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Michael Dickel,
The World behind it, Chaos...: an eBook of poetry, photography,
and digital art. wv? eBook Press (http://www.whyvandalism.com).
March 1, 2009.
Free ($0.00)
download. Flash Projector (no plug-in needed), Flash
online (requires Flash plug-in for browser). Contact:
Jacob Abrahamson,
MyPalmTree@me.com
About Michael
Dickel
Michael Dicket, a
poet and photographer with degrees in psychology, creative
writing and English Literature from the University of Minnesota,
teaches at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dickel's
prize-winning work has appeared in literary journals, art books,
and anthologies for over 20 years. This debut book magnificently
explores chaos & mystery. View his website at
http://web.mac.com/Michael_Dickel
The World behind
it, Chaos
A collection of
poetry, photography and digital art by Michael Dickel. Michael
Dickel’s poetry has appeared in small-press literary magazines
for over twenty years. His photography and artwork have been
published in art books, literary / arts journals, and online
journals for around five years. Most recently, two of his poems
received recognition through the international Reuben Rose
Poetry Competition. This unique collection brings together the
best of his poetry with visual art that both complements and
complicates the reading. Artistically laid out, The World behind
it, Chaos provides both visual and intellectual provocations
towards sensing both the wonders of our world and the chaos that
lies just beneath our lives. Beginning with a sharp intake of
breath (“Leaping Deer”) and ending with the crumbling of the
present into sand (“Return of the Sea”), the poetry arcs through
life, politics, nature, mysticism, and human relationships. The
images spark from that arc, creating moments of reflection to
absorb the words, or creating their own visual poem to enhance
the “text” of the book.
From the Foreword (written by the editors of why vandalism?)
“Michael Dickel,
in The World behind it, Chaos, reveals life’s chaos in
all the dark, hidden places, as well as often unacknowledged
order that stares us right in the face: the pastoral beauty of
nature; the alarming and sometimes ugly; the knowing; the quiet
yearnings of the human soul; memory, nostalgia, love; the
stagnation or inability of humanity to see clearly or grow.”
The poems themselves range from the quiet lyric to experimental
prose poems to surrealistic-imagistic explorations. One long
poem near the center of the book (“The Morning News”) collapses
time while chanting TV news, interspersing quotidian activity,
joining events across decades, all the time swimming in the
chaotic insanity of megalomania in cult and government leaders.
We emerge, as readers, on the other side into a theoretical
world of materiality and ideas (“Materiality,” “electronic
transfer,” and “language you/me”) that merges into a spiritual
and sensual world (as in “Theosophical Summer Evening, 1972”)
that eventually encounters a pragmatic world of clipping coupons
and raising children (“Still Kalamazoo, Mother’s Day at the
Airport”). Yet, this pragmatic world still contains wonderment
and chaos side by side, even as the voice of the poet grounds
itself in nature (“Renewal”).
In the end, the seas overtake even the Midwest ordinariness of
life, a city collapses into ruin, and we are reminded that
history moves on, “the foundation collapses, pieces of brick
grind into sand” (“Return of the Sea”). Yet, somehow, it is not
a pessimistic message. Overall, the poems and images suggest the
place of the individual, the importance of choosing a direction
(any direction) even in the face of collapse, and the mystery of
life as revelation: “all simmering, composting toward a
distilled memory / to sip against the coming chill” (“After the
Frost”).
Online Review of
The World Behind It, Chaos:
http://www.articlesbase.com/literature--articles/the-world-of-chaos-theory-and-art-in-michael-dickels-new-poetry-and-art-collection-771489.html
About Michael Dickel’s Poetry
“I love the way Michael Dickel’s poetry mixes eros and kabbalah
with politicsbeautiful, disturbing, soaring.” —Adeena Karasick,
poet, cultural theorist and performance artist, and the
award-winning author of six books of poetry and poetic theory,
most recently The House That Hijack Built (Talon Books
2004).
Dickel’s poem “…is at once a poem of erotic love addressed to
the beloved; a celebration of landscape, nature and fertility;
an implicit reverencing of Jewish tradition; and, above all, a
universally human beckoning towards peace and joy. My personal
reading of [“Oasis”] yields hints of a mystical interpretation;
the invocation of Tikkun, in the tradition of Isaac Luria and
other Kabbalistic masters.” —Richard (Berengarten) Burns, poet
and organizer of the Cambridge Literary Festival, Bye-Fellow at
Downing College, Cambridge and Preceptor at Corpus Christi
College, and author of more than 20 books.
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