This Is Probably A Few Years Late--A Response to Letters to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

I feel like I finally earned my atheist badge after reading Letters to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris recently.  As I had no doubt, Harris proves himself to be the most reasoned person writing nowadays, emotions stabled by reason, rather than reason getting pushed aside for carried away emotions. Thinking mistakes poofed away, Harris isn’t crying for help or being dogmatic in his response to the dogmatism of Christianity. He’s laying down facts. His just happen to come in the form of a letter to an entire people, a powerful and “normal” group of people. 

He’s brilliant in his organization, his reason, and his morality. Via organization, he perfectly addresses the issue, proves that it’s an issue, puts forward a powerful response, a response that’s reasoned, making it hard to refute most of these claims with actual facts (i.e. the Bible condones violence and murder, i.e. it’s all very contradictory). And his view of morality, with human suffering at the forefront, is plain and clear and totally right: "Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering” (p. 8).

My (only) (large) (saddening) concern with this book, as an atheist, as someone with similar fears and frustrations as Harris, is his approach. The letter. Moreover, his general rhetorical strategy, one that at times is borderline attacking, and at others is heavily hidden beneath his reason, is that of blame and scare tactics, at least at first glance. One of my favorite quotes is from p.51: "Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs." But what kind of noise are we making? What kind of noise are people hearing?

At times, his goal is muddled for me, or maybe it’s just two parts very loudly coming out at once: to prove to the Christian people their errors and to arm nontheists with the arguments and insight to help in their everyday struggles as nontheists. While I get that he doesn’t expect to change the mind of every Christian nor does he think every nontheist is as reasoned and adamant as he is, I still fear the way he approaches the book from both of these goals is problemsome. There are several parts where Harris blatantly points the finger of blame at Christians for the suffering of others thanks to their decisions. And while he’s undoubtedly right, the aforementioned stellar three things proving such, I fear he’s shouting when he really could turn the argument to an impactful Q&A on the page. 

In the same way Christianity believes you will be punished for ignorance, of not knowing one’s Savior and such, Harris might seem to some to be doing the same to Christians, ones who have been brainwashed essentially by family and society, ones who haven’t been exposed to the level of reason Harris offers. Sure, as he says, "[i]t is a scientific face that moral emotions--like a sense of fair play or an abhorrence of cruelty--precede any exposure to scripture” (p. 21). However, these have to be the most animalistic and comprisable of instincts, ones easily succumbed to social norms, societal pressure, and history. No one besides someone with the discussion capabilities and sincere knowledge of Harris could dig deeper into that layer of indoctrination than the man himself. 

However, with this mechanism of blame Harris uses, I worry he’s giving Christians, who are already often rather defensive, often for no reason (see: War on Christmas; see: Prayer in Schools), another reason to hate and distrust atheists. Furthermore, he’s providing nontheists, ones who are possibly less rational and more militant than myself and Harris, strong rhetorical statements that could easily be strapped to hateful means. While I see beyond this finger-pointing, I fear those we (society, America, nontheists, etc.) crucially need to read and understand this book—Christians, agnostics, youth—might get hung up on/confused by such strategies.

That being said, inside Harris’s wonderful facts and logic could likely be a great discourse for getting people to rethink their faith, or at least the application of that faith, and to put true human suffering first. The pieces Harris links, like the absurdity of concerns of abortion and birth control and homosexuality, seem very obvious, but to some, it might not. This helps in the effort, no matter their religious beliefs, to get more people to realize that human suffering is the key thing to worry about in this life and ways to reduce that are the concerns to spend the most time on. 

So yes, I enjoyed this book, but I can’t help but wonder: what if Harris had written a more inviting book, for all, one that exposes faith’s contradictions and irrationality, but instead of blame, it was focused on reinstituting human compassion and decreasing human suffering, no matter what one believes.  As he says on p. 25, "[i]ndeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral--that is, when pressing these concerns inflict unnecessary and appalling suffering in innocent human beings." This is the thing to change! As “[p]eople make religion out of the full fabric of their lives, not out of mere beliefs,” we have to get that fabric to blanket the ‘this life’ suffering and issues, as much as it worries about what’ll happen to our poor souls when we die. And that’s the greatest thing Harris’s book does, as I certainly see it, and I hope others, not just atheists, do as well.

