"The most unique set of poems I have ever read." Having read Dark Earth by Dean Baker my first reaction is WOW. This was written for me. His poetry speaks to me deep down in my soul.""What I admire is Dean's pulling out all the stops, no sublime romanticist here; no, instead he's taken notes from the underbelly of those masters of the macabre and grotesque." "Dean is a true comic poet as well, full of those sly interventions and evasions, slights of self, incriminations and elisions... He's the kind of poet that gets under your skin and stays there like a song in some dark noir alley that sings to you of love and death suckled on good old home-grown truth. Through his exceptional and distinctive poems and prose poems you will be fully engaged in an ongoing relationship which you will find irreplaceable, and delightful in their enrichening influence. His poetry allows for re-reading and renewed understanding through the work and its in-depth nuances in the only standing form of active privacy extant...from an early review... "The key to Dean's art is its unique subtle narration of certain moments that are never revealed in the full natural disclosure of facts, but are rather revealed more subtly in the voicing of certain affective relations between memory and mind in this ongoing inquisition with the sordidness of our unlived lives." http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.com
"Delightful? A few poems are. Poignant they all remain.With his one-of-a-kind poetry style, Dean trains his unique eye on the end of the world, or of humankind, death, the destiny of humanity...There is no escape like reading What about reading about what one may never escape from? Dean's words took me into that darkening day. He used the color of meaning to paint the way. Yet, I never felt like running from it. I wanted to remain, to hear what the poet, writer, musician had to say about the decay, and more.Dean's words ring true, even if they bite you. Might as well face the music he presents, it feels healthy. Be tempted It is a book worth reading."
The first volume in the two-volume series of early poems covering between 1970 - 1980. Early poems by the author, Dean Baker. The ability to transcend the weight of the world through the appreciation of limitations transformed through perception is most evident in these poems.Inspirational shorter poems of immediacy and lasting insights.These are not the poems of our grandfathers or grandmothers, not even of the nearest generation.These poems are evidence of the future, boundaries necessarily transcended in order to become more than the trappings of contemporary physicality moving the individual beyond their own native dimensions to a world of self-evident grace residing within as the originating point for every understanding and knowledge of the means to alter our worlds.Poetry is the song and the expression of our sorrow and joys, minute and finite, that allow that greater feeling and comprehension of what it is we can hope to achieve and experience without turning aside, resorting to or giving in to mechanisms used to make our way through passages in the world.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.co
The second volume in the two-volume series of early poems covering between 1970 - 1980. Early poems by the author, Dean Baker. The ability to transcend the weight of the world through the appreciation of limitations transformed through perception is most evident in these poems. Inspirational shorter poems of immediacy and lasting insights. These are not the poems of our grandfathers or grandmothers, not even of the nearest generation.These poems are evidence of the future, boundaries necessarily transcended in order to become more than the trappings of contemporary physicality moving the individual beyond their own native dimensions to a world of self-evident grace residing within as the originating point for every understanding and knowledge of the means to alter our worlds.Poetry is the song and the expression of our sorrow and joys, minute and finite, that allow that greater feeling and comprehension of what it is we can hope to achieve and experience without turning aside, resorting to or giving in to mechanisms used to make our way through passages in the world.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.co
Prose poems by Dean Baker. The perfect mixture of poetry and prose combining to create a new form of both.Challenging habitual thoughts and perception, through the grace and joy of these prose poems, an inherent delight in the work conveys itself to the reader.Accepted forms of expression which tend to either the linear, abstract or the merely physical, without irony or grace, we are taken by purposeful expressions which allude to a consciousness not necessarily found through distended forms foreign to our everyday, but through the poetry gathered from such things.The work exhibits delight beyond any narrowly prescribed methods of thought and awareness in these bold frontiers of literature, and poetry.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.com
A coffeehouse, caf as society..."Acid wit, deep insight, humor, powerful metaphor, intelligence.... A smooth ride on a bumpy road, with side trips into unseen hollows of the human experience.... What else do you need to know? An excellent read, worth sharing far and wide... More, please...."Prose poems that are a paean to Musicians, Writers, Artists, & Wingnuts: to folksingers, the troubled and disturbed, open mic nights everywhere.The poet made it out alive from Fat Albert's.A satiric, and loving, tribute to open mic nights everywhere, whether in coffeehouses, on campus, or in living-rooms of the desperately demented.The ironies and distinctions that make for unintended humor and discreet or not so discreet satire, as well as the tenderness evoked through an awareness of the frailties and too-human vulnerabilities of the denizens of Fat Albert's Outpatient Folk Clinic.While tending towards a metaphor of the world and entertainment as just such a clinic for the disturbed, there is evidence of the mastery of the writer in these expressions of the unconventional, and the absurd, which allows us entry to our own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the world at large as one bigger Fat Albert's Outpatient Folk Clinic.
