#dean rader

[the-final-sentence]

She was born to create.

Dean Rader, from "Creation"

[typewriter-worries]

Did You Walk to Oklahoma?, Dean Rader

[ Text ID: If you are a song let us sing you ] 

[rustbeltjessie]

American Self-Portrait I

Give me the sheriff star pinned to the mermaid and that tiny piece of wood from your throat. Give me the saw blade, the plastic cat's-eye. Give me the flash drive of your tongue:

I want to save everything. Even the goat horns you strapped to the skull of the little girl, and yes, both of her hands. No, I don't really know what that means, but so what?

I'll take the boneyard and all its yellow flowers, I'll take the pisspot, the necklace of petal fire, and while I'm at it, I'll take the body's wafer: I'll take whatever breaks down beneath its own sad weight —

whether it's this life or a bad party. Your tangy pelt, your twitch. You want my sandwich, hey, get in line. This isn't the army, but I'll march. I want your shoulder holster, I want your mouth of bullets.

—Dean Rader, from Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)

[nebulousstudy]

Give into the dark, and you won’t feel the darkness

Dean Rader, Apocryphal Self-Portrait

[pigmenting]

How often have I woken in fear, blind In my unknowing?

Dean Rader, from “Frost on Fire” published in Narrative

[bibliomancyoracle]

The old grammar was always just a placeholder for new resentments.

*

from “June Notebook” by Dean Rader

[therumpus]

If silence is bitter, change yourself into song.        O listener, I think of you alone there    on the cliff’s edge of your daily duties,        waiting, the way saints wait, for the    falling to cease and the fire to rise,        when the tiniest note, the loveliest letter    from this world finally arrives.

excerpt from Self-Portrait As A Wikipedia Entry by Dean Rader, reviewed by Barbara Berman.

[poetsandwriters]

The biggest risk we take as artists is making art. The second biggest is deciding we want to make art of consequence....I guess my recommendation would be to see if you can stretch in seemingly opposite directions. And, I wouldn’t even worry so much if your work ‘succeeds’ or not. Be bold. Be traditional. Be anything but safe.

Dean Rader, in this week’s Writers Recommend (Poets & Writers, 2017)