The End of the West

By Michael Dickman

"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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556592892
• ISBN13: 9781556592898
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A small marvel

A fragmented past, an intense scrutiny. The images---stark, potent, and uncontrived. They're often playful, but never glib. The lines---there is a vague anxiety hovering over the page and the lines have been edited down to the quick, in a bitten fingernail sort of way. The art---there is a sense of careful poetic process. An alchemical clarification has taken place resulting in concise stanzas of oddball beauty. The knowledge of the medium---the poet allows the empty space on the page to function as a source of luminosity which surrounds his thematic darkness. It illuminates meanings that are barely suggested, gives shape to characters that are ghostly sketches, and deepens the contours of memories that are tersely outlined. It is a gift to be able to handle the poetic form in this way. The outcome---a small marvel of balance between light, form, significance, shadow...and erasure.

Worth your time and consideration

This is a terrific and astonishing collection of poems. I jolted in my seat reading the last stanza of Scary Parents. There have only been a handful of times in my reading life where the lyricism of a work has compelled to read it out loud on a first reading; this was one of those times. Just gorgeous. I am eager to read his next collection, to follow his career.

lives up to the hype

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.

A Brave, Unflinching, Selective Voice

My mother waits for me breathing 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.