Dali/Dalai

By Richard Solomon

Using surreal, monolithic poems about nine Salvador Dali paintings as guideposts, this collection of poetry moves from the dream world through progressive inquiry to the spiritual. From the material world to the immaterial world, from association to dissociation, from personal to impersonal, Dali/Dalai is at turns funny and heartbreak- ing. These poems present a wholly unique reading experience. From the specific—anguish over sick children in a hospital ward, the beauty of an enduring love story, the grief for a friend’s dead son, the holiness of an unexpected Seder—to the general—the aftermath of war, the mysticism of nature, the delicacy of the threads that connect all of us—the poems come out of spiritual experiences that convince the reader that the divine is uniquely available to humans. Ultimately, this collection presents a deep feeling of compassion for the world.

“There is a big imagination at play in these poems. Rick Solomon takes his license from Dali’s precisely painted yet bizarre (and, the poet acknowledges, bombastic) images. But he also writes narratives of his medical practice with children. Then he can write the erotically playful poems of the ‘long married man.’ Along the way he can write an ode to Zingerman’s pulled pork sandwich and achieve satori on the Sturgeon River in the UP. These are poems written from a life lived intensely, lived with intelligence, emotion, occasional terror, and—yes—joy.”
—Keith Taylor, author of Ecstatic Destinations

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fifth Avenue Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781947989801

Book preview