$15.00
by Philip Dacey
Readers’ comments on previous work by Philip Dacey:
Gimme Five is a joyous overhead slap for lovers of what we do with words on the great court of poetry.
—Laura McCullough, Mead
A master craftsman able to comfortably play freely within structure while both honoring tradition and breaking new ground, Dacey dances in Vertebrae Rosaries from profound to profane with grace and panache.
—Brent Goodman, Verse Wisconsin
If there were a Poet Laureate for middle America, Philip Dacey would surely be at the top of the list.
—g emil reutter, Fox Chase Review
Gimme Five is stunningly written, engaging from beginning to end, a book you should want in your collection of contemporary American poetry.
—Betty O’Hearn, Wild Goose Poetry Review
Mosquito Operas is a magnificent collection in which each so-called “short” poem is in fact part of a grand vision. This book belongs on your shelf, in an honored place.
—Jared Smith, Big City Lit
Dacey's work is land-mined with risks. And brave.
—Leonard Gontarek, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts
Philip Dacey is the author of twelve previous books of poetry, most recently Gimme Five, the winner of the Blue Light Press 2012 Book Award, Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems (Rain Mountain Press, 2010), and Vertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). The winner of three Pushcart Prizes, he has written entire collections about Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Eakins, and New York City. His other awards include a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center and various fellowships (a Fulbright to Yugoslavia, a Woodrow Wilson to Stanford, and two in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts). His work has appeared in The Nation, Hudson Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, The American Scholar, New York Times, Esquire, The American Poetry Review, The Hopkins Review, and many other leading periodicals. With David Jauss, he co-edited Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms (Harper & Row, 1986). After an eight year post-retirement adventure on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he returned in 2012 to Minnesota, where he had taught at Southwest Minnesota State University for 35 years, to live in Minneapolis in the Lake District with his partner, Alixa Doom.
by Philip Dacey
In Praise of 5 a.m.
Escort the sun up.
Sweep clean the sky-path he has to climb
as you pick the night’s dreams from your hair.
Early risers catch sight
of efflorescent tail-feathers trailing
safely away into the underbrush,
the Great Bird’s daily escape.
This is the hour of the laid egg.
Sleep late and miss its first warmth.
Your head is laid
awake in the darkness,
the softly glowing center of the room.
The boots of your ancestor’s English lord
must be polished and set before his door
before he awakens.
You have so much to do--
slip the stars into their bright envelopes
and mail them to the other side of the world,
then fold the dark carefully,
flag of the nation
you, now exiled, belong to in your sleep,
and slide it under the bed with its cousin the dust.
The quiet weighs on the bedcovers, on you,
with the tender pressure of a lover
who pins you down to yourself,
and you can hear a faint bubbling from
the place within where a cold spring
rises from its source
and if you are lucky
floods your day.
The Abyss Variations
The abyss can dangle pretty from an ear.
He turned a corner, and there was the abyss.
At the border, I had only the abyss to declare.
“The abyss? The merest fiction,” huffed the abbess.
The abyss complains it isn’t understood.
To cross the abyss, it’s best to pack a lunch.
Enjoy Abyss, the latest breakfast food.
Shoes by Abyss are fashionable but pinch.
In bed, the abyss yawns, stretches seductively.
Why walk stooped if the abyss is eyelash-light?
Question the abyss, and all it does is sigh.
Chumminess and the abyss don’t mix; salute.
Told his work was abysmal, he said thanks.
Invest in the abyss; it’s better than the banks.
Sourdough Ennui
“I’m bored. Let’s do something, Man. Let’s do something.
Let’s get naked. Get a soda, cheesecake, anything!"
Overheard, corner of 15th and Guerrero, San Francisco
I’m bored. Let’s do something. What does it take
to give this place a shot of juice, a buzz?
Let’s get naked. Get a soda. Cheesecake.
Man, I’m ready for another earthquake.
Let the plates shift and the tidal waves rise
to swamp my boredom, if that’s what it takes.
This big nothing’s giving me a headache.
Black hole? My middle name. Boredom is what is
unless we get naked, a soda, cheesecake,
anything--boogie-woogie on a stick.
How bored can I get? Let me count the ways.
I’d even consider an all-out attack,
but on what, whom? The savage god Yawn. Let’s make
faces, a beeline, time, a joyful noise.
Or else just get naked, a soda, cheesecake.
Isn’t there something, anything, to shake
up this day, my stopped clock, some word to raise
the dead? The air’s for mounting. What would it take
to get you naked? A soda? Cheesecake?
Pascaliana
All men’s misfortunes spring from the single cause
that they are unable to stay quietly in one room.
Pascal, The Pensees
The place to go to is the place you’re at.
Though wheels wait, cultivate denying them.
This place is fat, fat, fat.
If you scoot, you’ll only see where you once sat
and be a long way from home.
The place to go to is the place you’re at.
Paris, say. I think of places like that,
where all day I could je vous aime
and forget this place is beaucoup fat,
then I remember millions in their hut,
my place-poor bro and sis. Mobility’s a dream.
Wake up. Go to, be, where you’re at.
Of course, even if wheels are flat
or roads awash in weather, it’s still damn
hard to get to where you’re at,
though at least you don’t need a hat.
Local gods hide. They want you to come
find them in that place you’re at.
It’s so thin, so nearly invisible, it’s fat, fat, fat.
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