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Flies (2011)

by Michael Dickman(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1556593775 (ISBN13: 9781556593772)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

Copper Canyon Press

review 1: Dickman writes in an alternating current of jagged short and long lines that help make his verse attractive, approachable, and nimble. But ultimately I found his brand of American surrealism too dreamily soft-focus and, for all of the genuine pathos and spiritual warfare in the collection, at the dark heart of which is the suicide of an older brother, I thought the poems were too unrelenting in their manic anguish.
review 2: I'm torn about what to make of this book. Like his first collection, _The End of the West_, Dickman's short lines and jarring line breaks--with ample space in between everything--make for an eye-squinting read, at times. Eye-squinting because of all the space that requires filling in, and the dreamlike quality of the clipped visions that ... moreare roughly painted by terse, clipped phrases. Eye-squinting because rather than dreamlike, this book is more aptly described as nightmarish. I consider it impressive if a book makes me tear up; the last poetry collection that did that to me was _Crush_, by Richard Siken. This collection made me swallow back the urge to allow myself to sob because I was eating lunch in public at the time of my first reading, and I didn't want to appear to be crying over a book. But the emotion is one of feeling horrified at the visions and emotions roiling around in the air around me and inside my chest and throat, threatening to come up, like vomit. Which is what the book is about: mortality, bodies, death, stinking of meat, nightmare visions of people you know and love going out to sea, rocking back and forth, dying piecemeal right in front of you. That's what reading the book is like. The four stars, rather than five, is because as much as I admire the highly crafted and deliberate nature of Dickman's aesthetic that successfully creates a very specific effect, I still can't quite stomach one-word lines, unless they are used sparingly. In this collection, they are everywhere. It reads like performance poetry to me, rather than lines of poetry honed and crafted, on the page. I don't doubt that each decision to cut a phrase or sentence in half was deliberated and conscious, but after a while it seems like an easy out, a pattern or trademark that feels a bit lazy. But I admit my bias: I'm more of a maximalist than a minimalist, at heart; I enjoy the weight of a poem that appears more substantial more than a short, terse poem that works as much with empty space as with the connotations created by ambiguity and multiplicities of images.One last thing: for some reason, it doesn't offend me when Dickman writes about Emily Dickinson--as opposed to when Billy Collins writes about her. This is a good thing. Am also reminded of Emily Dickinson because of that feeling of having the top of my head taken off, kind of feeling. So, yeah. That's a good thing. less

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