Matthew Dickman is cool. He has shaggy hair, round square glasses, and isn’t shy to do a poetry reading in his Converse All-Stars (with his pants cuffed, of course). His most recent book, Mayakovsky’s Revolver is a foray into a poetic modern world. The long poems carry you with them; they aren’t so much about one or two good lines as much as they are about image after image slamming into you.
…And then I think
the world is like a crowded staircase
full of midtown commuters all pushing and pulling, each dropping
something important that they will not remember
until it’s too late. And then I think I’m an idiot for thinking
the world could be a story I tell myself
to make myself better.
-from “Blue Sky”
The Poetry Foundation has a video of Matthew reading his poem, Slow Dance. It’s worth a look.
But that’s not what make Matthew really cool. He also has a twin brother, Michael Dickman. And guess what? He’s a poet too.
If Matthew’s poems are densely packed punches, Michael’s are stretched out like taffy. Each image is given plenty of space on the page, stretching across stanza and line breaks.
Here is an excerpt from “My Autopsy,” originally published in The New Yorker.
There is a way
if we want
into everything
I’ll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the
small and glowing loaves of bread
I’ll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night
The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese
poems
You eat the forks,
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables
What do you love?
I love the way our teeth stay long after we’re gone, hanging on
despite worms or fire
I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth
Read the rest here.
Comments are closed.