for a college student working part-time!

1980: College senior drop-out. Burch became the lead software developer for Computer Consultants Inc., freelanced via Alpha Omega, and still found time to shoot pool, master video games, and chase women. He had his first serious relationship with MM, who would become the object of a number of his early love poems. For the next decade-and-a-half Burch would write poetry with few serious attempts attempts to publish it. During this period Burch designed and wrote software for a record outlet and a publishing company.

1981: The only published poem from this period appears to be "Tomb Lake." Burch designed and wrote an Auto Dealership software package. Burch went to Chatanooga with Doug "Preacher" Almy to watch the 1981 U.S. Open Nine-Ball Tournament. "St. Louis" Louie Roberts won, beating Buddy "The Rifleman" Hall in the process. Burch would later edit a book, Have Pool Cue Will Travel, written primarily about the exploits of Louie Roberts by Mark "the Shark" O'Brien. A number of unusual synchronicities were involved. Burch dated MJ briefly.

1982: Burch designed and wrote a Job Cost accounting software system for construction companies. He bought a Camaro Z-28 Indy Pace car, his first sports car. He vacationed in England for a month, staying with relatives at an ancient cottage called "Throstle's Nest." On the plane trip to England he updated his poem "The Last Enchantment." He dated MC briefly, then MM, for whom he wrote "Every Man Has a Dream."

1983: Burch dated MM seriously. They decided to live together, but she didn't tell her parents. Awkward! Burch buys his first house at 836 Beech Bend Drive in Bellevue, Tennessee.

1984: Burch, MM, DF and RF vacation in Destin at a swanky $450,000 Edgewater Beach condo. Burch figures out from the owner list that Nashville's mayor, the appropriately-named Bill Boner, had been "gifted" a condo by one of Burch's well-heeled construction clients. Fraud is everywhere!

1985: Burch, MM, DF and RF vacation in Miami and the Florida Keys. They visit Ernest Hemingway's and Jimmy Buffet's favorite watering holes. Burch begins playing pool at a dive-y bar called Springwater. Later that year, his first dates with CC.

1986: Springwater's Busch pool league team finished second in the city tournament, advanced to Memphis for the regionals, won two rounds, then lost in the finals to Nashville's J.O.B. team. A Memphis vacation with MM. Burch dated BM and wrote "Musings at Giza" based on her recollections of a trip to Egypt. First date with SK at Julian's. Burch very briefly dated Dan Fouts' sister but couldn't tell you her name.

1987: Oak Ridge trip with BM. First date with KT at Kobe, but she was weird about her cat. One date with a young woman who later took her own life led to the poem "For Rhonda with Butterflies." Destin trip with KT, but more weirdness about her cat. First date with AO; she was part Cuban, part Seminole, and part Italian. Very hot! Another England trip with bed-and-breakfast tours of Wales, Stratford-on-Avon, Chesterfield, Chatsworth Hall and London. On the return flight from Gatwick the pilot had to jettison fuel and return for flap repairs. Panic! MM moves out.

1988: Back together with MM. Burch bought a second, much bigger house in Bellevue at 7324 River Bend Rd. Movin' on up!

1989: Destin trip with MM, DF, RF and two friends. MM moves out again.

1990: MM moves back in, then out again. A third England trip with a bed-and-breakfast tour of Scotland and the northeastern coast: Loch Lomond, Stirling Castle, Calendar, Edinburgh Castle, North Berwick, Lindisfarne. Also visited the Lake District, Lake Windemere, York, Yorkminster Cathedral, Scarborough (stayed in a converted windmill!), the Yorkshire Dales, and Alton Towers. It was the hottest English summer on record, with temperatures as high as 99. Dates with KM, LA and RA.

