Post by rebeccatr116 on May 31, 2013 20:40:50 GMT -5
It’s a bizarre sensation, chortling at the macabre. And yet, Matthew Dickman invites you to do so. His poetry shoots off tittering sparks of light within the darkness, granting glimpses of illuminated curiosities, and invites the reader to explore the most repressed and painful areas of memory and experience. His poetry contains “enough sex and humor and beauty… to make one swell with the ecstasy of existence.”
Dickman is the ubiquitous ‘dark poet’, a product of a broken home in a poor Portland suburb. Embittered by his experiences, of which he shares many in common with his twin brother and fellow poet, Michael, he writes strong maternal figures (he was raised by a single mother) and vapid young women, insensitive fathers (his own father was completely absent from his life) and imperfect speakers. He mused, rather matter of factly, that his “writing habits are as unhealthy as [his] drug habits were when [he] was younger! No ritual. No routine,” and erratic task performance is not the only carryover from his formative years; thematically, Dickman draws a lot from his experiences growing physically and emotionally. Poet Major Jackson noted that Dickman’s poetry evokes “the violence that such poverty recreates and echoes in the lives of the dispossessed. His authority is that of the native, unwavering and resolute.”
Despite a childhood enveloped by abject poverty and its violent trappings, Dickman managed to attend the University of Oregon and University of Texas, eventually matriculating with an MFA. Taking a more prose-like approach to poetry than his brother, Matthew evokes the narrative structure of Walt Whitman and the fearless boundary-pushing of Allen Ginsberg.
A high-concept, intellectual edge pervades throughout all of his work. His most recent book, Mayakovsky’s Revolver, meshes the affably personal but ultimately universal (“She wore those lovely cotton slacks like Katherine Hepburn/but was Jewish/which made her even more beautiful -/some fascist inside of me/watching the History Channel and romanticizing tragedy”) and the most obscure of common experiences (“no more cheap soap, no more/washing our mouths out because Motherfucker and Fuck off”) seamlessly. Perhaps a step in the direction of hyper-intellectualism, the titular Mayakovsky was a Russian writer who shot himself, and many of the other historical and pop culture figures referenced committed suicide. The book itself, like many of his poems, is a semi-autobiographical work intended to “help…deal with some of the demons I still have [over the suicide of his older brother, Darin]”.
He also has a masterful command of humor and sexuality as provocative devices. The jarring reveal of the punchline of the “joke about child molestation” told unknowingly to the molestation victim was something as seemingly-innocuous as “sexy kids”, packs a particularly harsh punch that reflects the gravity of simple utterances. Much of his poetry reads as therapeutic, with his speaker introspecting instead of acting, musing on the philosophical implications of seeing the “line her underwear makes beneath gray silk” and two teenagers rabidly having sex on top of his brother’s grave. Rarely explicit in his descriptions of sex and sexuality, Dickman allows for projection, and in doing so “strengthens the bond between his readers and himself to a point of orgasmic discomfort.”
Dickman’s poetry is a force that ensnares its audience completely. His is a mix of the urbane and the urban - Peckinpah and Lee, Prokofiev and Public Enemy – and it is effective; he has appeared in many publications, notably The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, personally recommended for the American Poetry Review’s Honickman Prize, which he won, by Tony Hoagland, and was also awarded the May Sarton Poetry Prize. Accolades aside, the poetry of Matthew Dickman ultimately, as Jeremy Butman asserted, reminds us that “though we are haunted, still what fun it is to brush one’s teeth, what fun to get dressed up. Despite it all, what pleasure there is in being alive, and what pleasure in poetry.”
Dickman is the ubiquitous ‘dark poet’, a product of a broken home in a poor Portland suburb. Embittered by his experiences, of which he shares many in common with his twin brother and fellow poet, Michael, he writes strong maternal figures (he was raised by a single mother) and vapid young women, insensitive fathers (his own father was completely absent from his life) and imperfect speakers. He mused, rather matter of factly, that his “writing habits are as unhealthy as [his] drug habits were when [he] was younger! No ritual. No routine,” and erratic task performance is not the only carryover from his formative years; thematically, Dickman draws a lot from his experiences growing physically and emotionally. Poet Major Jackson noted that Dickman’s poetry evokes “the violence that such poverty recreates and echoes in the lives of the dispossessed. His authority is that of the native, unwavering and resolute.”
Despite a childhood enveloped by abject poverty and its violent trappings, Dickman managed to attend the University of Oregon and University of Texas, eventually matriculating with an MFA. Taking a more prose-like approach to poetry than his brother, Matthew evokes the narrative structure of Walt Whitman and the fearless boundary-pushing of Allen Ginsberg.
A high-concept, intellectual edge pervades throughout all of his work. His most recent book, Mayakovsky’s Revolver, meshes the affably personal but ultimately universal (“She wore those lovely cotton slacks like Katherine Hepburn/but was Jewish/which made her even more beautiful -/some fascist inside of me/watching the History Channel and romanticizing tragedy”) and the most obscure of common experiences (“no more cheap soap, no more/washing our mouths out because Motherfucker and Fuck off”) seamlessly. Perhaps a step in the direction of hyper-intellectualism, the titular Mayakovsky was a Russian writer who shot himself, and many of the other historical and pop culture figures referenced committed suicide. The book itself, like many of his poems, is a semi-autobiographical work intended to “help…deal with some of the demons I still have [over the suicide of his older brother, Darin]”.
He also has a masterful command of humor and sexuality as provocative devices. The jarring reveal of the punchline of the “joke about child molestation” told unknowingly to the molestation victim was something as seemingly-innocuous as “sexy kids”, packs a particularly harsh punch that reflects the gravity of simple utterances. Much of his poetry reads as therapeutic, with his speaker introspecting instead of acting, musing on the philosophical implications of seeing the “line her underwear makes beneath gray silk” and two teenagers rabidly having sex on top of his brother’s grave. Rarely explicit in his descriptions of sex and sexuality, Dickman allows for projection, and in doing so “strengthens the bond between his readers and himself to a point of orgasmic discomfort.”
Dickman’s poetry is a force that ensnares its audience completely. His is a mix of the urbane and the urban - Peckinpah and Lee, Prokofiev and Public Enemy – and it is effective; he has appeared in many publications, notably The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, personally recommended for the American Poetry Review’s Honickman Prize, which he won, by Tony Hoagland, and was also awarded the May Sarton Poetry Prize. Accolades aside, the poetry of Matthew Dickman ultimately, as Jeremy Butman asserted, reminds us that “though we are haunted, still what fun it is to brush one’s teeth, what fun to get dressed up. Despite it all, what pleasure there is in being alive, and what pleasure in poetry.”