If the arresting
title of Pinyon Publishing’s latest poetry publication, Wires Over the Homeplace by Paul Dickey, doesn’t attract readers, the sharp black and red cover
painting entitled “Bold Painting” by Ira Haber will certainly entice poetry
lovers to look within. However, readers don’t have to read far for their interest
to be captured by poems of energy and variety that introduce a poet who writes
at the center of things.
Paul Dickey crosses
the boundaries of space and time in the opening section of Wires Over the Homeplace,
entitled “Frontier Ancestors,” in the poem by that name, “bearing the full
baggage of history, stowing the ancient instruments/that no more predict the
future” and moving on to “where the rivers part…” in a late 18th
century Pennsylvania frontier, then across the U.S. into the postmodern era. He
transports readers into harsh places of the Midwest--at a public auction of the
revered family farm and to a scene where “plump and skinny wives crow of
granddaughters with money and day jobs in Milwaukee…” reaching out to every
generation with his wry style conceived in democratic introspection.
My favorite
section, entitled “A Knack to Losing Things,” shows Dickey’s ability to execute
a bit of partner poetry in which he dialogues with the deceased American poet Elizabeth
Bishop, author of “One Art.” He links himself with Bishop’s lines about significant
personal losses with his own lines “What had been lost along the casual
way/will not come back to me another day,/and to be frank, it often will not
do/to keep a useful thing its use past due…” This “union in identity” carried
out by many poets has been explicated in David Lehmann’s preface to The Best
of American Poetry, 25th Edition, in which Lehmann explains how
poets often “take note of an ancestor, ally, or rival” and begin a dialogue
with a deceased poet about a mutually-inspired subject.
Dickey’s
philosophical inclination exerts itself in many of the poems included in “The
Knack of Losing Things” section; e.g., his “A Thief We Barely Noticed,” a poem
with succinct lines about the inevitable journey toward life’s end, penned in metaphors
that speak of ordinary household events: “A thief is living with us/tearing
threads of wallpaper, pulling threads from the carpet./Every night it is the
same./Footprints wear the linoleum./Luster is stolen from the silverware…”
In the section “We
Never Know,” Dickey confronts aging, writing poems that are so poignant they
cannot be dismissed by those who have reached the evening of their lives; e.g.,
“A Retiree Ponders His Day,” in which Dickey ponders his “morning of many rooms”
and likens his life to a phonograph needle, listening to the “scratches,
hisses, the pops that even now sound like the many years of himself…” These metaphors
are woven into poems of sustained power throughout the section and affirm
Dickey’s poetic strength in illuminating ordinary objects and people so that
readers easily connect with his vision.
Dickey belongs
among the Best of American Poets, and Wires Over the Homeplace is a significant work of contemporary poetry – each poem
in the volume is a polished gem. He adds another star to Pinyon’s galaxy of
outstanding American poets. Dickey is a poetry and philosophy instructor in
Omaha, Nebraska and has published poetry book reviews, poetry, fiction, plays,
and creative non-fiction in over 100 journals. His recent books include They Say This is How Death Came Into the World
and Liberal Limericks of 2012, a collection of humorous political
poems.
Order Wires Over the Homeplace from Pinyon Publishing, 23847
V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.
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