Night School

May 15, 2018

In the opening poem of his latest collection, Pulitzer Prize winner Dennis (Practical Gods) stands amid cottonwood trees that have taken root where sludge was once dumped and declares, "It's time to focus on the life at hand." Yet soon he imagines nearby strollers taking him for a "Late-blooming cottonwood creature" or "self-appointed surveyor of urban wetlands." And in the following poem he creates multiple stories for a middle-aged woman eating alone, wanting to assure himself that she "Hasn't made a wrong turn in life that's deprived her/ Of friends and family." Clearly, Dennis likes to look beyond to the world's possibilities, rethinking what he sees, and he warns us that our paths aren't set; his grandparents met only because of a train breakdown. VERDICT Seriously inventive and delightful; for most readers.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2018
Is Dennis the most accessible poet in America? Well, there's Mary Oliver, but whereas she speaks to any and all, he talks first to (as well as of) particular persons. While she is a philosopher of nature, he is a creative psychologist, conjuring characters, motives, conversations, and incidents. The characters can be himself, a friend, a family member, a stranger, a deity, an animal. They're never object as well as subject of the poem, never you; you is the poet or an immediate companion, not, by default, the reader. It is Dennis himself in the poem Two Lives; a woman eating alone outside Ernie's Red Hots in Fast Food; a Favorite God; an intimate in Not Description; a son in A History of Nagging; the neighbor who's really never warmed to the poet in The Actress . They are, for all intents and purposes, the people we know and interact with and wonder about, and, presented by Dennis in a lilting and loose extension of blank verse, they're every bit as engaging.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)