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    The Dirt Riddles: Poems
    The Dirt Riddles: Poems
    The Dirt Riddles: Poems
    Ebook72 pages20 minutes

    The Dirt Riddles: Poems

    By Michael Walsh

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    About this ebook

    This powerful first collection and winner of the inaugural $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize is literally rooted in the earth and in the world of animal husbandry. You can taste these poems about life on a family dairy farm in your mouth. In these lyrical poems we meet a closeted young man, his parents, their herd, and the other flora, fauna, and objects that populate his surreal garden.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Arkansas Press
    Release dateJan 1, 2009
    ISBN9781610754156
    The Dirt Riddles: Poems
    Author

    Michael Walsh

    The author of seventeen novels and non-fiction books, Michael Walsh was the classical music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, and received the 2004 American Book Awards prize for fiction for his gangster novel, And All the Saints. His books The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and The Fiery Angel examine the enemies, heroes, triumphs, and struggles of Western Civilization from the ancient past to the present, while Last Stands (2020) explores the reasons why men fight to end when all is lost. He divides his time between Connecticut and Ireland.

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    • 4/5
      The Dirt Riddles, poems by Michael Walsh Winner of the 2010 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry PrizeThe Dirt Riddles is a sober and quiet reflection on rural life, composed by Michael Walsh. The poems highlight many of the themes of agrarian life: the constant attendance to the sky, the soil, and the wind as well as the more routine chores of keeping the home place in order. There is a solitary feel to the poems, a reflection on the inner mood rather than the outside. In fact, reading these feels like eavesdropping...hearing a quiet voice observe and evaluate their surroundings unsuppressed by inhibitions. And yet, these aren't sullen or gloomy either. The introspective voice is aware, calm, and natural. There is no awkward metaphors or complicated allusions. The simplicity is deceiving.From the larger animals down to insects, Walsh shows an acuity to every detail. No living thing escapes his notice, and even inanimate objects merit interest. Things we consider traditionally beautiful may be mentioned, but it is Walsh's ability to note the beauty of rust, electricity, wind, gravel dust, even the rot in the core of an apple that make this collection unusual. With very few words, Walsh describes different facets of a father figure, one who is rigid and angry, yet runs into a burning house to save his childhood comic books. In "Paper Flesh" he describes him: He couldn't leave these stacks behind.But the bright covers were already half-cooked, dark as negatives, heroes and villainssinged indistinguishable.One favorite, still on the father theme, was "After his lessons from the belt":my mother would always sit on the bedand spread out the great mapof his fault lines - that webworkof unpredictable tensions.We studied where the quakes were most likely to occur: in barns, fields,near sheds.We learned to sense the shifting,the slow grind of plates, the openingchasms of his hands.And "Wind"If you sprint fast enough,the corn runs with you,whole rows quick on their roots.Slow down and they jogcalm and breathless.Stop and they turnto walls. Hands on knees,you pant, and all the leaves,like wings, beat wildly.It's the attention to simple details and the juxtaposition of unusual elements that makes this collection really enjoyable, even relaxing, to read. Without getting maudlin or political, there's a sense of how the increasing loss of the farming life and the family farm in our lifetimes has left a void in our consciousness in the last century.

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    The Dirt Riddles - Michael Walsh

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