Norman DubieReviews

Dubie writes poems that are free verse but with a formal ear, using ghost meter and ghost rhyme to write often of metaphorical ghosts. So many of his poems are historical character portraits steeped dark and strong in mystery and surreal violence or tenderness. He is singular, as far as I can tell, in what he has done and is doing in terms of the American poetic landscape. Absolutely enthralling, sometimes unnerving, always with an eye to unexpected beauty.

That said, the title of the book is misleading. It is a new and selected poems, rather than collected. The poems are not arranged chronologically and the reader has no idea what book each is taken from. That's a very minor grievance though. If you only get one Dubie book, get this. Reading this, though, made me want to get all of the individual collections.½

I resonated with this book upon reading the first lines of the first poem in the book, "Hunter in an Arctic Midnight": He wears a sea froth of lime. / The whiskers of the walrus / say to us / that there is no wind. I'm immediately brought into this other world, that I must continue to the end of the poem before stopping. Dubie has pushed into an understanding by native peoples of the world around them, seen and unseen, but infused with a modern sensibility for those of us who don't live near this more original world. His poetry is informed by many sources and we can discover the specialness of that alternate vision.½