All American Poem

Winner of the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award.

“Matthew Dickman’s all-American poems are the epitome of the pleasure principle; as clever as they are, they refuse to have ulterior intellectual pretensions; really, I think, they are spiritual in character—free and easy and unself-conscious, lusty, full of sensuous aspiration. . . . We turn loose such poets into our culture so that they can provoke the rest of us into saying everything on our minds.”—Tony Hoagland, APR/Honickman First Book Prize judge

"Dickman crystallizes and celebrates human contact, reminding us...that our best memories, those most worth holding on to, those that might save us, will be memories of love....The background, then, is a downbeat America resolutely of the moment; the style, though, looks back to the singing free verse of Walt Whitman and Frank O'Hara....(Dickman's) work sings with all the crazy vereve of the West." —Los Angeles Times

"Toughness with a smile....(Dickman) breathes the air of Whitman, Kerouac, O'Hara, and Koch, each of whom pushed against the grain of what poetry and writing was supposed to be in their times." —New Haven Review

All American Poem plumbs the ecstatic nature of our daily lives. In these unhermetic poems, pop culture and the sacred go hand in hand. As Matthew Dickman said in an interview, he wants the “people from the community that I come from”—a blue-collar neighborhood in Portland, Oregon—to get his poems. “Also, I decided to include anything I wanted in my poems. . . . Pepsi, McDonald’s, the word ‘ass.’”

There is no one to save us

because there is no need to be saved.

I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed

the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress

covered in a million beads

slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,

I take her hand in mine. I spin her out

and bring her in. This is the almond grove

in the dark slow dance.

It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping

for joy . . .

Matthew Dickman is from Portland, Oregon, and has been honored with writing fellowships from the Michener Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

All American Poem plumbs the ecstatic nature of our daily lives. In these unhermetic poems, pop culture and the sacred go hand in hand. As Matthew Dickman said in an interview, he wants the "people from the community that I come from" — a blue-collar neighborhood in Portland, Oregon — to get his poems. "Also, I decided to include anything I wanted in my poems.... Pepsi, McDonald's, the word ass.'"

There is no one to save us

because there is no need to be saved.

I've hurt you. I've loved you. I've mowed

the front yard. When the stranger wearing a sheer white dress

covered in a million beads

slinks toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,

I take her hand in mine. I spin her out

and bring her in. This is the almond grove

in the dark slow dance.

It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping

for joy . . .

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