The Sonnets by Ted Berrigan

Wow, I was a dummy in the past, if you've been paying attention you know this, don't you, but here, I'm not talking about my staggering and LOVEFEAR, no, just poetry, and how sometimes I can't read, or read right, like I wanna, like with these poems by Berrigan, when I first read, I thought eh okay and wuzz and get it together man, but I was wrong, totally, they're huge and wild and so important, the mesh of influences, both poetic and LIFE, time running and doing, ever-changing and rearranging, wow.

Here are my favorite lines from this book, yeah I don't know why I'm cataloging my favorite lines, but I am, it feels right:

from VI

"And the green rug nestled against the furnaceDust had covered all the tacks, the hammer...optimism for the jump...The taste of such delicate thoughtsNever bring the dawn."

from XXXII

"A farmer drove up on a tractor
He said he was puzzled by the meaning exactly of "block".
The blue day! Where else can we go
To escape from or tedious homes, and perhaps recapture the past?"

from XXXVI

"                I never thought on the Williams-
burg bridge I'd come so much to Brooklyn
just to see lawyers and cops who don't even carry
guns taking my wife away and bringing her back"

from XLII

"               The black heart beside the 15 pieces of glass
Of my many faceted and fake appearance
The most elegant present I could get!"

from L

"Whatever is going to happen is already happening
Some people prefer "the interior monologue"
I like to beat people up"

from LXXIII

"                           at heart we are infinite, we are
ethereal, we are weird!" 

Standing In Line For The Beast by Jason Bredle

Standing in Line for the Beast by Jason Bredle

Bredle's a poet I genuinely look forward to reading, a talker, a good talker where sometimes he's moping around or jumping up and down or hiding behind personified images of Apocalypse but I keep on following him around, a sad sack and the lonely wind, who is who, I don't know. My admiration for Bredle, especially in this, his debut collection, is how I'm sometimes tired of his listing, his kaleidoscope of images and memories, his lengthiness, yet I can't seem to not care, to give up, to put the damn book down. There's something endearing about the voice that I can't quite explain (YET?). Having read a good deal of his later work first (Smiles of the Unstoppable is unstoppable), I can say while he's certainly matured in his talkative ways, the core guts of the poems still wanders. And thank the goodness for that!

from "While Anne Reads a Lengthy Poem About Her Grandmother's Funeral and Our Mortality"

I'm reminded of some details Bill told me
about his aunt's funeral in Memphis a few years
ago--a paraplegic whose casket somehow
got tipped on its side while being lowered
into the grave during a thunderstorm. The pallbearers,
Bill included, were forced into the mud
in an attempt to turn the casket right side
up, digging and clawing their way in and out
of the hole, slopping around for an audience
of bereft women in black dresses and red
hats. Finally they gave up and left her
on her side, creeping away in their Cadillacs and ruined
suits, the wives angry at the husbands.

Some stuff I've read recently.

I always think those book round-ups, where people talk about their experience reading several books they've read recently, are really awesome. Recent example: Roxane Gay over at HTMLGIANT.

Here's some stuff from my head:
- For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly and Carelessly Destroyed... by Hosho McCreesh: Check out my single-sentence review over at Vouched.

- Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot: Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in contemporary and indie lit stuff that I forget about the goodness of people like Eliot. As I'm becoming more and more interested in long poems (somehow; I was always trying to find ways to not extend my poems beyond a page), this book was just what I need. Thoughtful meditation and sincere beliefs. I loved how this series took itself seriously in a way that some poetry today is afraid to. Eliot trudges forward unafraid of the big boys, the tough topics like life and death, time, and religion. Along similar lines of "The Wasteland," Eliot isn't afraid to risk torturing his readers by unleashing the torturing inside himself, through style and voice shifts. The thing I enjoyed most about this book was its sense of self, its fearlessness in searching for answers.

from "East Coker"
There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.

