Michael Dickman

The award-winning poet returns to his homeplace in the Pacific Northwest, where the neighborhood simmers with the chemical presence of human trouble and sparks of beauty coexist with danger. This image-driven, sound-driven collection carries us to the working-class Portland neighborhood of Lents, where Dickman was raised by a single mother. Here, as a skateboarding boy practices his kickflip on the street, enlightenment simmers under the surface of both the natural world and the human constructions that threaten it. The rivers shrinking to a trickle, the unaddressed crisis of homelessness, the drug use in a local park: these run side by side with the efforts and structures of families, created mostly by working mothers, with their jumbled bottomless purses and full-time jobs; Dickman's own mother worked at the power company of the title, PP&L. His exquisite, ultrareal narratives take us down through these layers, illuminating the way we've treated and should treat one another, seeking integrity and understanding in the midst of a broken world.

A dual-authored volume of poems from the multi-award winning Dickman twins - leading voices in America's outstanding generation of younger poets.Although the brothers extol differing inspirations (Matthew writes with the ebullience of Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Michael with the control of William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson), they are unified by the unflinching, remarkable verse they wrote when their older sibling tragically took his own life. It is these moving, grieving but life-affirming poems that solely comprise this dual-authored volume. Published in an inventive tête-bêche edition, the poems appear head-to-toe, communing in the middle, making Brother a searing but ultimately up-lifting journey of grief, love and family.'Michael's poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence. Matthew's are effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, spilling over with pop-cultural references and exuberant carnality . . . together, the resonance of the work is amplified.' New YorkerMatthew Dickman is the author of All-American Poem (2008), 50 American Plays (co-written with his twin brother Michael Dickman, 2012), Mayakovsky's Revolver (2012),Wish You Were Here (2013) and 24 HOURS (2014). He is the recipient of The May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College and a 2015 Guggenheim award. Matthew Dickman is the Poetry Editor of Tin House magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.Michael Dickman is the author of three books of poems, The End of the West (2009), Flies (2011, Winner of the James Laughlin Award), and Green Migraine (2015), as well as a book of plays, 50 American Plays, co-written with his twin brother, Matthew Dickman, in 2012. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he is on the faculty at Princeton University.

Reading Michael Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind.--The New YorkerThese are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings.--The BelieverMy master plan is happiness, writes Michael Dickman in his wonderfully strange third book, Green Migraine. Here, imagination and reality swirl in the juxtaposition between beauty and violence in the natural world. Drawing inspiration from the verdant poetry of John Clare, Dickman uses hyper-real, dreamlike images to encapsulate, illustrate, and illuminate how we access internal and external landscapes. The result is nothing short of a fantastic, modern-day fairy tale.From Where We Live: I used to livein a mother now I livein a sunflowerBlinded by the silverwareBlinded by the refrigeratorI sit on a sidewalkin the sunflower and its yellowdownpour...Michael Dickman is the winner of the 2010 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for his second collection, Flies. His poems are regularly published in the New Yorker. He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Their verse . . . is strikingly different. Michael's poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence. Matthew's are effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, spilling over with pop-cultural references and exuberant carnality. --The New YorkerIdentical twins Michael and Matthew Dickman once invented their own language. Now they have invented an exhilarating book of poem-plays about the fifty states. Pointed, comic, and surreal, these one-page vignettes feature unusual staging and an eclectic cast of characters--landforms, lobsters, and historical figures including Duke Ellington, Sacajawea, Judy Garland, and Kenneth Koch, the avant-garde spirit informing this book introduced by playwright John Guare.Lucky in KansasJudy Garland: This is always the worst partTin Man: The coming backJudy Garland: Yes, it fucking sucks, it's depressing as shitThe Lion: Well, we're lucky to still be employed at this farmStraw Man: I wouldn't call it luckyThe Lion: We were lucky to get backStraw Man: That's not really lucky either I don't think you know what lucky meansJudy Garland: It's funny what you missTin Man: The runningJudy Garland: The flyingTin Man: The flying monkeysJudy Garland: The beautiful flying monkeys above the endless emeralds the unbelievably green worldMichael Dickman and Matthew Dickman are identical twins who were born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Michael received the 2010 James Laughlin Award for his second collection Flies (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). Matthew won the prestigious APR/Honickman Award for his debut volume, All-American Poem.

"Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the bone--Flies renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating."--James Laughlin Award citation"Reading Michael Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind."--The New Yorker"These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings."--The BelieverWinner of the James Laughlin Award for the best second book by an American poet, Flies presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman's poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves.What you want to rememberof the earthand what you end uprememberingare often twodifferent thingsMichael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, The End of the West, appeared in 2009 and became the best-selling debut in the history of Copper Canyon Press. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Dickman's book moves with careful intensity as it confidently illuminates buried, contemporary suffering.--Publishers WeeklyElizabeth Bishop said that the three qualities she admired most in poetry were accuracy, spontaneity, and mystery. Michael Dickman's first full-length collection of poems demonstrates each brilliantly....These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings. Again and again the language seems to disappear, leaving the reader with woven flashes of image, situation, emotion....These are durable poems from one of the most accomplished and original poets to emerge in years.--The BelieverWith vacant space and verbal economy, his work suggests volumes. --Poets & Writers The poems in Michael Dickman's energized debut document the bright desires and all-too-common sufferings of modern times: the churn of domestic violence, spiritual longing, drug abuse, and the impossible expectations fathers have for their sons. In a poem that references heroin and "scary parents," Dickman reminds us that "Still there is a lot to pray to on earth." Dickman is a poet to watch.You can go blind, waitingUnbelievable quietexcept for their soundingsMoving the sea aroundUnbelievable quiet inside you, as they changethe face of waterThe only other time I felt this still was watching Leif shoot up when we were twelveSunlight all over his facebreakingthe surface of somethingI couldn't seeYou can wait yourwhole lifeMichael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and began writing poems "after accidentally reading a Neruda ode." His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and The American Poetry Review.