Flies

by Michael Dickman

Overview

"Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the bone—Flies renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating."—James Laughlin Award citation

"Reading Michael [Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind."—The New Yorker

"These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings."—The Believer

Winner of the James Laughlin Award for the best second book by an American poet, Flies presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman's poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves.

What you want to remember
of the earth
and what you end up
remembering
are often two
different things

Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, The End of the West, appeared in 2009 and became the best-selling debut in the history of Copper Canyon Press. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556593772
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	05/10/2011
Series:	Lannan Literary Selections
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Michael Dickman: Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His debut volume of poetry, The End of the West, appeared in 2009. He has received fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Editorial Reviews

"This is only [Michael] Dickman’s second book...he already seems a major American talent."—New York Times Book Review



"This is only [Michael] Dickman’s second book...he already seems a major American talent."—New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

One of Dickman's poems is called "Imaginary Playground," and that phrase could be used to describe the book itself, which returns again and again to blue, unshakable reveries that explore the strangeness of how childhood actually feels to a child…Many of them…derive their force and intimacy from a loss in the poet's own life—the overdose death of his older brother, Darin Hull—but they're so deftly calibrated that they manage never to be maudlin. This is only Dickman's second book, but…he already seems a major American talent.
—The New York Times

Jeff Gordinier