Book review by Jeffrey Allen Mays
Michael Dechane, author of the 2024 publication The Long Invisible, is a man whom I expect future generations will read in the annals of 21st-century American poetry. I have had the pleasure of Dechane’s friendship since we met as colleagues working toward our MFA degrees. He tells me he has been writing poetry as far back as he can remember, and just published his debut collection in his mid-40s through Wildhouse Publishing.
Like the biblical Nathanael, Dechane is a man in whom there is no guile. Asked why it took him so long to publish his first book of poetry, he explained that getting published was never part of his calculus in writing poetry from the start. Writing poems was a source of personal joy and nourishment, an impulse that seemed as natural as eating, never a means to recognition or fame. Even when he decided to enroll in an MFA program in 2016, it was simply because he wanted to be the best poet he could be, not to launch a career or angle himself into the recognition of journal editors and publishing houses. This lends authenticity to his writings and provides a very personal window into his inner life.
The Long Invisible contains poems of elation and great joy, derived from the poet’s multi-sensory contact with the soil and sea, plants and creatures, as well as the blessings of love relationships and friendships. Many poems reflect on the particularity of the natural world. But the book also lyricizes pain and heartache, betrayal and loneliness, and moments of grief and disappointment seem best articulated in verse form. Indeed, this book encompasses a continuum of human emotion, and every page is a treasure trove of artistry, exploring various dimensions of the soul.
Among the more joyous compositions, “Purple Heart,” subtitled Tradescantia pallida, creates a scene that, as I read, I felt these memories were my own:
Haze of a boy’s sleep
as he wakes up within
a cool humidity and breeze
disturbing thin muslin curtains
his grandmother sewed
to soften her guest room.
Beyond their opaque flutter
the green glass jalousie
windowpanes lend color
to the morning light. Beyond
them, the assembled shades
under a live oak’s fullness
And beyond everything
below the boy’s window
his grandmother hums and tends
her Purple Heart and azaleas.
It rises and greets him,
this nameless lingering
song where her feet are still
draped in an amethyst wave.
As a child, I must have awakened from a hundred afternoon naps in the same hazy, cool bedroom to the peaceful, secure sound of some maternal figure humming just out of sight. The title of the poem draws our attention to that common, beloved groundcover plant with its deep purple leaves and tiny, three-leaf flower in the center. Many of Michael’s poems possess an uncanny familiarity with times and places that the reader recognizes, remembers, and delights in.
Several poems recall his native Florida seaside home and youthful memories there, such as the poem called “Recurrence,”
The gentle current of Jenkin’s Creek
carried me by the muddy bank
I crouched on as a boy, dip-netting
blue crabs lured by a chicken thigh.
Past the last bridge before the Gulf.
Into the sawgrass and saltmarsh smell
edging along the wildness of palms
shaggy and bent in unkempt sloughs…
This mesmerizing poem goes on to describe the poet in a reverie of memories of the water, the waves, and the sounds of nature, with a sweetness to the mind I have seldom read.
After reading his poem called “Gladiolus,” I wrote in the margin of the book, ‘I need to slow down and gather more beauty. When have I ever studied a gladiolus, or reflected so deeply on a bouquet?’ And that is one of the gifts of Dechane’s poetry, it compels me to respond to the world with closer attention. And while reading his poems, I jotted notes, thoughts, or questions on the page. The poetry rewards multiple readings.
Dechane includes some poems that lyricize the stability and depth of his love for his life partner. From the lines and phrases, we catch a glimpse of the delight they take in finding each other at a time when they seem best suited to be together. I envy anyone for whom poems are written with such grace and subtlety.
One final mention from his more heartwarming poems: “Jake’s Parade” is a story in verse form of a cold night when friends were gathered around a bonfire “at Jake and Donna’s place,” a little tipsy, and watched in amazement and laughter as Jake decided to throw an old Papasan chair onto the bonfire. Then other items followed: a bookcase, a guitar. The scene is risible and makes the reader regret missing the event. The poem concludes with a poignancy that can only be fully captured by seeing the words unfold on the page. I’ll let you buy the book and discover this joy yourself.
