Learning to Talk Again

Learning to Talk Again by Jim Doss touches upon the poet's memories of growing up in Central Virginia as well as time spent in Maryland and Arizona. The poetry in this book is rich, lyrical and full-bodied, covering themes of family, place, love and war with many poems of tribute contained between its pages...... "A powerful, multi-layered, richly lived and beautifully imagined book of poems--as good as any first book of poems I've read and far better than most. I will continue to reread it many times in eager anticipation of other work yet to come." Sandford Lyne

Searching for Poe s Grave on Halloween, Baltimore, Md.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and the other begins? -- Edgar Allan Poe

Not here on Fayette Street where the dull faces of commuters stare back at us in their pilgrimage to nowhere. Not on the sidewalk

where a dingy robin lies like a broken doll, its missing eye peering into the next world. Not in the greasy smoke that braids

the air above Hardees with animal scents, drifts into the blue haze of power plants. Not in the used hypodermic needles that gleam through a sewer grate,

or crushed cans of Colt 45 rusting by the curb. Not in the red scrawl of graffiti on brick row houses where home-boys lean against the wall, peddle baggies of rock or weed

to walk-ups and drive-bys. Not in the purple and black billboard advertising play by play for the Ravens games. "Perversity," Poe wrote, "is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart."

In the end, he lay face-down in the gutter, delirious with fever, poisoned by madness and tainted alcohol, bribed to vote under the names of dead men for shot after shot.

Now, his features carved in garish granite come alive in stone. Sunlight reflects off stained glass windows. Roots strain to topple markers in their slow crawl through soil.

The path we ve walked from his Amity Street garret traces Poe s own footsteps as he strolled with his pubescent cousin-wife and her mother on their way to worship.

We read from Tales of Mystery and Imagination into the sunset s orange glow, wait for his spirit to rise through clay to accept our offerings this bottle of amontillado, and three black roses.