October 8, 2004

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  The photo shows both the 1972 and the 1980 editions of “The Collected Works of Michael F. Nyiri.” These are the actual “Poetry Books” I have kept since I began writing at the age of 14. I have two more “volumes” from 1984 and 1995. All the poetry on the ElectricPoetry website originated here in these volumes. Some of the work was typed, but most is handwritten. Beginning in 1972, when I typed most of the poetry from 1967 to 1972 on my trusty old Underwood, and closed the rings on the first binder, I wrote the first of about six “introductions” to the work. Below I am posting the 1972 introduction, written at age 19, and the 1982 introduction.

  
  

  The 1972 Introduction to The Poetry of Michael F. Nyiri
  Poetry, A Loosely Constructed Essay

  
  

  Written by MIchael F. Nyiri at 19 years of age in 1972.

  
  

  When two people meet, they notice only that outer covering called the “skin” and only a “pinch” of personality. They fail to realize that the one standing across from them is not a walking doll, but a human being with fears, hopes, achievements, and failures, a paradox on two legs, a ,map of life. We so seldom think of others, we say we do, but we feel sorry for ourselves even more so. The casual passerby who asks for the time is as much  a person as we are, yet we fail to realize this. He has porobably fallen in and out of love, witnessed tragedy, and pulled through an accident barely alive also.

  
  

  The poet accomplishes two things in this world of people. He writes about himself and others. Writing about life is difficult, but it forces others to realize people are “here’, they are living, they are alive.

  
  

  No poet is perfect. They all try very hard, though. A poem is a thought or an emotion, expressed through the eyes of the poet. Some poems are written in a month, a year, others in a moment. Poems diagram a small bit of life. Each poem is a heartbeat on an oscilliscope. Each poem is  a small part of a great whole.

  
  

  The poet can only be biased. He can’t help it. Even though he may try, he only “knows” himself. He only tries to write about others, and the poem only proclaims what he thought at the time he wrote it.

  
  

  This collection spans a few years. When the poet is extremely young, he hardly knows his own feelings. The poems are merely versed stories, most with no content other than entertainment.

  
  

  The poems grow in insight with time. Some are bad only because they are not understood. No poem is really good if it tries to imitate a moment in life. The poet is extremely fortunate if people understand what he feebly attempts to say.

  
  

  A poem may or may not rhyme, it may or may not have punctuation, or strict meters. What it does have is one feeling or thought, one bit of mind of the poet.

  
  

  A poem is only a group of words. They may be constructed in any number of ways, but they only try ot convey, to communicate with others one facet of life.

  
  

  Whether they succeed is up to life itself.

  
  

  MFN 1972

  
  

  
  

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  The 1982 Introduction to The Poetry of Michael F. Nyiri
  On Poetry

  
  

  
  The words escaping from my lips
  Have seen the light of day before-
  The apple of my love’s delight
  Has never shown it’s core.
  And as I read those words I wrote
  They seem to mean less now
  For as I have more things to say,
  I’ve just forgotten how.
  I’m all mixed up inside, you see.
  Though I’ve said that too, I know.
  And as I sit with turbulent mind
  My words find it hard to flow.
  I cannot say why I want to scream
  Or why I’m crying, too.
  Or why I think I’ll never make sense
  To anyone else or you.
  “On Poetry” December 27, 1975

  
  

  
  I am a painted canvas
  Which you will have to read
  And when you scratch the paint
  To find out if I’m a copy
  Then you will either love or hate me
  And I cannot tell you
  What will be the end result
  Because I am such a bad analyst
  When I try to analyze myself.
  “The Analyst”, also12.27.75

  
  

  
  Let us resolve the situation
  Close the book and end the show
  Let’s touch each other with our eyes
  And find out all that we don’t know
  written November 25, 1978

  
  

  
  Lover’s little stranger
  Sitting by the roadside
  Hoping all his dreams come true.
  Making up his fantasies
  Wallowing in worries
  Not much more can turn him blue
  from “Song About A Man I Know”
  1971

  
  

  
            It began at a timeworn desk, one of hundreds just like it, in a rubberstamped schoolroom in a rubberstamped town in a rubberstamped world with a rubberstamped mind……Mine.
            I began writing words which rhymed and had a sort of rhythm, words which in some prehistoric way and to my prehistoric mind conveyed a sense of explanation about my situation and the world around me.
            As time advanced and my vocabulary grew, and as other rubberstamped institutions attempted to mold my malleable mind like silly putty into societal acceptance, more words and phrases spilled from my brain to my notebooks, asking, answering, and alleviating my naive, juvenile fears.
            Love, justice, honor, all the old cliches took on an intense meaning. I felt I would fall in love. Alas, I took great pains to, but like all cliches, in time love justice and honor and a host of their brothers and sisters ran and reran themselves out of the projector and into the ground.
            Time, a pretty well placed cliche itself, bore me less and less themes. My notebooks mildewed and fell away.
            I prospered, rubberstamping my unique nonindividuality upon everything I did, making countless acquaintences which I naively believed were friendships, spouting countless cliched judgements and dogmas which I mistakenly believed were my own, and at some times I actually took out my poetry books and rubberstamped a stanza or two onto the printed page.
            Events which stood out as boggling to my mind inevitably found themselves rewritten into tired themes on my notebook paper. As life itself taught me its own cliched truths, the rubber in my stamp began to wear away.
            Where I was once analytical, yet thought provoking and loving, hopeful, trusting in my poetry, I became cynical, attaching myself thematically to death and hate, consequently harboring little desire to communicate with the people I’d thought I needed all my life.

  
  

  
            Where my book of poetry, my “volume of experience”, my “life on paper” once meant so much to my fledgeling writer’s aura, it became a mocking, whining voice from the past, proving to me more and more that the more I reached out to touch humanity, the more humanity saw fit to recoil.

  
  

  
            Finally, I broke the bond. I proclaimed “I don’t need people” “I don’t need poetry.” I covered myself with a blanket of mistrust and drowned myself in alcohol, occasionally admitting to myself, but to no one else, that I was utterly wrong. From the frying pan into the fire. The pendulum swings all the way to the left, then all the way to the right.

  
  

  
            The present. I am nearly two months sober. I still look at most people with distrust. I question myself and my world most wholeheartedly. What better time to pull out the old volumes: dust the pages off, and try to find myself again. It is a new year, a new situation. There is really no need for me to drown my inadequacies in cynicism now. I’ve accomplished what little I think I can in life, and now it’s time to sit down and write again. Let the questions make way for answers and the cliches make room for reality.

  
  

  
            For many years, I actually believed myself to be prophetic, a gifted chronicler of the human condition. Then when humanity grabbed me by the lapels, and proclaimed, “I’m not what you think I am.” I stopped believing in myself.

  
  

  
            I am only me. I do have a talent for words. And I should never forget that. I also have a need for humanity. Someday soon I’ll satisfy that need. For a while, I forgot my poems. I should have been reading them. I’ll remain “lover’s little stranger” but I’ll have a pen in my hand again.
  Michael F. Nyiri
  5-6 PM.
  December 29th, 1982
  Lomita, CA.

  
  

  
   

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