by Matthew
Dickman
W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
New York NY
Copyright © 2012 by
Matthew Dickman
93 pages, hardbound,
$18
Review by Zvi A. Sesling
If you are going to make it in
poetry, the Matthew Dickman highway to success is a good road to take. According to a Wikipedia article Dickman will
be thirty-eight this coming August. He received a B.A. from the University of Oregon in 2001
and has been the recipient of fellowships from The Michener Center for Writers
at the University of Texas at Austin, The Vermont Studio Center, and The Fine
Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is the author of two chapbooks, Amigos
and Something about a Black Scarf, and two full-length poetry
collections. His first book, All-American Poem, was winner of the 2008
American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, published by American
Poetry Review and distributed by Copper Canyon Press. He was also the winner of
the 2009 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for that book,
and the inaugural May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences.
Mayakovsky’s Revolver is his second full length volume and it is easy to see why he has won
the awards. From catch opening lines like “ no dog chained to a spike in a yard
of dying/grass like the dogs/I grew up with…” And “Because I miss you I have
made a pile of clothes/along the bed, your exact height and weight.” Or “There’s no telling what the night will
bring/but the moon./That’s a no brainer.”
Try this one: “The only precious
thing I own, this little espresso/cup. Finally,
“I’m thinking about the ancient Egyptians/and how when someone died/they
would separate the body forever in four jars…”
And those are
only the beginnings! Lest you think this book is one of humor, be cautioned.
Dickman’s poems are about loss and grief, remembrance and sadness. Even the
book’s title recalls the Russian poet who committed suicide like so many other
poets have done.
The title poem
tells a lot about Dickman’s poetic powers, his thoughts and ability to
translate them to paper:
I keep
thinking about the way
blackberries
will make the mouth
of an
eight-year-old look like he’s a ghost
that’s been
shot in the face. In the dark I can see
my older
brother walking through the tall brush
of his brain.
I can see him standing
in the lobby
of the hotel,
alone, crying
along with the ice machine.
Instead of the
moon
I’ve been
falling for the lunar light pouring out of a plastic shell
I’ve plugged
into the bathroom wall. Online
someone is
claiming to own Mayakovsky’s revolver
which they
will sell for only fifty thousand dollars. Why didn’t I
think of
that? Remove the socks from my dead
brother’s feet
and trade them
in for a small bit
of change, a
ticket to a movie, something
with a
receipt, proof I was busy living,
that I didn’t
stay in all night weeping,
that I didn’t
stay up
drawing a gun
over and over
with a black
marker, that I didn’t cut
out of the
best one, or stand
in front of
the mirror, pulling the paper trigger until it tore away
These poems
heavy in the heart. Ropes hung from light bulbs ready to burst. Emotions boiled
like potatoes, but not mashed, Instead they remain hard, the skins cleaned, the
interiors there for us to explore if we wish to enter.
His poems beg
us to enter. Demands we look deeper. Is My
Brother’s Grave about Dickman or his brother. Is it about grief or
remembrance. The past, present or future.
Perhaps it is
about all of this:
Like a city
I’ve always hated, driving through but never stopping,
my foot on the
gas, running all the lights,
wishing I were
home. Hating even the children who live there
as if they had
a choice. I imagine him
in his
ten-million particles
of ash, tied
up into a beautiful white bundle of lace, a silver bow
looped where
his neck should be,
thrown into a
washing machine, set on a delicate cycle
to spin
forever under the dirt. The all of him
left, the
vegetation of him, the no more thing
of him: his
skateboard and mountain bike and beers and cigarettes
and daughter
and mixtapes
and loneliness, his legs and feet and arms and brain
and kneecaps
Out the
graveyard
there is still
some part of him
buried in the
mysticism of his DNA, smeared across a doorknob
or brushed
along the jagged edge of his car keys. Two kids
from the high school
nearby
will fuck each
other on top of him
and I won’t
know how to stop them. Someone
will throw an
empty bottle of vodka over their shoulder
and he will
have to catch it.
It is a book
to be read with objectivity and subjectivity. With sensitivity and never
with an ice
box of a heart. It is a book which will be
a permanent part of a collection.
__________________________________________
Zvi A. Sesling
Reviewer for Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene
Author, King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams
Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review
Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7