1991: Burch meets Elizabeth Harris on 1-5-1991 at the Natchez Trace bar in Bellevue, Tennessee. She asks him to teach her to play pool and they invent "twister pool." First real date with Beth at Sperry's on 1-11-1991. Burch writes Beth the poems "Enigma" and "Is the Mirror Unkind" for Valentine's Day. Another date at Sperry's. Met Beth's grandparents at Justine's in Memphis. Things are getting serious for the confirmed bachelor! Later, a May trip to Destin with Beth and Burch's parents, sisters, aunts and uncles. Beth moves in. Chatanooga trip with Beth and English cousins. Visited Lookout Mountain, Ruby Falls and the Chatanooga Choo-Choo. Beth sang "Mockingbird" with one of the singing waiters. A very daring girl! On 8-31-91 Beth asked Burch to marry her! A very daring girl! On 11-07-91 Grandma Lee died, a grand, very independent woman.

1992: Michael R. Burch marries Elizabeth Steed Harris in Warren, Arkansas on 6-27-1992.

1993: Michael R. Burch and Elizabeth Harris Burch have a son, Jeremy Michael Burch. Burch's poems "The Desk," "Lullaby," "Passages on Fatherhood" and "A Real Story," among others, would be written for his son. Burch began submitting poems for publication after a long hiatus. "Musings at Giza" was published by Golden Isis, "In the Whispering Night" and "Moon Lake" by The Poetic Knight.

1994: "Lay Down Your Arms" was published by The Romanticist.

1997: Burch began to study the ancient Celtic legends that inspired the much later, heavily Christianized legends of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. He preferred the older stories and wrote a cycle of poems on the subject, including "At Tintagel," "Truces" and "Isolde's Song." A number of the poems were written on a single day, 7-13-1997. Burch thinks his poems are good enough to be published, but where to submit them? Around this time he discovers a book, Poet's Market, created by the poet Judson Jerome, which explains which journals favor, rather than discriminate against, traditional poetry. Burch decides to take another stab at publication ...

1998: Around this time Burch founds and creates The HyperTexts, a literary website which has since had over 13 million page views, according to Google Analytics. "Geode/Resemblance" was published by Poet Lore, "Righteous" by Writer's Gazette, "Are You the Thief" and two other poems by Poetic License/Monumental Moments, "Shadows" by Mind in Motion, "Enigma" by mo jo risin' magazine, "State of the Art" and five other poems by Tucumcari Poetry Review, and "Haunted" by The Laureate Letter. "Keep Up" wins third prize and a medal in a poetry contest with several thousand entries.

1999: "In Flight Convergence" finished in the top ten of the big Writer's Digest non-rhyming poetry contest (out of around 13,000 overall contest entries), then was published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. (Ironically, it was a rhyming poem with eclectic line breaks that made it look like unrhymed free verse.) "Once," "At Once," "Twice" and "The Leveler" were published by The Lyric. Jean Mellichamp Milliken, the editor of The Lyric, called Burch on the phone to make sure his poems made the upcoming issue. Editors seldom call poets, so that was a rare and encouraging event! "The Poet" was published by Icon, "Prophet" by Penny Dreadful, "The Song of Amergin" by Songs of Innocence, "Ince St. Child" by Piedmont Literary Review. "Geode/Resemblance" was a finalist in the Penumbra poetry contest and earned a special mention from the judge. "Salad Days" was published by Lonzie's Fried Chicken. The poem would later be re-titled "Salat Days." Eight poems were published by Tucumcari Literary Review, including "For Rhonda, with Butterflies."

2000: "Abide" was published by Light Quarterly. "Tremble" was published by The Lyric and later received an Honorable Mention in the 2000 Lyric Annual Awards, judged by Shakespearean scholar Caroline P. Chermside. "Tremble" also won third prize in the Verses Magazine 2000 Nature Competition. "Once" and "The Platypus" were published by Writer's Journal, "Styx/Death" and "The Harvest of Roses" by The Raintown Review, "Loose Knit" by Penumbra, "Moments" by Tucumcari Literary Journal, "Infinity," "Floating," "Mid-Summer Eve," "Shock" and "Nevermore!" by Penny Dreadful, "At Tintagel" and "In the Whispering Night" by Songs of Innocence, "Salad Days" by Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, and nineteen Celtic-themed poems by Celtic Twilight, Celtic Lifestyles and Storyteller (UK).

