Michael Baumann

Qoheleth’s Ecclesiastes characterizes a life lived with deep resentment, playful angst, dark sarcasm, seditious cynicism; equivocal Ecclesiastes bursts with the bittersweet, with doubt, with paradox, contradiction. It’s not unlike the Bible — wholly. Discrepancies over its interpretation have begot us rashes of violence — interpersonally, intrapersonally, communally, globally. To make “Co-Hell-Lit” I explored the practice of Midrash, a Jewish Biblical exegesis, in response to the loneliness that infects chapter 2 through 4. This poem also creates a phonetic pun on the name often attributed to Ecclesiastes’ authorship. “Resilience” resists chapter 11. “Go(o)d Grief” fixates on 7:13 and offers a queer dialectic reading of Ecclesiastes (for filth).

Spoken word poetry invites me to draw literally, literarily, heavily from hevel, a Hebrew concept of breath and a thematic element in Ecclesiastes. However, my poems bloom in their liminal tension between the ephemerality of live performance and the permanence of printed script—not unlike scripture. Thus, this tryptic of illuminated manuscripts not only showcases the poems’ textual performance, but also reappropriates a religious genre that has been instrumental in institutional oppressions of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, especially as those experiences intersect with queer and femme bodies. This collection seeks to disrupt and subvert co(mmo)dified interpretations of scripture that historically have supported colonialism, whiteness, capitalism, and positivism. Instead, I seek to resuscitate (rather than resurrect, mind) a fractal, subaltern chorus of reclamatory voices. 

About Michael

Michael Baumann has headlined as a performance poet at over 40 venues across the country, especially in Indianapolis, where he is Poet in Residence at The Learning Tree. A former professor, Michael holds a PhD in composition and rhetoric from The University of Louisville. For more, see michaelalbertbaumann.com