What
Wisconsin Took, Paul Dickey. University of Wisconsin-Madison: Parallel
Press. 2006. $10.00 (pa) 1-893311-73-2.
Dickey’s chapbook evokes a sense of place with a sense of humor.
In “How Dickeyville, Wisconsin Might Have Got Its Name,”
he plays out a personal mythology in the idea that this place might
be named after him. It opens: “I tell my wife…how my great-great-grandfather…settled
a farm here. To myself, I worry; did grandmother/tell me this, or did
I make it all up?” Dickey’s narrator is looking for a connection.
It’s funny, but humor often hides terror.
Dickey reveals the fragility of his characters, underneath their brave
facades, when faced with strange or out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.
He mixes mathematics, philosophy and real and unreal characters. The
language is careful, moody, always hinting at hidden meaning. In “Only
Another Mystery of Love and Death,” he writes about love and confusion:
“The rain last night, I swear, went tick tock,/ tick tock. Of
all things not to understand./ We know how rain is supposed to sound…”
This confusion caused the narrator and his wife to rise form bed. They
hunt for the sound, remarking: “Was it Quine or Wittgenstein/
who said that truth was just a different language?” The poem goes
on: “The sound stopped. Rain we knew started. I held/ all the
angles of your body until you felt like air.”
-CL
Bledsoe