2001: Burch had the first five poems in the inaugural issue of Romantics Quarterly, which led off with "Goddess." Burch's villanelle "Ordinary Love" won the Swinburne poetry award and a $100 prize, then was published and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Burch had seventeen poems in the first four issues of Romantics Quarterly. "What the Poet Sees" and "The Locker" won Poem Kingdom contests and small cash prizes. "Poetry" and "The Watch" were published by The Lyric, "The Composition of Shadows" by Iambs & Trochees, "What the Poet Sees" by Byline, "Memory" by Carnelian, and "Will There Be Starlight" by The Word (UK). Four poems each appeared in The Bible of Hell, Poetry Magazine and Unlikely Stories. "Flight 93" and four other poems were published by Poetry Super Highway. Two poems appeared in Ironwood, two in Poetic Reflections, three in Poetically Speaking, four in Poetry Magazine.

2002: Burch wrote a how-to book for Practicum Strategies that earned nearly $3,000 in royalties. "Pan" and "Imperfect Sonnet" were published by Poetry Porch. Four poems were read by Burch for the How Sweet the Night spoken-word poetry CD published by Romantics Quarterly: "Ordinary Love," "Goddess," "Circe" and "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful." Burch also helped acquire readings by other poets for the CD, including Richard Moore and Rhina Espaillat. "Redolence" appeared in The New Formalist and "She Gathered Lilacs" in the Neovictorian/Cochlea. "The Watch" and two other poems appeared in Carnelian. Burch was the spotlight poet for and had eight poems in Triplopia. Four poems appeared in The Eclectic Muse; editor Joe M. Ruggier recited one of the poems over the phone to another editor. (Another rare event.) "Warming Her Pearls" and two other erotic poems appeared in Erosha. Burch was the first featured poet with five poems in Poetic Ponderings. Eight poems were published by the Net Poetry & Art Competition, which asked Burch to serve as a judge. "She Was Very Strange, and Beautiful" was published by Numbat (Australia). Nine poems appeared in two issues of The Lyric, including "Frail Envelope of Flesh," "The Wonder Boys" and "Roses for a Lover, Idealized." An early prose version of "Salat Days" won an honorable mention in the 2002 Writer's Digest personal essay contest.

2003: "See" placed third out of 18,000 overall entries in the big Writer's Digest poetry contest, while "At Wilfred Owen's Grave" placed seventh, winning $475 together. Both poems appeared in Writer's Digest The Year's Best Writing. "Distances" and "Fair Game" appeared in Verse Libre. Seventeen poems and two reviews appeared in Romantics Quarterly. "At Tintagel" was published by Fables.org, "Ordinary Love" by Poetic Voices. "At Wilfred Owen's Grave" by Rogue Scholars, "Violets" and four other poems by Muse Apprentice Guild. Four poems appeared in the anthology The Birth of Crystals. "The Peripheries of Love" earned second place in a poetry contest, winning a silver medal. "She Was Very Strange and Beautiful" placed third in a People's Poet reader poll.

2004: "Auschwitz Rose" appeared in the Neovictorian/Cochlea. The poem made Joe Ruggier jump out of his bus seat when he read it! (Another rare event.) "The Composition of Shadows" appeared in Contemporary Rhyme, "Neglect" and four other poems in Mindful of Poetry, "The Folly of Wisdom" and five other poems in Romantics Quarterly, "Neglect" and "Epitaph" in Voices for Africa, "The Highest Atoll" in IBPC News and Useless Knowledge, "Fahr an' Ice" in Light Quarterly, eight poems in Poet's Haven, three poems and a review in The Eclectic Muse (Canada).

