Poetic Pair

Do you like your poetry lyrical and sprawling? Or sparse and shocking?

Either way, the Dickman twins, Matthew and Michael, have got you covered. I became fascinated by the story of these talented identical twins when I stumbled upon this recent New Yorker article (sorry, membership required to read full text). You can get more of their background story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The New Yorker piece explores the vastly different ways in which their works tackle shared experiences. Amazing.

Michael's The End of the West and Matthew's All-American Poem are available now through Copper Canyon Press. Yep, published by the same press. Michael's book was accepted for publication by Copper Canyon, then Matthew entered his manuscript for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize—and won publication by Copper Canyon. The publisher seems a little worried that they'll take flack for doing something gimmicky, but I think it's good publicity for poetry (it could use some identical, blue-eyed, straight-male poster boys).

As you know, I am a firm supporter of people reading and writing more poetry. So check out: Michael stuff at The Narrative magazine online (includes audio!); Matthew stuff at TheStory.org.

Both are reading this year at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival, tempting me to brave a trip to my alma mater. Dare I? Dare I?