DIMLY LIT

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DIMLY LIT

by Desireé Dallagiacomo

PUBLISHED: 2014

SIZE: 7" x 4"

PRICE: $12

Before NEXT LEFT PRESS launched, I designed & hand-bound books for myself and designed the occasional chapbook other poets could take to their local print shop. Instead of a Kinko's, I printed mine on a $28 inkjet bought on sale at a big box store. Instead of staples, I used the same green nylon twine that shrimpers use for netting. After a book I made for myself in 2010 sold out, I'd send people the .PDF. I sent it to Desireé Dallagiacomo, who asked if I could turn a dozen or so of her poems into a chapbook. DIMLY LIT & NEXT LEFT PRESS were born on the same day.

DIMLY LIT begins with a recollection of violence: "Your father used to beat you with the vacuum tube /and some people think that's not my story to tell..." Calling attention to the "some people" (which might be outside feedback but could very well be the poet's own interior dialogue) shifts the physically upsetting and menacingly specific detail away from one person's story into a larger story of violence; a story less specific, less jolting but one Desireé and others know far too well:

We, the seeds of the monsters poverty makes of men.

We, not yet big enough to carry sorrow’s weight slung

on our backs. We, the children ducking the fists

of our fathers, using everything we have

to avoid being the punch line. 

This is Desireé Dallagiacomo at work. Her nuanced & haunting images depicting both a specific event (her own in most instances which, again, is why the opening works so well) & a larger social illness. Desireé writes of disease by presenting, in gut-gathering detail, its symptoms. The "You" or "I" in later poems becomes both a smaller more personal and larger more societal "We" that struggles to muster what courage it takes to, as another of her poems says, "just stay alive."

I hate to use a metaphor of violence to describe Desireé's work, but the world from which she writes exists in a violent place. In terms of the evolution of Desireé's poetry, DIMLY LIT provides keen insight. The balled-fist haymakers of her first collection, THE YEAR OF THE INSTITUTION (pre-dated our collaboration), become a carefully orchestrated mix of jabs, crosses, and uppercuts paired with solid footwork and a steadied breath. The careful blend of power & proficiency with which she writes is what makes Desireé poetry's Ronda Roussey: her poems will literally knock your poems out in competition.

And how exactly does knowing how to fight not mean knowing how to love? In "Notes on Loving a Five-Time Felon" we see the intersections of strength & vulnerability, compassion & unease, fighting & loving. Through the poem we understand, like actually understand, that what may seem clear-cut to some about incarceration isn't to those who've sat & waited for someone in the prison waiting room.

So it all began with Desireé. Without her vision, forethought, & appreciation there would likely be no NEXT LEFT PRESS (or certainly a drastically different & less driven incarnation of it). She remains dedicated to publishing books that were actually made by someone, that look & feel more special than your average paperback. Des shares our passion for giving the people who love people something different, something special, something real. We remain dedicated to honor the original deal made during the original run of DIMLY LIT with all our authors

WATCH Desireé perform "Notes on Loving a Five-Time Felon" from WOWPS 2014.