Post by sobener35 on May 20, 2012 16:26:54 GMT -5
Matthew Dickman, born in Portland, Oregon grew up with his twin brother Michael Dickman, who has found his way out of Lents to become a poet as well. Raised without a father in the working-class Lents neighborhood of Portland, Matthew endured the various struggles that anyone growing up in a poor neighborhood full of drugs, gangs, and violence would experience. Growing up in a neighborhood where “kids carry knives to school” and the adults go “two-stepping in the sawdust at the Broken Spoke” is unquestionably influential to Matthew’s poetry. The influence his childhood has on his poetry makes his work captivating and amusing to all of his readers.
In addition to bringing in aspects of his own past into his poetry, Matthew uses humor to convey his thoughts and ideas about the country in which we live in his book called All American Poem. He takes something serious and makes it comical by using metaphors such as a “purple gorilla” to explain “Grief.” As creative and humorous as his metaphors are, there also lies a deeper meaning as his memories flow into each poem. His “purple gorilla” is his grief for the death of his older brother, he is the “Sad Little Outlaw” who played with his brother in the backyard, and he is a witness to “Trouble” in America.
The creative metaphors, memories, and humor are joined by pop-culture references to create exceptional poetry. As Rebecca Mead explained in her article on the Dickman twins written in a 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Matthew’s poems are “effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, spilling over with pop-culture references and exuberant carnality.” Mead’s accurate description of Matthew Dickman’s poetry is in agreement with Tony Hoagland’s introduction to Matthew’s All-American Poem in which he states that Matthew’s poems are “spiritual in character- free and easy and unself-conscious, lusty, full of sensuous aspiration, [and] tarted up in metaphor.”
While journalists, poets, and other readers compliment the fascinating style of his poetry, critics have done the same. Matthew has earned an impressive amount of awards, one of the most prestigious being the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize.
Matthew continues to get the recognition he deserves for his ability to convey the aspects of America that make it “broken in half and beautiful” while keeping his readers entertained by referencing Cadillac, Vanilla Coke, and The Wizard of Oz. He forces us to view America and ourselves in a new light by clarifying what America is as a whole with the characteristics that makes it beautiful and those that make it broken. We learn from all that is broken in half to appreciate all that is beautiful. While the broken “live in a cardboard box” and the beautiful “live in a loft above Chelsea,” his poetry forces us to question what beautiful really is if it cannot be appreciated by using a comparison to the broken.
I hope that you will all find Matthew’s story and his poetry as intriguing as I have, and I would now like you all to join me in welcoming Matthew Dickman.
Word Count: 511
In addition to bringing in aspects of his own past into his poetry, Matthew uses humor to convey his thoughts and ideas about the country in which we live in his book called All American Poem. He takes something serious and makes it comical by using metaphors such as a “purple gorilla” to explain “Grief.” As creative and humorous as his metaphors are, there also lies a deeper meaning as his memories flow into each poem. His “purple gorilla” is his grief for the death of his older brother, he is the “Sad Little Outlaw” who played with his brother in the backyard, and he is a witness to “Trouble” in America.
The creative metaphors, memories, and humor are joined by pop-culture references to create exceptional poetry. As Rebecca Mead explained in her article on the Dickman twins written in a 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Matthew’s poems are “effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, spilling over with pop-culture references and exuberant carnality.” Mead’s accurate description of Matthew Dickman’s poetry is in agreement with Tony Hoagland’s introduction to Matthew’s All-American Poem in which he states that Matthew’s poems are “spiritual in character- free and easy and unself-conscious, lusty, full of sensuous aspiration, [and] tarted up in metaphor.”
While journalists, poets, and other readers compliment the fascinating style of his poetry, critics have done the same. Matthew has earned an impressive amount of awards, one of the most prestigious being the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize.
Matthew continues to get the recognition he deserves for his ability to convey the aspects of America that make it “broken in half and beautiful” while keeping his readers entertained by referencing Cadillac, Vanilla Coke, and The Wizard of Oz. He forces us to view America and ourselves in a new light by clarifying what America is as a whole with the characteristics that makes it beautiful and those that make it broken. We learn from all that is broken in half to appreciate all that is beautiful. While the broken “live in a cardboard box” and the beautiful “live in a loft above Chelsea,” his poetry forces us to question what beautiful really is if it cannot be appreciated by using a comparison to the broken.
I hope that you will all find Matthew’s story and his poetry as intriguing as I have, and I would now like you all to join me in welcoming Matthew Dickman.
Word Count: 511