- The July/August issue of The American Poetry Review: Though they've been really awful at getting me my issues (missed two of the four in my subscription so far), I do enjoy APR when I get it. This issue especially had me stoked because it was packed with people I like. Like 8 (yes EIGHT) new poems by Bob Hicok, along with an interview with him and a short essay about him). Like essays by Tony Hoagland and David Rivard. Like an interview with John Ashbery. I love how APR is unafraid to dedicate so much space to someone like Hicok with such a long selection of new poems. Obviously, it is risky because if the poems prove unpopular with a reader, there's a good amount of space taken up. Of course, I dug these poems; Hicok making further strides with the music of his poems, quirky meandering poems that breath out very well. Cynthia Cruz has a set of self-portraits in the issue that are impressive. Where the self-portrait often wants to expand and project, these poems use fragmentation that makes the self-portrait fresh, even non-self-focused. Overall, an issue full of more than great poems, but great thoughts about poems and great depth in engaging with poets.

from "Stop-loss" by Bob Hicok

The man beside you in fatigues, camouflaged
from Wednesday, holding his son’s hand
for the last time before he returns
to shooting at people, being shot at

in a war he thought he was done with,
I mean him: he wants to stop loss.
What a beautiful phrase for the army
to support. In it, I hear

that we’re through with grenades,
the violent enterprise of steel,
we’re on to the new war, the war against
the cannibalism of war.

- Skirmish by Dobby Gibson : Because this is the kind of poetry that I gravitate towards (white guy, discursive, associative, self-focused), I have to be careful not to read too much of it too often (read: trying to expand my range). After reading and falling in love with Matthew Zapruder's poem "Dobby's Sweatshirt," I've been itching to read this book. Amongst the stress of moving, I decided to console myself a little with this book. Overall, it's exactly what I expected. I don't know if that's a great thing or not. My favorite poems were the ones all titled "Fortune." Different than the typical style of one-two page poems, these only lasted a dozen or so lines playing strongly off the ideas of fortune and chance. I love how contemplative and thoughtful (kind of like the Eliot pieces) this series is; they piece various examples together in a way that equals an unstated fortune. The book as a whole didn't cure me, but it was a charming read that nursed me out of my stress zone.

Fortune (from H_NGM_N)

An iceberg calves and drifts
its first few feet toward destruction.
The motel hallway carpeting just goes on and on.
A cigarette is flicked from a speeding car,
a farmer files his horse’s teeth—
how is it that we can ever fall asleep?
There’s an infinity inside even
the shortest storms of our seen lives.
A Finn ladles water in his sauna.
He’s never met you, and that is why
he has to make himself feel better
by going someplace very small to be warm and alone.

there is but one fence

Abraham Smith spits up rural life in beautiful fragmented songs in his debut collection, Whim Man Mammon. Exactly where it comes from, I can’t say. I know it reminds me of my Grandpa Gobble and his porch, that old shack at the end of the dirt road in North Carolina. And his whiskey in the fridge and the stories of my Dad’s youth.

Wherever he comes from and whatever he’s been through, Abraham Smith has shaken it loose and tossed it on the page. He speaks and it’s the trembling sound of the self, of throwback, of removed in America. Smith hopes, “may we live live live/forever far from walmart, among/the husk and husky peas and husky voiced singers/who ring among rusts and thrive on good boot gals.” He is not speaking from beside me in Central Indiana but broadcasting in his loud spoken word. A removed throwback self. These poems strike the sense that beg COME OUT AND PLAY. The best kinds of poems pull me out of my apartment, off my couch, away from the computer; Smith’s poems taunt and punch me out of my comfort hole. You want experience? Take this:

in work jeans

patched four ways with pants
I ripped the ass on

kneeling to my first
still warm deer

my knife just so
my hand slid in

and all the plates
began a claim

on hopeful
blues

vultures and crows
sky-locked

waiting
to fall to steaming

Abraham Smith is not shouting the gospel of a distant way of life. He’s breaking open the bottle to prove there’s whiskey inside. In these moments, Abraham Smith knows the knife is more than a knife and the blood more than blood and those pants and their patches remind him (and us) that those bits live on. And he can pull close to himself, to others, to us remembering a grandpa:

it goes without saying
my grandpa’s head is one helluva circus
never was religious man
people say he walked with deer
tickled their chins
flipped kernels of field corn
off his thumb
in and down their dog nun hatches
alzhimer’s now sad because
never would have wished to live this far from deer
happy when he doesn’t pine
happy when is bed is
cut from skin of moon
how much you need?

