Mayakovsky's Revolver: Poems - Hardcover

Dickman, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393081192 ISBN 13: 9780393081190

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012

Synopsis

From a dazzling, award-winning young poet, a collection that paints life as a celebration in the dark.

At the center of Mayakovsky’s Revolver is the suicide of Matthew Dickman’s older brother. “Known for poems of universality of feeling, expressive lyricism of reflection, and heartrending allure” (Major Jackson), Dickman is a powerful poet whose new collection explores how to persevere in the wake of grief.

from “Mayakovsky’s Revolver”

I keep thinking about the way
blackberries will make the mouth
of an eight year old look like he’s a ghost
that’s been shot in the face. In the dark I can see
my older brother walking through the tall brush
of his brain. I can see him standing
in the lobby of the hotel,
alone, crying along with the ice machine.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew Dickman is the author of Mayakovsky’s Revolver and All-American Poem, winner of the May Sarton award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the coauthor with Michael Dickman of 50 American Plays and Brother. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his two sons and partner.

From Booklist

Though Dickman, whose first collection, All-American Poem (2008), received the May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, lives in Portland, Oregon, he belongs to the New York School of Poetry. He is not as completely immersed in the quotidian as Frank O’Hara, and his lines lack O’Hara’s tensile strength, but Dickman’s tone is similar, as is the ambition to evoke but not to capture, and his poems progress at the speed of sensation. Dickman is so committed to his method of digression that all but one poem are similar in length, style, and tone. “The Madness of King George” introduces a second voice, a woman in a bar sitting next to the poet, and the different cadence of speech is astonishing because Dickman’s primary voice is so distinctive. Dickman is a curious hybrid; a sophisticate inclined to pose as a naïf, he cannot escape the grief that threatens to overwhelm this book. --Michael Autrey

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0393081192
• ISBN 13: 9780393081190
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112