Dan Gerber and the Lyric

Wouldn't you know it. I found an American lyricist — a damn good one. He's got that Spanish soul. That old, dusty, bloody soul. He's got Machado, Lorca, and Jiménez all rolled up in him. And when he does the lyric or the meditative it speaks to the universe and to us. He's got what I was looking for, and I found it in A Primer on Parallel Lives (Copper Canyon, 2007 (just released)). My first impression: he's what I mean by the vertical poet — able to traverse lyric and narrative while speaking to us and the cosmos.

Here's a sample:

Six Miles Up

The shadow of a hand brushes over the mountains,
as if smoothing rumpled sheets.
And now I see that the mountains are clouds.

In my dreams,
I search for what I won't remember in the morning,
but I do remember the searching.

In Venice I ate cuttlefish, steamed
in its own black ink,
and now it's coming out of my fingers.

Across the aisle in a window seat,
a man like me is
reading a book in which words appear,
tracing an indelible line
through the invisible sky
while the pilot's skill keeps us flying.