This collection isn’t easy to talk about because this isn’t a man sitting down to write the next great American poem, this is the man cutting his poems from the mud and muck of the American rural. Though some of the poems blew themselves into too small of bits or rattled too far, Abraham Smith’s first collection is one to be reckoned with, the work of a man possessed by the where as much as the what.

It's always better to hear Smith read his poems.
It's always best to see Smith read his poems.

(SPECIAL THANKS TO LAYNE FOR BUYING ME THIS BOOK ON HER RECENT TRIP TO NYC)

Music is a mushroom, an argument between mirrors

Don’t know how to do that fancy upside down A like on the cover, so I’m just gonna call it Fall Higher by Dean Young.
We know Dean as the surrealist, associative master of the wacky and wild. We know him as the great example of the art of recklessness. We know him as the poet with the new heart. But reading this book reminds me of what is so simply evident in Dean’s best poems (in books such as Strike Anywhere and First Course in Turbulence): Dean Young knows poetry.
In this book, his musicality has been turned up. At first, I was like WOAH WHAT, but rereading these poems, it just shines through that this dude knows what he is doing, again and again.

VIDEO READING OF MADRIGAL



AHHH GEESH the video cut off the last two lines. WHY I DONT KNOW. I wanna finish this post and sleep, so here are the lines, read them to yourself in my voice or someting: while the next set of fools scampers into the puzzle garden/detonating with laughter.

The steady rhythm and rhyme scheme at the beginning, the parts with too many rhymes or syllables, and the choppiness at the end all mark for me the brilliance of what Dean is doing in this book. Like the subject matter dealing with loss, he starts with the sturdy and steady, before loosening up, breaking down.

Not to be a butthead in the middle of a review, but: ANYBODY ELSE REAL DISAPPOINTED WITH THIS INTERVIEW WITH DEAN AT THE RUMPUS RECENTLY? The majority of the questions seemed goofy or disconnected or broad to the point of being empty.

Often, music to me hides the meat of the poem or even makes it seem like something is there when it’s just a pop song. This book uses the music to sing a beautiful chant of blistering bitterness, strong contemplation, and yeah-yeah-yearning
Yeah, the typical Dean stuff is there, but the poems where he expounds on those old ways, using a tightened sense of music, a calmer sense of association, is where this book reaches into the fresh, the new, the bold. Take the last poem, “Teetering Lullaby.” Dean pushes here where he normally would pull, giving to the “you” this beautiful lullaby. Take the middle stanzas:

The heart’s
adumbrations of bees may never
cease, not the hopeful hum
or peevish sting but rest I would
my hand upon your breast, sleep I would

above the troposphere. No accounting
for your beauty moving through me
like a branch, a sigh coming from under
the squeaky remnants of the old barn.

Though more refined, these types of poems do not strike me as watered down or passive. Rather, they are bold in their clarity, their sense of self. Yes, we know Dean can rattle through a page and a half of associative energy that breaks bones and hearts alike, but that only makes this resolve so beautiful, so impressive. To end the book with such a feat of a slow exhale reminds us that this type of writing, this type of thinking, this type of living is harder than it seems.

I don't think anybody understood then what a monster really was.

The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg, his debut collection, represents an exploration into some pretty gritty spaces. Into contemporary surrealism. Into imaginative association. Into that blur between prose poem and flash fiction. As I read this book, I became enamored with the shapes Schomburg was making with his words, with the images, with the pieces and sections and book as wholes. Honestly, I am perplexed how to talk about this book as a collection in any defined/refined way. I know I liked it a great deal and am intrigued by why I like it. But when looking up one of my favorite poems “A Band Of Owls Moved Into Town,” I discovered it was originally published in a free verse form with linebreaks and a few other differences. Because my mind immediately latched onto the structure of the poems in this book, I thought I’d examine the differences between the two, hopefully uncovering some of the answers to what makes this book rule.

