Nocturne

<p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Mike Dillon's Nocturne: New & Selected Poems features his best work from six books of poetry two poetry chapbooks and three books of haiku. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>That Which We Have Named</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> he writes: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>eyes that long for the windless/light of Heaven must in the end/show proof of earth.</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> This quest for ultimate things grounded in daily life is the common thread running through all of Dillon's books. Along the way the poet's eye swerves to the margins away from the crowd to find a patch of sunlit moss or a fleeting moment of silence. A tender regard for the marginalized is captured in this much-celebrated haiku: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the last kid picked/running his fastest/to right field.</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Dillon grew up on Bainbridge Island west of Seattle. His </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Departures: Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island's Japanese Americans After Pearl Harbor</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> evokes the tragedy and heroism of that time delivered with the terse evocation sharp detailing and devastating humanity of a Netsuke carving. It was written during the rise of Trumpism.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Across Agate Pass from Bainbridge Island lies the Suquamish reservation burial place of Chief Seattle. For a middle-class white boy Suquamish was a source of mystery and wonder opening a door to another dimension: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>A white marble cross flanked by two cedar poles/marks the great chief's grave/his feet aimed east</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> he writes in </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Suquamish and Other Poems.</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Mike Dillon's poetic quest searches for the crossroads of time and eternity where the world appears as glimmering immanence.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p>