The Lookout Man (Phoenix Poets)

Vivid poems full of drama and action by award-winning poet Stuart Dischell.

Sometimes elegiac, sometimes deadly comic, and always transformative, The Lookout Man embodies the energy, spirit, and craft that we have come to depend upon in Stuart Dischell’s poetry. Inhabiting a mix of lyric structures, these poems are set in diverse locales from the middle of the ocean to the summit of Mont Blanc, from the backyards of America to the streets of international cities. There is a hesitant, almost encroaching wisdom in The Lookout Man, as Dischell allows his edgy vision and singular perspectives to co-exist with the music of his poems. In lines that close the book and typify Dischell’s work, he writes, “I will ask the dogwoods to remind me // What it means to live along the edges of the woods, / To be promiscuous but bear white flowers.”

Stuart Dischell is the author of six collections of poetry, including Dig Safe, Backwards Days, and Children with Enemies. His first collection, Good Hope Road, was selected for the National Poetry Series, and he has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. Dischell teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.