Poetry. R.H.W. Dillard's long-awaited seventh collection consists of a sequence of fifty-two poems, each sixteen lines long, each addressed to a dead poet or several times to more than one dead poet. Each is a meditation of sorts upon that poet's work, secondarily that poet's life, and ultimately, all together, upon the life of poems themselves in a continually violent and inherently unjust world. The syntax of these poems is shattered, interrupted by bits and pieces of other poems, memories, reflections, echoes, dates, ...
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Poetry. R.H.W. Dillard's long-awaited seventh collection consists of a sequence of fifty-two poems, each sixteen lines long, each addressed to a dead poet or several times to more than one dead poet. Each is a meditation of sorts upon that poet's work, secondarily that poet's life, and ultimately, all together, upon the life of poems themselves in a continually violent and inherently unjust world. The syntax of these poems is shattered, interrupted by bits and pieces of other poems, memories, reflections, echoes, dates, journal entries, explosions, &c., &c, constituting in part a "demonstration" of how the mind actually deals with poems (and, for that matter, with the business of living). They are poems that, while obviously and purposefully belonging to the great tradition and continuum of poetry (what is owed the dead), are entirely unfamiliar and new. The full collection, for all the violence, depression, hurt, betrayal, anger, and suffering in it, is nevertheless a celebration of the resilience of poetry.
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