
The End of the West
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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781619320857 |
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Publisher: | Copper Canyon Press |
Publication date: | 05/04/2013 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | NOOK Book |
Pages: | 96 |
File size: | 3 MB |
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My mother waits for me
breathing easy
having let her hair go
silver, white
longer now
shining
in this
one of her many
afterlives
...so starts the longer title poem at the end of the book. Michael Dickman, unafraid of facing a brutal upbringing, brings us a sparse, symbolic, minimally punctuated style - and I don't say this lightly - uniquely his own. What the reader is left with, in the blank spaces, is the depth of human lives lingering around death, smirking at hope.
It's hard to imagine healthier ways to look at a tough upbringing full of drugs, parents who never made it out of their own childhoods, and well-meaning yet thin promises of relief, let alone a better life. Best to face the bitter, acidic past and get it over with - maybe. The summarizing end poem suggests that as merely a possibility. The poetic triumph here is the narrative of a boy, sometimes young, sometimes in his teens or twenties, slowly backing away from his environment, frantically looking around at bitter contradictions. The pausing - short lines, stanzas and poems - leaves the reader sunken emotionally and without looking at anything else but the people in Dickman's early life. But in stepping into this universe one is never confused, and never deceived one single bit. Dickman uses vivid, specific details in each poem, and powerful, open symbolism to bring a decaying world to life.
From the 3rd poem in one of my favorite series, "Returning to Church":
The light thorugh the stained-glass window was snow
Do you want to be home forever?
Its all right if you do
Kiss me in the pew among strangers who aren't strangers but His
other homeless children
The light through the stained-lass window
was snow, not Grace
not Spirit
Not, lightly
His fingers
I'm eager to see what Michael Dickman comes up with next.
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