Earlier, I mentioned Dechane’s ability to evoke loneliness, pain, and betrayal. Interspersed in the collection, coming like waves of grief amid stretches of mirth, are poems that invite the reader to sit and weep with him over sins (his own and those of others), to ache over heartbreak, to burn with pain as the knife is thrust in. Dechane has clearly loved much and mourned deeply in the wake of love’s dissolution. He is a sensitive and passionate lover, and it seems the extremes of rapture have too frequently been followed by equal and opposite extremes of sorrow.
When I got my copy of the book and read the first poem titled “No Fortune,” I wept and had to put the book down. It laments a pitifully bleak moment as the narrator stands at the water’s edge in a state of brokenness. The sights and sounds evoke deep emotions of hopelessness, pain, and loss. A once beautiful relationship had come to a bitter and agonizing end. It seems an unlikely topic with which to begin a collection. It was a week before I found the courage to open the cover again and read on. I’m so glad I did.
I admire Dechane’s vulnerability, his willingness to invite strangers into the secret chambers of pain. In a poem titled “Because I Love Twice at Once,” the narrator brings us into the bedroom of a dying love affair.
No sleep and my night thoughts thicken.
So I come to this window
naked, where winter pours in.
Here is a tang my skin remembers.
I turn and watch my lover, lost to me
For a while on her own pillowy island.
But still, I still can’t see the problem.
Somewhere, far into the night,
another love sleeps. Or stands
At her own window…
…
And once more my body remembers
how ardor is a thing with horns.
These solemn lines are harrowing. I don’t think any other medium but poetry could convey the gravity and regret so poignantly.
Another poem of wistful regret is titled by its first line.
Why am I kinder to your memory
than I was to you? Or so generous
to your future self? What opens in me
now to want their good with such tenderness?
Under my heart there must be a cellar
holding all I could not feel in your arms.
In dark bottles, filled by some vintner,
lies the love from vines on a hidden farm
which could be growing anything this time
of year—mealy pears or another house
we could not live in. But I would not mind
a bit more loss: let’s toast what’s been. Aroused,
my heart pours but cannot quite decant
this amity, so late, of no account.
There are others of equal or greater power that decorate the dimensions of human experience in these lyrical incantations. I could easily write about many others, each one who has changed me in some way, bringing me closer to the tragedies and blessings of this life that we all experience.
I want to conclude with what may be the greatest poem in the collection, and it should be remembered for its timeless message, its urgency, and its beauty—a sermon in fourteen lines that penetrates to the division of soul and spirit.
In These Last Minutes
Say the burning unsaid thing.
Say what there is time left for.
Quarter no cleverness
In these last minutes.
Say the names of the unloved.
Say slowly those names you hate.
Empty the great gulch,
the scorched earth of your heart.
Say then the old adversary knocks.
Say every fierceness you rehearsed
balks before his ugly, benevolent face.
What now? Do you need to know why
forgiveness heals before pronouncing some—
say the burning unsaid thing.
That’s a pertinent commission to us for all times and places. “Say the burning unsaid thing.” I love how the poet interrupts himself in the second last time, cuts himself off to restate his concise and axiomatic point, say the burning unsaid thing. It’s a tribute to the eternity and power of our words to heal, forgive, and bind up the broken.
The Long Invisible was published in September of 2024 by Wildhouse Publishing and can be purchased at the following address. https://wildhousepublishing.com/the-long-invisible/
Editor’s note: Click here to enjoy an in-depth interview between Jeffrey Allen Mays and Michael Dechane recorded in April 2025. Michael discusses what poetry means to him, how he got started, and the intersection between his art and the world we inhabit.
Jeffrey Allen Mays’ short fiction has been published in Catapult/Topology Magazine, Please See Me, Radix Magazine, and God and Nature. His debut novel, The Former Hero, was published in 2014 by AEC Stellar Publishing and won first place in the 2015 Texas Association of Authors Book Award, as well as being a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards. In 2020, Jeffrey received his MFA and now teaches writing at St. Edwards and Concordia Universities in Austin, Texas.