“If I ever get stuck writing a poem, I will play some Talking Heads. That band is the poet I want to be! The album Stop Making Sense is especially meaningful to me. Although pop music might not always be clever or complicated, it is deeply honest and open. Like the band Vampire Weekend sings: ‘First the window, then it's to the wall / Lil’ Jon, he always tells the truth.’ Lately, and not only because our names look weirdly similar, I have been reading Matthew Lippman’s The New Year of Yellow again and being deeply moved and jealous. My poems will never be like Lippman’s, but they are not supposed to be. It is the fire in another person's work that can keep us warm and the blaze in a song that ridiculously asks the question ‘What you gonna do with all that junk? / All that junk inside your trunk?’ that lights a path of honesty and fun.”
—Matthew Dickman, author of All-American Poem (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)
Photo credit: Matthew Dickman