Norman Dubie: the one we begin with.

I am not going to give a biography of Dubie. If you like the poem you can find out plenty about him using the box you are facing. He is, like the very best of artists and people, exceptionally difficult to define. Sometimes he bombards the reader with language. At other times, like with this poem, he lays out a simple story and allows the twists within the simplicity to make the impact. He is very capable, which cannot be said of every poet, of giving his mark or voice to all of his work. This poem plays with the epic. It is Biblical. It is historical. It is violent. It might even be accurate. That seems to be the joke that Dubie is trying to get at. It is not a funny joke as much as it is an educational quip. Why is one year so different from any other? Why do we build our history in the way that we do? Which events constitute our remembrance and, historically and artistically speaking, what is truly important? Why write a poem?

These are the types of questions that good poems force the reader to ask. It is not enough, it is important but not enough, to just say "I like it" or "I do not like it" and leave it at that. There are reasons and questions and thoughts provoked. It may be that you do not like this poem or you may want to run out and buy all the Dubie you can find but there must, in either case, be a reason. It is very good to find reasons and think about them.

My advice would be to read at least twenty more Norman Dubie poems. That would be reasonable.




An Annual of the Dark Physics

The Baltic Sea froze in 1307. Birds flew north

From the Mediterranean in early January.

There were meteor storms throughout Europe.

On the first day of Lent

Two children took their own lives:

Their bodies

Were sewn into goatskins

And were dragged by the hangman’s horse

The three miles down to the sea.

They were given a simple grave in the sand.

The following Sunday, Meister Eckhart

Shouted that a secret word

Had been spoken to him. He preached

That Mary Magdalene

Sought a dead man in the tomb

But, in her confusion, found

Only two angels laughing. . .

This was a consequence of her purity

And her all too human grief.

The Baltic Sea

Also froze in 1303—

Nothing happened that was worthy of poetry.

From: The Mercy Seat by Norman Dubie
Copper Canyon Press