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Open Books: Events
January 13, 2009 07:30 PM
JENNY BROWNE & MATTHEW DICKMAN
In The Second Reason ($12 Tampa), Jenny Browne explores our odd time and place through the scrim of pregnancy and new motherhood. She is both witty -- “there are moments I pretend I am popcorn / swelling fourteen times my original size / and nobody ever looks surprised” -- and grave. A poem in which she confesses to going skiing “the day my country most / recently went to war,” newly pregnant and wearing a warm orange hat, ends “in my country orange means / everyone should be a little more / afraid than usual.” Browne exhibits a childlike fascination in following, and learning from, her images and thoughts rather than attempting to lead them. Her poetry, and we, benefit from those good parenting skills.
Matthew Dickman’s All-American Poem ($14 APR) won the APR/
Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Tony Hoagland. His poems are big-hearted and ferociously human. They move with a compulsive intensity and are rich with lust, heartbreak, kindness, and fear. “Death! My favorite kind / of fear. I think about it whenever I fly / and whenever something good happens I give it a little kiss.” Dickman’s contending with the masculine mystique -- “I’m supposed to walk down the street like a violent decision / that hasn’t been made yet” -- fuels these bold, comic, generous, often sexy, and emotionally vulnerable poems.
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