Description
Poetry. "War, mental illness, narcotics, sickness, incest and a deep passion for poetry were all a part of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl's short and tragic life (1887-1914). Biographical accounts have been few, vague and speculative. So little is clearly known about the man that much in this regard has been supplanted by what can be only assumed from the poet's substantial volume of work. The great German poet, Else-Lasker Schüler, who was a friend of the poet, wrote in her two line elegy: 'Georg Trakl died by his own hand in the war. / That was how lonely he was in the world. I loved him.' In BLUE SWAN, BLACK SWAN: THE TRAKL DIARIES, Stephanie Dickinson opens a new door, but not one into Trakl's psyche, rather from out of his psyche as if it were him relaying the incidents as they occurred in each particular moment and which these poems more than aptly provide. All is as if it originates from his mouth, from his dictation onto the pages of what is meant to be read as his unwritten diary. So powerful and precise is Dickinson's language that at times you cannot distinguish between what she says and what you imagine Trakl would have said. The intensity level is that analagous. Dickinson's intimacy with such a tragic poet's life acts to offer us Trakl himself speaking about something we never knew in such detail and which we the reader have only her to thank for sharing with us."—Paul B. Roth
Author Bio
Stephanie Dickinson raised on an Iowa farm now lives in New York City with the poet Rob Cook and their senior citizen feline, Vallejo. Her novels Half Girl and Lust Series are published by Spuyten Duyvil, as is her feminist noir Love Highway. Other books include PORT ATHORITY ORCHIDS (Rain Mountain Press, 2013), GIRL BEHIND THE DOOR (Rain Mountain Press, 2017), Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg (New Michigan Press), Flashlight Girls Run (New Meridian Arts Press), THE EMILY FABLES (Rain Mountain Press, 2019), Big-Headed Anna Imagines Herself (Alien Buddha) and BLUE SWAN, BLACK SWAN: THE TRAKI DIARIES (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2021). She has published poetry and prose in literary journals including Cherry Tree, The Bitter Oleander, Mudfish, Another Chicago Magazine, Lit, The Chattahoochee Review, The Columbia Review, Orca, Gargoyle, among others. Her stories have been reprinted in New Stories from the South, New Stories from the Midwest, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received distinguished story citations in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays and numerous Pushcart anthology citations. At present she's finishing a work of creative nonfiction entitled In the Razor Wire Wilderness based on her longtime correspondence with inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey. To support the holy flow, she has long labored as a word processor for a Fifth Avenue accounting firm. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, she has worked remotely from the sanctity of her 5th floor walk-up red room. Along with Rob Cook, she edits Rain Mountain Press.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA