Book Focus
George Dickerson, Selected Poems, 1959-1999
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About George Dickerson's writing:
Your tribute to "Chico" [your short story] is a beautiful tribute. Please accept my
heartiest congratulations. —e. e. cummings
Keep a very sharp eye out for [George Dickerson's] work.—Robert Penn Warren
You write like an angel.—John Farrar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
George Dickerson's poetry engages the full body's senses. His images, both stark
and wonderfully crafted in their reach, are rich in tactile nuances. As in "Down
Tunbury Road," [appears below] one enjoys his ability to marry the natural landscape
to the lush, breathing mindscape of human nature, so prevalent in his poetry.
—James Ragan
In his poems, Dickerson gallops from war in Lebanon, to sexual exuberance, to the
dead, to poetry itself. His words are deftly harnessed, kept in rein in a number of
metric gaits. These poems both delight and delve.
—Karen Swenson
The poems of George Dickerson are uncompromising in their search to understand
the human condition. For in his poems, violent histories battle against the need for
love and freedom—all these forces fighting for the privilege to define who we are.
—Michael T. Young
This remarkable book of selected poems celebrates the re-emergence of one of
America's most lyrical poets. In love and war, he explores life's vagaries with
passion, wit, grace and an almost elegaic compassion.
—Judith Werner
RATTAPALLAX PRESS
U.S. $14.95/Can. $17.95
ISBN 1-892-494-17-5
FRANCE 90F / UK £ 7.95
~ . ~ . ~
Down Tunbury Road
George Dickerson
Down Tunbury Road
I met an old man
With hair in his ears
Whose task it was
To sharpen the brambles.
His fingers were scarred,
But he seemed content,
For raspberries grew
From the blood of his hands.
Down Tunbury Road
I encountered a man
With a rime-crusted beard
Whose job it was
To swing the great tongue
Of the bell of the sea.
And he seemed content
To rub salt from his hands
To flavor his meat.
Down Tunbury Road
You may find a man
Who stays up all night
To weave words for a cloth
To dust off the stars.
It doesn't pay much,
but they say he's content
To have poems in his hands
To polish the moon.
If you happen to wander
Down Tunbury Road,
We'll sit here together
And share a few suds
In Tunbury Pub;
For once you start out
Down Tunbury Road,
You can never go back
To Shrewsbury Town.
~ . ~ . ~