2005: "Pan" and five other poems appeared in The Chariton Review, "Pity Clarity" in Contemporary Rhyme and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, "Myth" and three other poems in the anthology There Is Something in the Autumn, "Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address" in the Holocaust anthology Blood to Remember, "Ali's Song" and four other poems in Black Medina, six poems in Nutty Stories (South Africa), three in Triplopia, eight in The Eclectic Muse (Canada), eleven in the Neovictorian/Cochlea. "Melting" is voted the best poem in SP Quill.

2006: "Isolde's Song" is published by The Raintown Review and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. "Excerpts from 'Poetry'" places fourth in the Margaret Reid poetry contest, winning $100. A number of Burch's poems are translated into Farsi and published in Iran. "Tremble" and "Brother Iran" appear in Farsi translations by Dr. Mahnaz Badihian on MahMag (Iran). Six poems are published by Kritya (India). Poetry Life & Times begins to publish Burch's poems in volume. Thirty of Burch's poems are featured at Famous Poets & Poems. Sixteen poems appear in Sonnetto Poesia (Canada). "The Effects of Memory" is read as part of the Candlelight Reading Series, on Valentine's Day. "U.S. Verse, After Auden" is published by The Barefoot Muse, "Salat Days" as flash fiction in A Flasher's Dozen, "Learning to Fly" in the anthology The Book of Hopes and Dreams. Burch has three poems in The Centrifugal Eye, five poems in Barbitos, four poems in a Katrina Anthology and six poems in The Journals. "Indestructible, for Johnny Cash" is published by Strong Verse. "Flight 93" appears in My Beautiful New York. Four poems appear in the anthology Somewhere Along the Beaten Path. "The Secret of Her Clothes" appears in the Velvet Avalanche anthology. "The Composition of Shadows" is published by Candelabrum.

2007: "Break Time" finishes third in a Sonnet Writers poetry contest, winning $50. "Leaf Fall" earns high distinction in the Tom Howard poetry contest and wins $100. A children's poem "The Aery Faery Princess" appears in Whimsy. Another children's poem, "The Dromedary," appears in Umbrella/Bumbershoot. "For All That I Remembered" and "The Peripheries of Love" are translated into Russian by Yelena Dubrovin and published by Gostinaya. Burch has three poems in Thanal Online (India), four poems in the Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, four poems in the anthology Captivating Poetry, five poems in Strange Road, three poems in Triplopia, three poems in Freshet, and six poems in Other Voices International, including the Holocaust poems "Cleansings" and "Auschwitz Rose." Poets for Humanity publishes "Epitaph for a Darfur Child." Voices Israel publishes "I Pray Tonight." (The poem will later go viral.) Deronda Review publishes "Leaf Fall," "Autumn Conundrum" and "Piercing the Shell." Nine poems are published by homeless advocate, poet and artist Judy "Joy" Jones as part of an On the Road with Judy interview. "Poetry" appears in the anthology Sailing in the Mist of Time.

2008: "Discrimination" is published by Trinacria and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. "Mother's Smile" places first in a Penguin Books (UK) Valentine's Day poetry contest and appears in the anthology Poems for Big Kids. Comasia Aquaro translates "For All That I Remembered" and "Isolde's Song" into Italian. "Homeless Us" is published by Street Spirit. Fullosia Press publishes "Flight 93" and two other poems. Jewish Letter publishes Russian translations by Vera Zubarev of "Leaf Fall" and other poems. Two poems appear in Deronda Review and Voices Israel, three in Freshet and The Eclectic Muse (Canada), four in Trinacria, six in Poetry Life & Times.

2009: Burch's letter opposing torture is published by TIME and quite possibly read by millions. Burch publishes Richard Moore's last essay, "A Life." Burch's tribute poem "Kin (for Richard Moore)" is published by Able Muse. The Boston Globe cites Burch's interviews with Richard Moore in his obituary. "Auschwitz Rose" is published by Verse Weekly. "Leaf Fall" appears in The Raintown Review, now being edited by Anna Evans. Burch begins writing letters to the editor of The Tennessean; three of his first four letters earn three stars (the highest rating). He will have over a hundred letters published by the paper over the next decade. He also has a letter in one of the world's largest-circulation newspapers, The Hindu. Burch has two poems in Light, two in The Lyric, two in The Chimaera, three in Freshet, three in Lucid Rhythms.

