A Child’s Sketch of the Afterlife by Brian Dickson

A stunning, playful, thought-provoking dance of poetry on the page. I could not help reading it out loud and savoring the images and music of Dickson’s words. The visuals are artfully done with a sophisticated simplicity that makes you see the world just a little bit differently. A Child’s Sketch of the Afterlife is like a trip to a favorite art gallery you always return to again and again.

–K.B. Jensen, award-winning author of Love and Other Monsters in the Dark

In these poems, Dickson is both student and master of observation, simultaneously engaging with the holy and the profane, the wondrous and the commonplace. Like Emerson’s transparent eyeball, the speaker both scans and absorbs his environment, transforming observation and reflection into revelation and insight. Through subtle juxtapositions and exploration of a range of American landscapes, the forgotten, discarded, and familiar become sites of discovery and transcendence. These gestural depictions ultimately leave us on the cusp of wonder, reveling in and celebrating what’s illuminated between worlds seen and unseen.

–Jennifer Moore, author of Easy Does It and The Veronica Maneuver

Brian Dickson’s poems always take you to unexpected places – his “old self stuffed / in a boot / tucked in a turkey / bought from a local farm”; “three blind mice … complaining / about the lack of pepper jack cheese”; a birthday parade at a carnival; the moment where “Buddha emerged, / bellowing laughter.” His slant on the world is unusual and provocative, and he plays with words in a delightful way. With a quirky sensibility about life in these usual times, his poems deliver “a Holy Touch of / Magnificence.”

— Diane Frank, author of While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems