James Dickson Libri

Too often, contemporary poetry presents itself as a document of truth and beauty, but here in James Dickson’s excellent collection Some Sweet Vandal, we’re treated to a more realistic and nuanced worldview: the landscape described by an eye that sees the entire panorama and understands that scars and broken flowers can be as beautiful as any pastoral setting. If beauty is the beginning of terror, these intricately crafted poems remind us of what happens when angels open their mouths to speak, that poetry can be the place where healing begins, and that sometimes it is our words that bind our experiences together into a slender yet elegant ray of longing and melancholy that makes art out of our darkest experiences