Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Reading Philip Dacey's poems is like having a conversation with a funny, sophisticated, and insightful friend. You're laughing, you're nodding in appreciation, you're saying, 'A-ha. I never saw things that way, but wow--you're right.' And you don't want to say goodbye anytime soon. Like the best literature, Dacey's poems teach us--or remind us--what it means to be human. They speak of our capacity for reverence ('Guest of Honor') as well as our ability to wound ('Neighborly'); they address our ability to conjure beauty via art, performance, and music ('Nijinsky: A Sestina, ' among others) and our power to destroy ('At the Hiroshima Photo Exhibit'); they evoke our ingenuity (all of Dacey's poems themselves as well as some of their subjects) and, simultaneously, as in 'The Hike (Altea, Spain), ' our frailty and our resilience.--Mark Brazaitis
