[New-Poetry] Dickmen

[David Graham]

The April 6 issue of The New Yorker has an article (not available  
online) about Michael & Matthew Dickman, the identical twin poets who  
write such different poems.

As is typical, I guess, for TNY, it's mostly gossip, with a few lines  
of poetry quoted in passing; but of interest if you haven't heard yet  
their story.  I generally don't believe poets who present themselves  
as being above gossip, anyway. . . .  My own favorite tidbit is the  
anecdote about the brothers when they were in school opting out of a  
lengthy analysis of one of Sharon Olds's father-poems on the grounds  
that they didn't wish to dissect their own grandfather. . . .  
(Technically, step-grandfather, I guess, but still.)

Just as Darwin's great-great granddaughter is proving irresistable to  
journalists, the Dickman brothers are fated to be known forevermore  
as "those twin poets."  Much too soon to tell if there's anything  
more than a flash in that pan, I suppose.

Here's the article abstract:

ABSTRACT: PROFILE of Michael and Matthew Dickman, twin brothers and  
poets. Michael and Matthew Dickman often draw from a similar well of  
images and experiences. Michael’s poems are interior, fragmentary,  
and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe  
with incipient violence. Matthew’s are effusive, ecstatic, and all- 
embracing, spilling over with pop-cultural references and exuberant  
carnality. Reading Michael is like stepping out of an overheated  
apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly  
chill gust of wind; reading Matthew is like taking a deep, warm bath  
with a glass of wine balanced on the soap dish. The Dickmans’ swift  
and simultaneous rise has aroused suspicion in some circles. Michael  
Schiavo, a young poet and blogger wrote, “the Dickman twins have put  
their life story, not their poetry, front and center.” The Dickman  
twins have made efforts to resist the pairing of their work, as does  
Michael Wiegers, the executive director of Copper Canyon, which has  
published and distributed their books. Compares the twins to other  
writers who are brothers: Frank and Malachy McCourt and Tobias and  
Geoffrey Wolff. One way of looking at their work is as an  
illustration of the distinctiveness of the imagination, even in two  
people who are as alike as two people can be. From the time they were  
teen-agers, the brothers have supported themselves with food-service  
jobs. Describes their childhood in the Portland, Oregon neighborhood  
of Lents. Their mother, Wendy, was unmarried and had become pregnant  
during a brief relationship with the boys’ father, Allen Hull. The  
twins shared a made-up baby language and had an unusual sympathy of  
experience. Tells about the decline of Lents. Drugs and gangs became  
a presence in the area. Wendy’s stepfather was also the father of the  
poet Sharon Olds, who was an intermittent presence in the boys’  
adolescence. The boys attended private Catholic schools, began  
drinking at twelve, and attended parties where gang members fired  
guns in the street. Tells about the positive influences of their half  
brother and half sister Darin and Dana. In high school, the twins  
started to write poems. Girls they were interested in introduced them  
to the work of Pablo Neruda and Anne Sexton. As teen-agers they began  
loitering at Powell’s Books. Discusses their college careers and  
their appearance in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Minority Report.”  
Matthew recalls an encounter with Allen Ginsberg. Not long ago, the  
brothers were contacted by Pablo Van Dijk with a proposal: that each  
write a poem for the other about their birth to be published together  
in a chapbook. The poems are as unalike as twin poems can be.




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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
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