Blinded by the Light then the Dark
by Duane Ackerson

Description

Selected by Harold Bowes and with an Introduction by former Strange Horizons poetry editor Mardel James-Bose (with cover image by Bob Dornberg), this long-overdue “selected poems of” collection will please the many Ackerson fans and gain him new admirers along the way. To quote Clemens Starck, one of the several people to write comments for the book (joining Carlos Reyes, Vern Rutsala and Peter Sears): “Miniature sagas of lost refrigerators and wind-up roosters, a classroom of frogs and how to make doorknob soup; the story of the man who opened up a cheeseburger stand on the moon; how fire was once used to put out water, and the account of a disastrous misunderstanding about omelets and broken eggs—these are just a few of the marvelous whimsies and cockeyed creations of Duane Ackerson, the work of a true original.”

Comments:

“Duane Ackerson has been laboring in the vineyards for many years and has come up with a bumper crop in this collection. With its sardonic wit and remarkable skill his poetry gives the pleasure that only the best poetry can provide.” (Vern Rutsala)

“In his second Duino Elegy, Rilke asks, “Does the space we dissolve into taste of us?” Duane Ackerson’s poems answer with, I believe, a resounding “Yes.” Here gathered for the first time in his long and still active writing career, these poems reach out effortlessly into the unknown. They are neither dogmatic nor revelatory. They are low-keyed joyous, good natured. Surreal, anecdotal, modest, tongue-in-check, these poems welcome our imagination as an old friend. Their closest relatives are the poems of Bill Knott, Vosko Popa, and Russell Edson.” (Peter Sears)

Excerpt:

Pavane for a Dead Mirror

The glass of the mirror comes apart,
sending a thousand yous tinkling to the floor:

the death of a wind chime
that carries the wind’s last gasp with it,
multiplying loss into a banshee crowd
mourning itself endlessly.

After all, we all want the world
to die with us,
and it does,
though leaps up from the end immediately,
phoenix luring us into the fire
and knowing all the while
it couldn’t really burn itself.

You pick up the pieces of glass,
see your face, a flame flickering
on the wick of each.
Remember:
it’s your face, not mine.
I’m still here,

safe in the wind
these words have harnessed,
blowing from the world that made your pyre
sing.