2010: Burch authors the Burch-Elberry Peace Initiative for Israel/Palestine and it is published by United Progressives and the National Forum of India, among others. Burch has five letters in Nashville's City Paper and is invited to become a regular columnist, which he accepts. He has one letter in USA Today, three in The Washington Times, and 35 more in The Tennessean. Burch's essay on Formal Poetry is translated into Vietnamese and published by Ai Huu Ninh Thuan. His poem "Epitaph" goes viral and is published 400 times before he loses track. Stremez publishes five Macedonian translations by Marija Girevska. Fullosia Press publishes twenty poems and essays. Litera (UK) publishes seventeen poems. Poems About publishes thirty poems. Burch has three poems in Freshet, six in Trinacria, and six more in The New Formalist.

2011: "Just Smile" is published by Victorian Violet Press and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. This is Burch's fifth Pushcart nomination. Fullosia Press publishes 29 poems and articles. Six letters are published by the Knoxville News Sentinel. Forty letters and articles are published by the Nashville City Paper. Twenty-seven poems are published by Inspirational Stories, six by Trinacria, six by Victorian Violet Press, five by The Eclectic Muse (Canada), three by The Flea, two by The Lyric. "For Rhonda, with Butterflies" is nominated for a Best of the Net award by Victorian Violet Press.

2012: Burch's first poetry collection, Violets for Beth, is published by White Violet Press. Burch has two poems in the first issue of Angle. Six poems are published by Poem Today, six by Victorian Violet Press, eight by Artvilla, eight by Poet's Corner including a translation of "Caedmon's Hymn," ten by The Eclectic Muse (Canada), fifteen by Fullosia Press. Five letters appear in the Knoxville News Sentinel, eight in The Tennessean. Burch's "bowlers" joke is published by the Washington Post. "Come!" earns fifth place in the 2012 Writer's Digest Rhyming Poetry contest, winning $50. "Hiroshima Shadows" is translated to Thai and published in Thailand, Japan and New Zealand.

2013: Burch's second poetry collection, O, Terrible Angel, is published by Ancient Cypress Press. Burch's translation of Rilke's "Autumn Day" appears in Measure, along with his translations of the Anglo-Saxon poem "Wulf and Eadwacer" and the Middle English poem "How Long the Night." Eight poems appear in Boston Poetry Magazine, eleven in FreeExpression (Australia), twelve in Complete Classics, twelve in Poems About, fourteen in Poetry in Progress, five in Fullosia Press, four in Shot Glass Journal. "Willy Nilly" appears in The Road Not Taken, "Lean Harvests" in The Rotary Dial. Thirty letters and/or articles appear in the Nashville City Paper. Ten letters appear in The Tennessean.

2014: Burch publishes his translations/modernizations of Scots dialect poems by Robert Burns, and they quickly go viral. By now Burch's poems are going viral so frequently that he seldom bothers to submit poems to traditional publishers. "Epitaph," "Neglect," "Something," and "Auschwitz Rose" are among his most popular poems on the Internet, along with his translations of Basho, Bede, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Burns, Caedmon, Thomas Chatterton, Deor, William Dunbar, Ahmad Faraz, Atilla Ilhan, Allama Iqbal, Ono no Komachi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sappho, Thomas Wyatt, and various Urdu and anonymous Anglo-Saxon poets.

2015: Jasper Sole does YouTube readings of "Something," "Moments" and "Enigma." Promosaik (Denmark) publishes six poems. Poem Today publishes four poems. Life & Legends publishes three poems. Asses of Parnassus publishes "Nun Fun Undone" and a Sappho translation. Brief Poems publishes a Sappho translation. AZquotes publishes fourteen Trump jokes and epigrams.

