North True South Bright
Dan Beachy-Quick
Grounded in history and nature, this smart, lyrical first collection explores the dangers of a world so complex that no single consciousness may grasp it—however much the attempt must be made. Following historical and imagined figures as they encounter specific moments or objects (such as Thomas Hariot in the American Wilderness of the late 16th century), the poems attempt to record the unraveling of the safe and singular into a multiplicity of unknowns. Impelled by metaphor and lilting repetition, North True South Bright seeks a sense of the world, and ultimately, a sense of the Infinite.
“…quirky and original.”
—Fence, “Best Books by Emerging Writers fall 2003”
“These poems appear before us with the urgency of prayer, the fever pitch of a spell being cast, and the desire to comprehend the mysteries of language. A unique and fascinating book of poems.”
—Ploughshares
“North True South Bright deliberately avoids easy idealisms by insisting that language can mediate, but never fully coalesce with, or pierce, the external world.”
—FreeVerse
“…Dan Beachy Quick’s first book, North True South Bright, is by turns lulling, inspiring, ecstatic, heady, and dense.…a rapturous swell of melody and thought.”
—Rain Taxi
"One feels Donne here…in the metaphysical probings, the fantastic image combinations, the insistent tone. One also feels the pierce, swing, and clutch of Hopkins, the dashed step of Dickinson, and the mystic awe of Charles Wright, yet the reader’s own breath is perhaps the most centrally invoked echo. Reading North True South Bright is an experience of reciprocity; it reminds us of the elegant exchanges of creativity in which everything participates."
—Rain Taxi
"For some poets, language is a riddle that, if one could answer truly, would yield insights to pierce the material world and rupture such dualities as subject-object, past-present, visual-verbal. These poets—Thomas Traherne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Susan Howe, Michael Palmer come to mind—variously resist our trust in detached description to evoke World as Word. Dan Beachy-Quick belongs to this tradition. Elaborating on such ancient forms as charms, invocations, rounds, his stunning debut collection wrestles with doubt's scrutiny to find an original celebratory gnosis, the 'Department of Attention Undivided.' In North True South Bright, the eye opens to sing, the mouth opens to see."
— Ann Lauterbach
"Dan Beachy-Quick has made a book which revolves around, if it does not resolve, the problem of how close we can get to this, the lived-in world. In this he is, perhaps accidentally but still excitingly, heir to the genius of Hopkins, by way of the special geographic and historical distancing of the American experience: 'Leaf blooms the leaf. A Native Word / For the tortoise egg buried in the beach / Our English tongue cannot open." What Beachy-Quick does name is the pleasure, the sometimes painful pleasure, of taking the world as it is, and loving it.'
—Bin Ramke
about the author
Dan Beachy-Quick received his MFA at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has two books out: North True South Bright (Alice James Books) and Spell (Ahsahta). His essays and criticism appear in the Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Southern Review, Interim, Jacket and elsewhwere. His poems appear widely.
Author photo by Sergio Vucci
