Patsy Cline is on the Radio by Barbara Dahlberg
$19.99
“Patsy Cline is on the Radio” moves us through changing eras and changing landscapes—rural Minnesota, the New Mexico dessert, a lonely Oklahoma home—full of lively detail made livelier by the realization that illness and death are always near. In a straight-shooting, sometimes humorous, never sentimental voice, Dahlberg looks the stuff of life—and the stuff of death—smack in the eyes and creates little treasures for us to feast on.
–Nancy Krygowski is the author of Velocity.
I like a poem with no room for lies to tell; Here are poems that do not lie. Here are poems for how to be in this racing world, today— bones, cancer, the red, red heart of seeing what’s right in front of you. These poems are woman poems to finger over a chipped tooth & to grin with. I like a poem that shows its belly. Barbara’s poems feel like a map of being human, they are crisp & daring in their sight. Some of them will keep you sitting down in the chair long after the reading, they are still reading you.
–Vanessa German is a sculptor, painter, writer, activist, performer and poet.
The poems in Patsy Cline is on the Radio are all dirt, sky, and water—made of that which, no matter how hard we try, we cannot deny. Dahlberg writes, in “Oklahoma, April 1981,” “Rocks run in my family.” And each poem in this collection is a precise relic of former lives, former selves, bodies lost and always on the edge of being lost. Dahlberg is proof that there are honest poets left, the kind whose vulnerability and succinct lines tell us to live now, to listen now—no matter how scared we might be.
–Stacey Waite, author of Butch Geography
Description
Patsy Cline is on the Radio
by Barbara Dahlberg
$19.99, Full-length, paper
978-1-63534-574-2
2018
Barbara Dahlberg spent her childhood in the woods of northern Minnesota, moving to Pittsburgh at age 11. Always a visual artist, she found her voice with the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project in 2001, and honed her skills as a Madwomen in the Attic since 2009. An art teacher with the Pittsburgh Public Schools for 20 years she retired in 2009. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2009 and given months to live, she now lives in the Regent Square area of Pittsburgh where she writes and creates art.
Her work has been published in the Lascaux Prize 2016, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, U.S.1 Worksheets, and Voices from the Attic. She won first prize in the Public Poetry:Work contest. Was a reader on the radio program Prosody performed in Being…She Said 2014.
Deborah Carr (verified owner) –
My words cannot do justice to Barbara’s. I am moved to the depths of my soul by her unimaginable candor and imagery. Barbara’s voice swirls around and slams up against love, pain, joy and sorrow bringing perspective and light. Anyone that reads “Patsy Cline is on The Radio” will feast on her poetry and wish they could spend many long afternoons with her, musing, feeling, remembering. I plan to pass this treasure along to all of my friends. Wow.
Emily Mohn-Slate (verified owner) –
Patsy Cline is On the Radio is a stunning, powerful book. Dahlberg’s poems have such a singular voice: sharp, funny, tender, real.
These poems take the seemingly ordinary stuff of life and make it strange. Dahlberg works magic quickly in each poem: even in a poem of six lines, you can lose your breath, feel a punch in your gut, have a new way of looking at the world. I read it all the way through and didn’t find a single weaker poem. I highly recommend this book for any reader.