2016: BBC Radio 3 publishes Burch's translations of 14 poems by the immortal Sappho of Lesbos which were recited by actresses Diana Quick and Sophie Ward. Two of Burch's Trump jokes are published on CNN.com. A number of other jokes go viral and are published on various "best Trump joke" pages. Asses of Parnassus publishes six poems. Better Than Starbucks publishes four poems. Brief Poems publishes six poems. "Conformists of a Feather" wins first place in the National Poetry Month Couplet Competition. "Pilgrim's Fealty" finishes second in a quatrain contest. "Isolde's Song" is published by The Orchards. Comasia Aquaro translates four poems into Italian and publishes them in La Luce Che Non Muore. Glass Facets of Poetry publishes five poems. "Child of 9-11" and an essay appear in Elephant Journal.

2017: Burch's mock "Trump Inauguration Speech" is published by the Washington Post, earning some raves and a special mention by the editor in charge of the competition. Burch is the Spotlight Author of the bilingual literary journal Setu for the month of March, 2017. "I Pray Tonight" is set to music and played at a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, helping to raise $8,000 in aid.

2018: "Auschwitz Rose" is published by the European Union Erasmus Project and is studied by advanced students from multiple member nations. "Ebb Tide" appears in Southwest Review, earning $50. Burch's googleyup "Does your virginity grow back?" earns second place in a Washington Post contest. (This had more to do with "thinking outside the box" than writing.) AZquotes has now published more than 40 poems and epigrams. Brief Poems publishes 15 poems, including translations of Sappho, Basho and Ono no Komachi. Better Than Starbucks publishes five original poems and five translations, including a translation of Adi Wolfson's environmental poem "Bureaucracy." Blue Unicorn publishes "Styx" and "A Possible Argument for Mercy" is accepted for publication by First Things.

2019: Better Than Starbucks publishes "Salat Days" and three Native American translations. Bewildering Stories publishes five poems, including Holocaust poetry translations of Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" and "O, Little Root." Poem Today publishes three haiku translations. Six poems are translated into Hungarian by István Bagi and published by Versforditas (Hungary). "If You Come to San Miguel" is published by Muddy River Poetry Review. "Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray" is published by Dusk & Shiver Magazine. PoemSeeker.com publishes 32 poems. Engpoetry.com publishes 25 poems. Oxford University called The HyperTexts "dynamic and challenging" with a "different approach" to poetry, on its ARCH resource page for the Arts & Humanities. "How Can We End Ethnic Cleansing Forever?" is studied by a class taught by the poet Michael Seeger. More than a hundred Burch poems have gone viral at this point. YouTube videos by Lillian Y. Wong of "Ali's Song," "Something" and "Survivors" have several thousand views each.

2020: Including poems that have gone viral, Burch now has over 5,000 publications and begins calling himself "one of the world's most-published complete unknowns." Burch is asked to join the board of the international literary publication Borderless Journal and accepts.

2021: Burch has the first five poems in the first issue of New Lyre.

2022: Including poems that have gone viral, Burch now has over 7,000 publications. Burch also has 41 poems set to music by 23 composers, poems translated into 15 languages, and has been quoted or otherwise cited in 404 scholarly articles on Academia.edu. Benjamin Jones publishes a book, Pete Rose Unforgiven Forever, based on Burch's extensive article about Pete Rose on The HyperTexts, often quoting the article at length, verbatim.

2023: The Anti-Defamation League in partnership with the Aspen Institute publishes Burch's translation of "Enough for Me" by Fadwa Tuqan in a 115-page booklet that is used in conjunction with a series of seminars in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jaffa in January 2023. Burch also has his 50th poem set to music or otherwise used by a composer. Burch now has 2,020 individual poems published and 8,997 publications in all, not including poems he has self-published. Many of the publications are poems that have gone viral on the internet. Burch also has his 15th poetry contest winner, 31st top ten, and 68th award in a writing contest. Poem Analysis includes Burch's translation of William Dunbar's "Sweet Rose of Virtue" in its top ten Valentine's Day Poems. The Burch-Elberry Peace Initiative is mentioned by Theo Horesh in The Holocausts We All Deny. Four Burch translations are published by Daily Kos. "Lay Down Your Arms" is slated to be set to music by Eduardo Agni. Helena Loorents sets "For a Palestinian Child with Butterflies" to music. Joshua C. DeLozier sets Burch's translation of "Admiring Flowers" to music. 

