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Product Description
Product Description
"Dickman's book moves with careful intensity as it confidently illuminates buried, contemporary suffering."—Publishers Weekly
"Elizabeth Bishop said that the three qualities she admired most in poetry were accuracy, spontaneity, and mystery. Michael Dickman's first full-length collection of poems demonstrates each brilliantly....These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings. Again and again the language seems to disappear, leaving the reader with woven flashes of image, situation, emotion....These are durable poems from one of the most accomplished and original poets to emerge in years."—The Believer
"With vacant space and verbal economy, his work suggests volumes." —Poets & Writers
The poems in Michael Dickman’s energized debut document the bright desires and all-too-common sufferings of modern times: the churn of domestic violence, spiritual longing, drug abuse, and the impossible expectations fathers have for their sons. In a poem that references heroin and “scary parents,” Dickman reminds us that “Still there is a lot to pray to on earth.” Dickman is a poet to watch.
You can go blind, waiting
Unbelievable quiet
except for their
soundings
Moving the sea around
Unbelievable quiet inside you, as they change
the face of water
The only other time I felt this still was watching Leif shoot up when we were twelve
Sunlight all over his face
breaking
the surface of something
I couldn’t see
You can wait your
whole life
Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and began writing poems “after accidentally reading a Neruda ode.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and The American Poetry Review.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Michael Dickman's THE END OF THE WEST,
By
This review is from: The End of the West (Paperback)
A poet is not measured by all poems, but by the best. The best of Michael Dickman changes poetry. I think that's all a poet can ask, is to write poems good enough, like in "My Autopsy," to "turn over the earth." They are beautiful on the surface, and they are beautiful in their depths, hiding the fine workings, well constructed, like a fine watch, like the flow and sine waves of "Seeing Whales." We don't have to look for heaven in Dickman's world, "only this world...created over and over."THE END OF THE WEST is a fine beginning. As he points out in "We Did Not Make Ourselves," "there were hundreds of other lives." I'm glad he chose this one. Schubert Moore
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
lives up to the hype,
By Edna Lake "a lady prufrock" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The End of the West (Paperback)
It's true that Michael Dickman, and his twin brother Matthew, have making major waves in the poetry world lately, thanks to some high-profile features in The New Yorker and in the Portland press. The hyped-up novelty of the identical twin poets might put some people off from reading the work, and that would be a real shame. I haven't been able to stop thinking about Michael Dickman's book since I read it, for a number of reasons. The book is stylistically fierce--deep silences and broken language mark every poem--and is emotionally even fiercer. This book is a particular joy because many poets under 40 seem to treat sincerity with suspicion, and choose either an ironic, witty voice or an overly abstract and obscure one. Dickman's poetry is not "easy" but it is immediately, instinctively visceral, and never flip. It's also a relief, in a poetry world dominated by middle-aged poets, to read a book that gives expression to the experiences of those who grew up in Reagan-Bush America, replacing the typical poetry narratives of marriage, childhood, divorce and parental death with those of drug abuse, poverty, illness, violence, death of friends, spiritual confusion, and longing. Dickman is unflinching about depicting the long slide from childhood to adulthood, and he manages to do it without narcissim and with restraint and precision.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Brave, Unflinching, Selective Voice,
By Shawn Sorensen - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The End of the West (Paperback)
My mother waits for mebreathing 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 through 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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dickman,
By Monkey48866 - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: The End of the West (Paperback)
I loved this collection of poetry. I believe it is autobiographical, due to it being so personal and raw, so it almost makes it like a memoir. The only problem I had was with the last poem, which was the title poem, because it deferred from the format of the rest of the poems. However, I would recommend this collection to any poetry lover (who is not afraid of some curse words or drug references)!
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