A basic overview of what I found structurally/thematically in this book: Two major structures of poems are normed in this book: half-page to full page prose poems and narrow, small stanza free verse poems. Also, recurring themes, names, and ideas repeat themselves (and Schomburg even includes a key word index at the end of the book). Also, there are some short sections/series in this book.

“A Band of Owls Moved Into Town,” a full page prose poem early in the book, is a great example of the type of things Schomburg is doing:

A band of owls moved into town. They shopped for groceries and ran for office, that sort of thing. It began casually. Everyone simply put up with the owls because businesses were booming and the schoolchildren’s test scores had suddenly taken a turn for the better. More and more owls, and some people too, made the move into town and the room for accommodations began to diminish. Needless to say, there was a lot of construction. The town became a city. It developed a night life and the
constant yellowish buzz of electricity.

One night at the Electric Mole, I met Julia, the daughter of new and prosperous socialites in town. She was incredible—the most amazing eyes. We stayed awake
through most nights holding each other beneath the moonlit window. We talked about everything, but mostly about our disdain for the construction and the flood of immigrant owls.

I would tell her, We seem to be the only two who are concerned, who notice. The only two who want out…

…Who want a simpler life, she would say. The only two who…who…

Aided by its structure, I am most intrigued by how this poem works its themes. This surreal context of owls moving into town automatically creates an oddness that for me allows the metaphors and the themes to shine. For instance, the struggle between youth and the various difficulties they face emotionally growing up, such as the conflict with adults, difficulty grasping change, and feeling like outsiders, radiates beautifully in this poem. The development of the piece complements those difficulties in the way it unravels. The first paragraph sticks to the third person, which allows readers to get comfortable with the unfamiliar situation. The second paragraph sets up the relationship between the I and Julia in this typical we-stay-up-all-night-and-just-talk-and-are-alone-together-in-the-world sort of way before finally unveiling the tension the speaker and Julia feel. Most telling, I think, is the separation of the speaker’s phrase, the more disgruntled of the two, from Julia’s, whose voice seems less concerned and more passive before trailing off symbolically. This structure pushes the poem to a good height because it allows readers to take each thing one step at a time, leading to the full realization of what it is representing.

Tarpaulin Sky originally published this poem in a different version. I’m intrigued by how the differences inform what Schomburg is doing in this book.

A band of owls moved into town,
shopped for groceries, ran for office,
that sort of thing. It began casually,
some of them gathered on Sundays
at Sophia’s to get their hair done and
then it was the bookstore on the corner.
Everyone simply put up with the owls
because businesses were booming
and the schoolchildren’s test scores
had suddenly taken a turn for the better.
More and more owls, and some people too,
made the move into town and the room
for accommodations began to diminish.
Needless to say, there was much
construction. The town quickly became
a city. It developed a night life and the
constant yellowish buzz of electricity.
One night at the Electric Mole, I met Julia,
the daughter of new and prosperous
socialites in town. She was incredible—
the most amazing eyes. We would stay
awake through most nights holding each
other beneath the moonlit window. We
talked about everything there, but mostly
about our disdain for the construction
and the flood of immigrant owls. I would
tell her, “We seem to be the only two who
are concerned, who notice. The only two
who want out…”
“…Who want a simpler life,”
she would say. “The only two who…who…”

Besides the additional musicality of the line breaks and the use of more fragments, especially in the opening, the main difference in this version is how the single stanza drives the poem. As mentioned before I think the white space informs the reading, allowing readers to take their time with the poem and progress into the metaphor and surrealism. In this version, however, I think that effect is lost because the added musicality pulls the reader without much room or time to reflect or deal with what is happening. Not until the indentation leading into the final two lines and notably Julia’s sole primary appearance does the reader have a chance to pause. While it may be a bias of having read the prose version first, I think this version of the poem lacks the tightness in readability that allows the message to really shine through.

At first, the poetic grumpyhead in me was mumbling about the abundance of paragraphs, but honestly, I realize that these are certainly poems and the prose form that is abundant is the best move as it allows Schomburg to do what he does best. Where many poems, mine included, are aided by linebreaks and a more stanza’ed form as it matches and controls the musicality and reading of the poem, most of Schomburg’s poems, especially his best ones, utilize their surrealism and symbolism as their catalyst for reading the poem. Rereading this poems, I find myself caught in the rhythm of the wild things happening on the page, engrossed and loving it. That is enough for me right now.

