Slowed rate of starlight
every hazy smudge of light
bursting galaxies offer
surprising behavior
the work confirms
that highest echo in the glen
Slowed rate of starlight
every hazy smudge of light
bursting galaxies offer
surprising behavior
the work confirms
that highest echo in the glen
A passionate, questing heart on a sleeve for poetry.
Simon Travers
Das Gedichtete (or un thème et variations du poétique) is book of raw material shaped by the elements in Dunagan’s mind and chosen by the poet with great care. Local and galactic resonances, basic Songsmithing. The grumblings and ecstasies of a lifer in the guild. “Das Gedichtete,” after Walter Benjamin: “the poetized,” or that which “in an ideal sense, preexists each particular poem but is realized only in the poem’s creation.”
Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. His books include: Das Gedichtete (UDP), The Duncan Era: One Poet’s Cosmology; Drops of Wine / Drops of Rain; “There Are People Who Think That Painters Shouldn’t Talk”: A GUSTONBOOK; and The Young American Poets. With his wife, Iranian poet and artist Ava Koohbor, he translates poetry from Farsi, including an ongoing project on Hafez. With Marina Lazzara and Nicholas James Whittington, he is editing an anthology of critical work by alumni and faculty of the now defunct Poetics program at New College of California. He also edited poet Owen Hill’s A Walk Among the Bogus.
Saddle-Stitched. 32 pp, 9 x 6.5 in
Publication Date: December 15 2013
Distribution: Direct Only