Husbandry by Matthew Dickman (reviewed by Alex Russell)
Matthew Dickman’s newest book of poems, Husbandry, focuses on parenthood. His poetry does not mince words – thematically, his intentions are clear; syntactically, there are no clumsy echoes. Everything is right there, visible and clear.
As a single parent with two young sons, the author’s world – as revealed in his poems – often revolves around everyday life. We see him folding clothes, cleaning dishes, and cooking food. In sparse yet precise language, he presents everything – from the monumental to the mundane -- with due diligence and a measure of concerned distance.
Most of the poems in Husbandry follow an established structure. Each stanza is made up of two short lines, making up a careful-sounding dialogue. After a while, the deliberate weight of each word becomes a signpost along a varied, expansive, living path.
Many pieces include conversations he has had with his sons. “Crossing Guard” is one such series of moments between a father and son as the two talk about lost friends. Without romanticizing it, being overly sentimental or trivializing it, death is a subject that is evenly threaded throughout each stanza. As the two talk about absent friends, the pair finds a dead animal in the road.
“For a moment I think / we will be standing / here forever, he and I / watching death / do its slow work / like someone restoring / a painting / but in reverse.”
It is this kind of soft dissection of death – this large and all-encompassing thing – where Dickman finds his power. Part of this skill rests in the author taking his time with the experiences and ideas he wants to discuss; in a thought-out and patient manner, he lays everything out for the reader.
Plain language does not equate to simplistic thinking and Dickman’s poetry is a testament to this. In a piece titled “Father,” he delves into the significance of names:
“Fathers with names / like Joseph, / Yosef, Josiah, Yasef, / meaning he will add…Fathers with names / like Ernie, Ernest, Ernesto, / Arnošt, meaning kindness.” With an almost stoic grace, Dickman ponders little asides like this – taking in minute complexities and the interconnectedness of language, human culture and thought – without ever making it feel like stalling for time or senseless, aesthetic meandering.
“Father” ends with a bittersweet but crucial realization on the author’s part: “I know / there are / really three children / in the story of my life. / I must make a home / for each of them.”
It’s true that many sons become fathers, but Dickman goes several steps further to illustrate a kind of fluid, revolving continuum. Three short stanzas reveal something tender and real at his core both as a writer and human being.
The poem ends without any huge reveal or twist; there is nothing prefabricated or resupplied for cheap emotional string-pulling. “I must make a home / for each of them” is an instance of pure personal reflection. Here, Dickman balances out both the internal and external aspects of his life and, in a broader sense, human nature.
Taking into account his naked fears, anxieties, and his myriad responsibilities as a father, many poems in the book – without spelling it out – attempt to arrive at some pertinent balance.
To find consistent harmony, in writing as in life, everything must be appraised. Thankfully, in Dickman’s writing, nothing is too big or too small to feature in his gorgeous, elegiac writing.
In “Lilac,” he savors “that amazing lemon / frosted lemon cake” from Starbucks, while he holds his youngest son and listens to “his body living, / alive outside / his mother’s body, and the lilac / outside on the street, outside / everyone, and heavy in the rain.”
As these stanzas make their way down the page, their tone is one of patience and resilience, and free of any ego. They move from a casual scene inside a Starbucks to the weight of the external world, always in flux.
Even though certain poems may seem to go off on tangents, Husbandry is to poetry what Dark Side of the Moon is to rock and roll; every aspect fits into a natural progression of thought and feeling. Interspersed throughout the book are prose pieces, two-lines at most, highlighting his sons Hamza and Owen and their individual reactions to their parents’ separation as well as their own burgeoning journeys in life.
Dickman’s writing is supremely candid about all things – separation from his wife is no exception to this. At times unabashedly pointed, at others frank and forgiving, the separation, in literary or thematic terms, could be considered a major inciting event in Husbandry.
More so than in actual, physical terms, what the separation took to mean for Dickman is a constant work-in-progress; a reappraisal of himself, Matthew Dickman – adult, writer, father, son, friend, lover.
In “Parenting and Virginia Woolf,” beautifully and bluntly, Dickman writes: “For weeks after / the separation really / kind people kept / telling me that I was / on a journey, this is / your journey / they would say / and I would want to / scoop out their / eyeballs with one / of my grandmother’s / silver grapefruit / spoons.” Spiteful? Maybe. But entirely human and universal.
Like the book as a whole, “Parenting and Virginia Woolf” takes time to develop, examine, exist in, and finally outgrow, the author’s individual, private hurt. “I am not on a journey, / I am cooking / dinner for my kids. / I am washing their / hair and underwear, / I am trying to go / for walks outside, / trying to eat more vegetables.” Not a journey, but a process.
A lot of the time, while reading Husbandry, it was hard to keep going. Dickman’s writing is “raw” – not in the sense of something unfinished, because his poems are as complete as diamonds, but in the way that exposed flesh will be red and sensitive to everything, even light.
In the end, it’s this sensitivity that, no matter how close he cuts to home, makes one return to his writing. There is something fulfilling and wonderful in being able to meet pain and vulnerability on level footing. Poetry, it seems, is Matthew Dickman’s way of doing just that.
Near the end of Husbandry, Dickman reflects in “Anniversary” how “The night isn’t as long / a year later, or bullied or rootless or night at all.” As painful as it often is, growth is still growth – eventually making us a little wiser, if not stronger.
Husbandry by Matthew Dickman, published in 2022 by W. W. Norton & Company. 142 pages.
Alex Russell earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from George Mason University and now works in the field of journalism and publishing. He has contributed poetry to a variety of literary magazines and art journals, such as The Elevation Review, 300 Days of Sun, and The Ignatian Literary Magazine. His contributions to the Falls Church News-Press, a locally owned newspaper in the Washington, DC area, can be found online at fcnp.com.