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"William Clipman's Dog Light is an extraordinary first
book: it's mature, intelligent, and it's visions are both tender
and fierce. There is at the center of each poem a unique poetic
imagination and the attendant exposed truths. The light cast by
Dog Light is relentless and illuminating. The voice is
real."
-Thomas Lux
"These poems are convincing because of their passionate commitment
to detail, yet it is Clipman's sensibility--tough-minded, morally
complex, humane--that gives the details their appealing flavor.
Dog Light is a wonderful start for William Clipman. It's
a pleasure to read poems that remind us, without lapsing into
the bizarre, that the truth is always a little odd, always somewhat
outside or beneath what passes for it in our daily lives."
-Stephen Dunn
"These poems bum with a tropical intensity: unembarrassed, loving,
exuberant, defiant, taking in and giving out. They are actions.
The present tense unwinds with little return and little regret--the
body's dance read in the mummy's hieroglyphic posture. Clipman
gives us the romance of American sensuality."
-Steve Orlen
DOG LIGHT
Ignored, like the green flash of the fly.
Passes across a dog's eyes, a beacon
to warn our thought-bound brains away
from the unthinking rock. Blinks on like the porch light
for a short visit from intelligence.
Skull-glow animates the mask adjusted by
a tilt of the head: a moon ray
through shifting clouds, a consequence.
Bums pale white--
what wolves know each other by.
And stays, sometimes, to mock our dumb surprise,
belie such false obedience.
White teeth, bone light, dog's eyes.
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