The facts aiming your eyes down the road...

One of the main reasons I got into poetry is that I’m drawn to using writing to deal, cope, live, move on. My favorite poets are the ones that push that ability, working through problems and points, staying true to their voice and persona to take their readers to a rewarding end. Bob Hicok was one of the first contemporary poets that I remember. He introduced me to the power of pushing his poems deep, stretching them wide to get their full effect.

In my poems, I have created the most satisfactory complete-feeling pieces by using this lesson to make the most out of what I was talking about. Sometimes, it involves traveling around the topic. Sometimes, it requires digging deep into myself and the idea. As I am currently going through the beginning stages of a divorce, college graduation, and the other things that come along with those big steps, I am having to remind myself, hard as it may be, to write about these things, and take them the distance.

Hicok’s early collection The Legend of Light is a great example of a young poet doing just that. Whether the poem be in first person or not, Hicok does not shy away from the tough subjects. In my favorite poem from the collection “Divorce,” Hicok guides us through his relationship with such a difficult topic by starting at an entry point away from himself, a man on the phone, through his own associations, like thinking about guns, before settling down beside his own wife to think:

When she asks what’s wrong, I begin to say
idiots, we’re all idiots, but stop
and put my arms around her. Because
we’re not, and because warmth’s
better comfort than words.

This is a place where I worry about going, because sometimes it can come off overly self-concerned. However, The progression of this poem pushes himself and his readers so deep into this idea so that the ending comes out meaningful. This isn’t just some whiny poet guy worried about his marriage, but rather a thoughtful poet giving himself the benefit of the doubt and being honest with what’s he’s finding.

Hicok’s complete sense of empathy, both with himself and others, balanced inside complete honesty is what makes Hicok such an admirable person on the page. Sometimes, I worry that my self-focus and confessions of things like depression and loneliness, even masked in my energy and associations, will come off as whiny and unpurposeful. Hicok manages to turn those risks into rewards by not relenting on his path.

Looking at “Neighbor,” I notice how Hicok carefully crafts the relationship and juxtaposition of a homeless man that is his “neighbor” and his own life. I am blown away here with how Hicok portrays the man and himself within the situations of themselves and their relationship to one another in a way that neither belittles or puts the homeless man on a pedestal, also without overemphasizing Hicok himself as the observer/poet, but rather smoothing out the details in a way that moves me equally in thought and feeling:

A man lives under the Beakes bridge. I drive over him
every day. His hair’s
like a troll’s I had once, a thicket though not purple.
Curled fetal, he sleeps
with his back to the river. I see him when I run, when
I chase my breath
to stay alive. He has a radio I’ve never heard croon.
Perhaps he’s an aficionado
of silence. He doesn’t wear foil on his head. Does not
spread the flower of his hand
for coin. Not that I’ve seen and we are neighbors.
I pass his house
on my way to breakfast, to buy shoes, tan or black
lace-ups, to drive
into what’s called the country but is really the city
spread out like paint
on canvas. I live in an area where cities are growing
together. The term used
is megapolis. Everything will have to get bigger.

The places he puts the lens circles around both him and the man in their various contexts to really allow himself to keep the tone and perspective in control. Then, like in many of his poems, the “point” barrels out, hitting me at my most natural level: a caring, worried human being.

OH MICHAEL

In his blurb, a rather lengthy one, for Michael Dickman’s first book, The End of the West, Franz Wright says, “To me, he is one of the younger American poets who are hiddenly heralding the end of the randomness, the glib irony Rilke strenuously warned against, the gratuitous non sequiturs and obscurities for obscurity’s sake which have been fashionable in our poetry over the past couple of decades.” Undoubtedly, he is right about one thing: the idea that Dickman’s poems are without that sense of associative franticness that inhabits much modern writing, including that of Dickman’s brother, Matthew, some of my favorite poets, and even at times myself.

