Post by olmobar35 on May 20, 2012 9:42:50 GMT -5
Born in Portland, Oregon, poet Michael Dickman grew up with a single mother and twin brother, poet Matthew Dickman. He was faced with the burden of earning money to support his family, as well as the pressure of adjusting to the gangs, drugs and violence that surrounded his home. Fortunately, Michael turned to poetry as a way out “after accidentally reading a Neruda ode”, and was inspired to begin writing at a young age. With the support of his family and the influence of other young writers, Michael was able to stand before us today as an established poet whose impact on the world of poetry has just begun.
While Michael’s poetry explores the difficult, often violent spectacle of personal memory, the simplicity of his poetry suggests that he is writing it from the perspective of a child. As Rebecca Mead noted in her 2009 New Yorker profile of the Dickman twins, “Michael’s poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence.” The New Yorker wasn’t the only organization that recognized Michael’s blooming and natural talent demonstrated in his books The End of the West and Flies, for he was also featured in The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, and Narrative Magazine, and was even awarded The James Laughlin Award by the Academy of American Poets.
His poems may look undernourished, but they seethe with the haunting presence of his dead older brother as well as never forgotten memories of his childhood. Michael’s poems are literally “Translations,” as the title of one of his poems suggest, forcing the reader to take simple objects like “flies” and “piss yellow lawns” and turn them into our own creations.
Michael leads the reader on a path from “the pines that are somebody’s/masterpiece” to “the field just beginning /to whistle us/ home,” making us feel compelled to keep reading so we can dissolve the meaning of his unadorned words.
His poetry evokes meaning, comparing the feeling of “shaving [his] father’s legs” to “the universe”- both in need of repair.
Michael is not afraid to address the violent and often negative aspects of life, and instead makes them into something beautiful. He takes “the end of one of the billion light-years of loneliness” and compares it to “some miracle.”
Michael once described his poetry as an “unspeakable and unknowable impulse” that “slows everything down.” Not only do his fragmented stanzas require slowness and reflection, but they also evoke meaning through the childish simplicity of his words. Although described by some as “violent” and “obscene,” Michael’s poetry acts as a passage into our universe by addressing the harsh yet sometimes loveable reality of life. It is “not frightening at all/ but beautiful, shiny and/ full of promise.”
I would like to thank Michael Dickman for sharing his poetry with us this evening, and for inspiring me and many others to pursue our careers despite the pressures of society. It is my honor to now welcome Michael Dickman onto the stage.
Word Count: 503
While Michael’s poetry explores the difficult, often violent spectacle of personal memory, the simplicity of his poetry suggests that he is writing it from the perspective of a child. As Rebecca Mead noted in her 2009 New Yorker profile of the Dickman twins, “Michael’s poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence.” The New Yorker wasn’t the only organization that recognized Michael’s blooming and natural talent demonstrated in his books The End of the West and Flies, for he was also featured in The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, and Narrative Magazine, and was even awarded The James Laughlin Award by the Academy of American Poets.
His poems may look undernourished, but they seethe with the haunting presence of his dead older brother as well as never forgotten memories of his childhood. Michael’s poems are literally “Translations,” as the title of one of his poems suggest, forcing the reader to take simple objects like “flies” and “piss yellow lawns” and turn them into our own creations.
Michael leads the reader on a path from “the pines that are somebody’s/masterpiece” to “the field just beginning /to whistle us/ home,” making us feel compelled to keep reading so we can dissolve the meaning of his unadorned words.
His poetry evokes meaning, comparing the feeling of “shaving [his] father’s legs” to “the universe”- both in need of repair.
Michael is not afraid to address the violent and often negative aspects of life, and instead makes them into something beautiful. He takes “the end of one of the billion light-years of loneliness” and compares it to “some miracle.”
Michael once described his poetry as an “unspeakable and unknowable impulse” that “slows everything down.” Not only do his fragmented stanzas require slowness and reflection, but they also evoke meaning through the childish simplicity of his words. Although described by some as “violent” and “obscene,” Michael’s poetry acts as a passage into our universe by addressing the harsh yet sometimes loveable reality of life. It is “not frightening at all/ but beautiful, shiny and/ full of promise.”
I would like to thank Michael Dickman for sharing his poetry with us this evening, and for inspiring me and many others to pursue our careers despite the pressures of society. It is my honor to now welcome Michael Dickman onto the stage.
Word Count: 503