A 21-year-old undergraduate student at the ASU Downtown campus recently published a chapbook — a collection of writing published on a smaller scope than the average book — with Four Chambers Press, an independent literary magazine based in Phoenix.
This is the first time the magazine published a chapbook featuring the work of an individual writer — ASU Downtown’s Michael Bartelt — said Jake Friedman, the founder and editor-in-chief of Four Chambers.
“We weren’t planning on doing chapbooks this early — we planned on doing it in the summer — but the opportunity presented itself,” Friedman said. “We really do think Michael’s work has been really high-caliber.”
The chapbook, titled “Poems for the Future President,” is also doubling as Bartelt’s undergraduate thesis for Barrett, the Honors College at ASU. Originally, Bartelt planned on self-publishing his chapbook with his director Rosemarie Dombrowski, which he said would have been a lot more difficult. However, Four Chambers took over the publication, sale and distribution of nearly 250 copies of his chapbook.
Dombrowski said only a few of her students publish their work, but usually just one poem or one short story.
“I’ve never worked with a student who produced the volume of creative work that Michael has,” Dombrowski said. “Whether or not you’re attracted to his aesthetic or the ideological impetus behind the pieces, his poems are undeniably well-crafted, mature beyond his 21 years.”
Bartelt said he is donating the royalty money he received from the first print back to Four Chambers because he feels passionate about the magazine.
This chapbook aims to challenge people’s views on society, Bartelt said.
“I think it’s really a reflection on the America we live in and the America that we could have,” Bartelt said. “It challenges people to look at our society and say, ‘What is democracy? What is freedom? What is equality? And are those things truly manifested within the society we live in?’”
Born in Pasadena, California, Bartelt grew up in a small suburb of Los Angeles county. He said a lot of his populist and democratic sympathies, represented in his poems, stem from his upbringing.
Bartelt said there were two towns in one neighborhood where he grew up. Just across from his town of La Verne was Pomona with “some areas of bone-crushing poverty.” He was struck by that difference in such as small place.
Throughout his high-school career, Bartelt was involved with feeding the hungry in Pomona parks. He said this is one of the audiences he’s writing for in his chapbook.
“I think if the collection is for one group of people outside of just a millennial American audience, I think it’s for those people who in our society are not empowered,” Bartelt said. “Those people who feel ostracized by the political system because of socioeconomic reasons.”
Bartelt said he came up with the idea for his thesis in his Intermediate Poetry Workshop course last year with Dombrowski, who was his English professor at the time and helped him with the long process.
After one year, Dombrowski and Bartelt narrowed down about 50 poems into the 26 that make up the collection. Bartelt said he spent weeks at a time “banging his head against a brick wall,” editing his poems and reworking them until they were perfect.
Bartelt also worked with Shawnte Orion, a fellow local poet who recently published his own chapbook, who gave him advice and writing tips to make his chapbook better.
Bartelt said he plans on getting a graduate degree in special education and becoming a teacher. He hopes his career will allow him to continue writing poetry that everybody can enjoy.
“I really don’t care about having any sort of academic credibility or recognition,” Bartelt said. “Poetry is normally reserved for the elites, particularly in academia. And I don’t want my poetry to be that; I want my poetry to be for everybody.”
Bartelt will read selected poems from the chapbook tonight at Lost Leaf.
Editor’s Note: Mike Bartelt is a friend or acquaintance to several staff members within the Downtown Devil who did not contribute to the reporting of the story. Bartelt wrote articles for the Downtown Devil in 2011 and 2013.
Contact the reporter at bjohns35@asu.edu
