GRL
Our name Brand sackcloth is sooo last year. ……………………………………….. Dearly beloved, our wrists slit Themselves in protest. And they’re being optimistic. Forgive the over-generous quoting, but to write about Nick Demske properly would be to replicate the book in its entirety, such are the complexities and rightness of reference in much of what Demske has attempted. I’m reminded of lines from a Robert Pinsky poem, Anniverary: Until we were sick not only of the sight Of our prodigious systems turned against us But of the very systems of our watching. Self-loathing, arrogance, blood-lust, fear, grief, frustration, anger, deftness, image, wit, recognition, loss and compassion: all present, but where, from such a peak of intensity, can the poet go next? At his best Nick Demske puts words into the broken birdcages of his son nets and still gets them to scream beautifully, gets them attending mightily to alienation, fury, grief and non-compliance. At his less-than-best, he can yammer slightly at willing converts. In a poem not included in this collection, entitled Campbell McGrath(http://therumpus.net/2011/03/campbell-mcgrath-a-rumpus-originalpoem-by-nick-demske/, Demske states: Whatever you eat you’re gonna shit so fuck it. That probably comes as close to excusing you, me and himself as Nick Demske allows.
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