Notes for Archivists, Anthologists, Biographers and Scholars:

When I count publications, I do NOT include poems that I have published myself via The HyperTexts, or poems that I have posted on websites like AllPoetry, HelloPoetry, PoemHunter, PoetrySoup, Quora, and WritersCafe. If I counted those publications, I would have substantially higher numbers, but I only count publications made by others. Why did I self-publish with the sites I just mentioned? First, my goal as a writer was always to be read, and I make no apologies for that. These large websites attract large numbers of readers and I believe that, because my poetry is much better than that of the "average bear," I had a distinct edge and was smart enough to take advantage of it. If the literary elitists disapprove, so what? I would much rather be read than have the approval of uppity snots. Second, because I knew I wouldn't be around forever and wouldn't have control over THT when I was gone. Replicating my poems on multiple websites was a way of "backing up" my poems and creating redundant copies of them. I make no apologies for giving my poems the best chance to survive me and to be read in the future.

When I am no longer alive, I intend for my writings to be put in the public domain for noncommercial purposes. If there are profits, royalties should go to my estate and heirs. But if people like my work enough to share it, and aren't profiting financially, let them share away.

If you are a biographer, it may interest you to know that I was incredibly ambitious as a poet in my early teens. I didn't just want to be a poet, I wanted to be a poet future readers would remember, the way I remembered my favorite poets. I wanted to be a great poet, a "capital p" Poet. Whether I succeeded or not, only time can tell, only the future can say. While self-praise is a dubious enterprise, I will say that I think some of my Sappho translations are the best ones out there, and major poets have translated her over the centuries. I think my Basho and Issa translations are some of the best out there, and they have been widely translated also. Ditto for my translations of Baudelaire, Burns, Brecht, Dunbar, Radnoti, Rilke, Tagore, and any number of Urdu poets.

If you have access to my computer files, the critical files are Submit*.wpd (the poems in their final forms as they were submitted for publication), WorkInProgress*.wpd (the original and revised versions of nearly all my poems not in Submit.wpd), and Poem.dbf (a database of when and where my poems were published). There are also multiple versions of my unpublished book Auschwitz Rose, with the one with the most current time stamp being the most critical.

Michael R. Burch related pages: Best Poems, Best Translations, Poetry Master Page, Literary Criticism, Critical Writings, Literary Devices: Definitions and Examples, Early Poems, Early Poems Timeline, Viral Poems, Poems for Poets, Epigrams and Quotes, Epitaphs, Sonnets, Villanelles, Light Verse, Limericks, Parodies, Satires, Less Heroic Couplets, Children's Poems, Family Poems, Doggerel, Haiku, Nature and Animal Poems, Free Verse, Prose Poems, Experimental Poems, Free Love Poems, Romantic Poems, Erotic Poems, Song Lyrics, Poems about Time and Death, Poems about EROS and CUPID, Poems about Icarus, Auschwitz Rose Preview, Did Lord Bryon inspire the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley?, Understatement Examples from Shakespeare and Elsewhere, Ancient Egyptian Harper's Songs, Why I Am Not A Christian by Michael R. Burch

You can find Burch's analysis of his poems here: "Auschwitz Rose" Analysis, "Epitaph" Analysis, "Something" Analysis, "Will There Be Starlight" Analysis, "Davenport Tomorrow" Analysis, "Neglect" Analysis, "Passionate One" Analysis, "Self Reflection" Analysis, "Pale Though Her Eyes" Analysis,  "Thin Kin" Analysis

The HyperTexts