Well, I DID want to tell you why Dugan's one of my six most-favorite poets. It's because of his VOICE. His TONE-of-talking. Theme-wise, he navigates well the socio-political chaos and absurdity of the parlous present, but heck how CHATTILY, how CONVERSATIONALLY, he talks about it! LOQUACIOUSLY rattling on in that inimitable street-corner buttonholing TONE of his, wry, wacky, discouraged-but-upbeat, all in arm-gesturing and eyebrow-raising SPEECH-STYLE.

But no....you see that I can't tell or INFORM you why Dugan's voice appeals-can I, now. So I better ILLUSTRATE his "urban-yawpy" tone unique as his fingerprint, with selected snippets quoted directly. So enough of praising secondhand, here are some selected SOUND-BITES from Dugan himself. They do present, I feel, what I'd call his stamp-of-style, namely "DICTY" (as in Take Dictation of the GENIALLY-GARRULOUS speech as she is spoken....)

(Heck, if you went no further than the poems' TITLES, they themselves carry Dugan's colloquial spritziness. Such as "What Happened? What Do You Expect?" And, "Transcribed Conversation in Praise of Cows." And, "Winter's Onset from an Alienated Point of View." But check out choice sound-bites such as the following:)

(1) HISTORY & SOCIETY. Dugan is on the lively move:

"Whatever was living is dead and a lot of what was dead has begun to move around, so who knows what the plan for a good state is: they all go out on the roads!"

"He dreamed America up, and I played Indian against his cowboy lies because: tradition is for the rich to love, the clerks to ape, the poor to suffer, so I wander to take the air, regards, and joys...."

"Some barbarian raped some peasant woman who produced a child who ultimately produced you and me, so there is this family continuity, so don't cry, it's obvious, look around!...."

"She's grateful, but goes out with a bruiser. Blood passions arise and die in lawyers' smiles, a few children suffer for life, and that's all...."

(2) DAILY EXUBERANCE. Dugan has got it, and he shares it:

"Then it was Saturday, Saturday, Saturday! Love must be the reason for the week! We went shopping! I saw clouds! The children explained everything! I could talk about the main thing!"....

"After long-haired women have unwired their pencil-pierced buns, it's an event with pennants when the Great Falls of emotion say that beauty is in residence, grand in her hotel of flesh,...."

(3) SEASONAL SPRIGHTLINESSES. Dugan is attuned to weather--outer, and "inner":

"The wind came in for several thousand miles all night and changed the close lie of your hair this morning....No wonder your laugh rings like a chisel as it cuts your children's new names in the tombstone of thin air."

"In fall and whiskey weather when the eye clears with the air and blood comes up to surface for one last time....All appetites revive and love is possible again in clarity without the sweats of heat;...."

"The first cold front came in whining like a carpenter's plane and curled the warm air up the sky: winter is for busy work, summer for construction...."

"The first cold front came through Indian Summer and blew the autumn foliage show away along with the drunks, addicts, crooks, and weaker regulars from Washington Square Park....If he drank another bottle of that stuff oh he'd be warm enough for a while in the southern California of its first gold rush...."

(4) The Times are TRICKY, but TALK TRUE about them anyhow. Dugan faces up:

"After this oracle there will be no more oracles. The precinct is hereby desanctified. You wanted it, you have it. From now on everything I say will be a lie for cash. Now, for the last time, here's the truth:...."

(Here's one complete brief poem, entitled "Passing Through The Banford Tolls") "Proceeding sidewise by inattention I arrive unknowingly at an unsought destination and pass it by wondering: what next?"

(Oh but Dugan walks-and-talks less severely, more sanguine, than that there. As in the following, which perhaps capstones his judicious exuberance of voice direct:) "Oh I don't know what happened but I wish I did because I did it, right? Wrong. Is everything all right? Yes. No. Rest in the mystery. Begin a new day."

You ever ride on such a custom-styled onrush of brash-but bright LOQUACITY as Dugan's Dictations? In the talkfest of poets, an utterly distinctive note.....

This book of poetry is amazing. It is modern, ironic, hyperrational, and mostly free verse. It doesn't stint on the intellect, but doesn't come off as arrogant. It is everything I love in postmodern American poetry. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it both aloud and to myself. Alan Dugan will be remembered.

I read a lot of poetry. Somehow I had completely missed Alan Dugan. Then, thankfully, the National Book Awards judges picked Poems 7 for the 2001 award. It's an extraordinary book; Dugan is an extraordinary poet. He should have won the Pulitzer, too, but he may just be too left-wing and energetic and raucous and funny for the Pulitzer. He's also dead serious, and makes a whole lot of other poets writing today look like dilettantes, dandies, stuffed shirts, lightweights and poseurs. These are mostly short, narrative, clear, yet also distinctly, and importantly, strange poems. They're working-class, brainy, rebellious, delightful. Buy this book!

Forget the dismal frightened little p-c conformists whose fears have annihilated their sensibilities & whose greatest thrill in life is trashing brilliant iconoclastic talent. This is first rate stuff, cerebral & visceral & on target at all times. This is Poetry!

Alan Dugan, Poems 4 (Little, Brown, 1974)

"Here we go." I thought. "Dugan. He won the Pulitzer. This gotta be some good, right?" Well, kinda right. Dugan is a mix of concrete and language, without ever actually getting into the typological gymnastics of either; dada without slipping into nonsense. When he's firing on all cylinders, he's witty, surprising, germane; when he misses, he misses wide.

Proceeding sidewise by inattention I arrive
unknowingly at an unsought destination
and pass it by wondering: what next?

That complete poem ("Passing Through the Banford Tolls") is simply delicious. Dugan makes getting lost into an art form, but allows it little enough space that it's not a big deal. A good number of poets past and present could take a tip about the latter half of that statement. A book full of poems like this would have made it into the year's top 15 without a problem; as it stands, there's enough brilliance here that I'm going to be looking for Dugan's other three books published before this one (bet you can guess their titles) to see if there's one that's all pearls and no swine. ** 1/2