Todd asked me about this blurb, the whole thing, which runs half of the backcover, and I’ve been taking time to digest it. Sure, blurbs are often lame, but I do think Wright brings up some interesting points about Dickman’s writing, but ones that also point to some of the contemporary writing I love and even many of my own poems.
I’ll come right out and say that I do like this book a lot, but honestly, I’m not sure why, as its distinctively outside of my “norm” and also has some glaring weaknesses. However, this book continues to resonate with me each time I’ve read it. Last fall, I read it twice in one weekend, so perplexed by my infatuation with it that I had to read it again. Now, as part of this class, we decided to include it because it is far from my aesthetic, forcing me to looking deeper into the book and my own poetic perspective.

As I contemplate this collection of poems more, I have begun to think of it as one of those air fresheners that shoots out a fresh scent every so often, something so minute that unless you’re looking closely at it, it’s effect can be missed. Still, its consistency and subtle potency keeps the place cozy and clean-smelling for a long while. Maybe, that’s an odd association.

Let me continue then. I think the kind of stuff Wright is talking about feels more like a quick straightening up, a couple swipes of a duster, picking up the magazines and dirty clothes. While for the moment its effective, deep down, things might not be as well-done and successful in the long run. Oh goodness, is this making any sense?

Dickman’s poems are sparse, heavily fragmented, and simple, yet somehow emotionally specific and impactful. I think it’s because he keeps coming at me. Most poems run a few pages, though short in word count. It’s this slow unraveling that seems to get me. Take the first page of “We Did Not Make Ourselves,” which slowly leaks humility onto the page:

We did not make ourselves is one thing
I keep singing into my hands
while falling
asleep

for just a second

before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the
other, like opening an Advent calendar

My brain opening
the chemical miracles in my brain
switching on

I can hear

dogs barking
some trees
last stars

You think you’ll be missed
it won’t last long
I promise

The lack of punctuation, the sparseness of words, the length it travels in such a short space really affects me. His negotiation of images to get to that last stanza, to me, is brilliant.

And, I think that’s where I find myself with Dickman, unable to comprehend how to write like this. Trust me, I’ve tried. I find both beauty and a challenge in attempting to blip through emotions that way.

But at last, I am of the temperament. that wants to run, to drag, to be dragged. Mike Young seems like one of those poets, one that I love, that Wright might point to as random for this type of discursive energy:

"You Know That Wait Means Stay"

Right away there’s thinking. Right away.
No matter how much I want my face to moon
with no contortion, leave all talk to voiceovers.
Hands take after purrs. Nicknames remind us
mostly of the fun inventing them. Every beach
fire is a kind of desperate flag. Cops pull over a
riding lawnmower, and the man won’t turn it off.
We walk the dike that crosses I-91. Headlights
pan like reasons. We’re keeping warm. Cars aren’t
fireflies, which is not even how I feel. “Funny isn’t
the same as being happy,” I tell you. Duh. Neither is
that. A family of tiny arsonists live in burned out
delivery trucks behind your neck. They are your
bad pillow. Hands wobble. It’s never been infinity
with me. Infinity is something I can fist bump.

But, I would be at the defense of Young’s poems because where I’m astounded by Dickman’s concision translating emotion to the page, I am equally enthralled with Young’s thinking, how it is both controlled and wild, natural in the most human of ways. For him to get from this excerpt to this quote, saying, “Sometimes I know that I don’t know what’s going to happen/next, but I know exactly who I’m going to be with when it/does,” is my definition of human thought and feeling combined and captured on the page.

My point wasn’t really to defend Mike Young against a theoretical attacker or to take away from Dickman’s approach. Rather, I wanted to hold Dickman’s style against my poetic worldview to see more, and what I seem to be learning is that Dickman’s book resonates with me because it feels so genuine, as Young’s poem does as well. While I’m not the kind of thinking, feeling human like Dickman, I know those types, and I appreciate the restraint and energy of both styles.

More and more, I’m wanting poems to feel like people, like personalities, like they exist outside the page and the world of literature, whether its an artifice or not. Wright complains that the “randomness” makes “it so difficult to determine whether or not a poet has talent or anything significant to tell us.” Certainly, that particular style runs the risk of getting lost in its action, ending up empty, but I’m realizing that as both a reader and a writer, through being close with a text, with myself, I can find the significance and talent, if it exists, both in myself and others.