The Moon Worn Tides, The Prose Poems Vol. 1, and Soliloquies Of The Horizons, The Prose Poems, Vol. 2, consist of the contents of The Transits Of Revelation edited, along with some newer prose poems added.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.co
Los Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.
Los Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.
The latest poetry by acclaimed poet and author Dean Baker.Poems commingling mind, body and soul - riparian zones interfacing with people, habitats, and future territories, spiritually and physically: how they interact and influence each other.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.co
No sacred cows in this long-awaited and in demand collection of satiric meditations on everything and everyone from politics, family, social issues, cultural and individual misconceptions...being that the 'monkey' loves to torment itself with things it already knows and enjoys the disconnect between what it knows and refuses to learn, repeatedly.Meditations on various dilemmas confronting any creature arriving on the social doorstep are here committed for your enjoyment by the poet known in some circles - the noose gets tighter - as Dr. Dean, reasons for which become apparent when reading the book.Any resemblance between the author and either the tales within or the back photograph are purely identical.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.co
Unique, one-of-a-kind guaranteed laugh out loud tales of a skewed world view held dear by many whose inner child is alive and well....about Cousin Harold's Adventures In The Real World, "I have never read anything like this It's amazing... excruciating - wonderful "http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.com
"Beautiful, brilliant and brutal, and ever truthful. "Intense early poems of Dean J. Baker. Some previously published in worldwide academic and literary journals, and several of his prior books. Poetry of necessity: unique combinations of thought, emotion, and art. Several poems have been revised for inclusion in this first volume of his Selected Poems. Further volumes will be forthcoming.
The Moon Worn Tides, The Prose Poems Vol. 1, and Soliloquies Of The Horizons, The Prose Poems, Vol. 2, consist of the contents of The Transits Of Revelation edited, along with some newer prose poems added.http: //deanbakerpoetryandsongs.comProse poems by Dean Baker. The perfect mixture of poetry and prose combining to create a new form of both.Challenging habitual thoughts and perception, through the grace and joy of these prose poems, an inherent delight in the work conveys itself.Accepted forms of expression which tend to either the linear, abstract or the merely physical, without irony or grace, we are taken by purposeful expressions which allude to a consciousness not necessarily found through distended forms foreign to our everyday, but through the poetry gathered from such things The work exhibits delight beyond any narrowly prescribed methods of thought and awareness in these bold frontiers of literature, and poetry
Church and Stage is a guide for people in churches who want to employ theater in ministry, and for theater people who want to create opportunities to work in churches. The points of contact between religion and theater are numerous, and Dean J. Seal offers guidelines for making the connection work no matter what level of experience or financial commitment a congregation brings to the task. The author, who has worked in the worlds of both church and stage, provides background on the historical and theological relationship between religion and theater. He then offers practical advice and guidelines for the use of theater in the context of ministry—from discussion groups to bibliodrama to play-going to ultimately producing a show. This book is a resource for ministers, lay leaders, youth groups, and members of the theater community who desire greater integration of faith and work.
