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Dementia, My Darling Paperback – April 6, 2016
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length104 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRed Hen Press
- Publication dateApril 6, 2016
- Dimensions6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101597097187
- ISBN-13978-1597097185
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Constantine’s most ambitious, most courageous, and most fully realized collection yet."
―James Cushing, The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Dementia, My Darling is a powerful book yet it is written with empathy and respect. It shows us a different way to extract meaning when it is not readily perceived. Like Dante, the poet asks you to accompany him on this exploration of an unfamiliar terrain. Like Dante, a reader passes through this world and receives a different perspective of the landscape we thought we knew. Such is the power of Brendan Constantine's art."
―Quill & Parchment
Review
“Brendan Constantine’s Dementia, My Darling is a mediation on memory. Poems address the difficulty of the death of memory and how does a survivor deal with recollections of a father’s lie, a collective lie about snow, school desk carvings, sleep talking, moths, and hospital ceilings. This collection examines consciousness, connotations, and relationships. Constantine is a master poet illuminating the ordinary and extraordinary with his distinct voice holding humor and heart equally.”
―Steven Reigns, author of Inheritance
“Dementia, My Darling is a suite of acute, beautiful poems about coming apart, slippage, love, emptying out, transformation, and carrying on. Every absurdly human moment in them is handled with smarts and just the right mix of inventiveness and delicacy. Each poem leaves its mark on the reader. Tender and humane and unsparing, the poems never surrender to despair. They all have a kind of brightness. Constantine renders the creeping surrealism of dementia from many angles, with the awe that is its due. Gaps, anagrams, collage and montage are employed to convey the myriad ways we fragment, multiply, dissolve. A fly is described as ‘an ink blot with wings / a blood spot / that sings a thin hymn.’ (!!) This book is a lyrical wrestling match with mortality.”
―Amy Gerstler, author of Dearest Creature
“I love this collection. I’m dazzled by its spectacular acts of imagination, the places it invents, the ways it invents of describing those places. Its most wondrous feat, though, is the heart it allows to beat behinds its intelligence, the person that peers from its intricate, sharp, brilliant latticework: so much structure, so much sharpness, and that softness, too. Bravo.”
―Mandy Kahn, author Math, Heaven, Time
"Brendan Constantine’s enormous talent and style are instantly recognisable in his latest poetry collection. His ability to play with words and ideas are, to me, unrivalled and his work is right at the top of my list of living poets."
―Chrissie Morris Brady
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Red Hen Press; 1st edition (April 6, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 104 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1597097187
- ISBN-13 : 978-1597097185
- Item Weight : 6.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,402,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,667 in American Poetry (Books)
- #53,697 in Mental Health (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many of the nation’s standards, including Poetry, Tin House, Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Poem-a-Day. His most recent collections are ‘Dementia, My Darling’ (2016) from Red Hen Press and ‘Bouncy Bounce’ (2018) a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He has received support and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A popular performer, Brendan has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on NPR’s All Things Considered, TED ED, numerous podcasts, and YouTube. Brendan currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing poetry workshops for people with Aphasia.
Customer reviews
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2016At first, these poems might just appear clever, funny or moving--then they chase you down the street. These poems make you wish you were in love so you could have your heart broken and you could turn to them for their wild comfort. Constantine sees what most of us miss, and he delivers it dressed in feathers and rain. These poems do the job that poems were meant to do--they are reckless and gentle, bursting their own seams. Dementia, moths, umbrellas--they leave nothing out. Listen: "Bats come, bats whose eyes are useless, who know the night is only crossed by screaming at it, loud as a tisk, a turn of keys." And this: "And though we know there will always be crying to do, just as there's always that song, always a leaf somewhere in the car, this may be the only sweetness left, to have a few griefs we cherish against the others, which are many." This is a book to buy for someone who claims s/he doesn't like poetry. Then just watch.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2017Hi. These are poems. But really they are poems that tell you they're poems and beat you over the head with the fact that they're poems.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2016Brendan Constantine's enormous talent and style are instantly recognisable in his latest poetry collection. His ability to play with words and ideas are, to me, unrivalled and his work is right at the top of my list of living poets.
I wish it were possible to give this four and three quarters stars. Some of the poems about dementia I find a little harsh - 'Extract', ''Hearth Rob' 'InThe Ear of Our Lord' and 'Dementia, My Darling' are, in my opinion, cold and arbitary, as if God is distant from our suffering or completely unmoved. In my own experience of terrible disease and involvement with Alzheimer's, these depict something alien to me. I would have closed 'Extract' with 'No, he weeps.'
This said, Constantine touches the foibles and weaknesses of the human condition with humour and comradeship. He is mocking no one, just telling it how it is or can be at any given time. 'Don't you ever want to crush a little/someone? If you hit me/hard enough, could we both leave/the ground?'.
I have given around forty interpretations to the book's front cover. Any or none could be true, so it is the reader who must decide, as with the poetry, what the author intended. Once poetry is written it no longer belongs to the poet, but is a piece of art for others to enjoy.
Sometimes I think American poets have it easy as their syntax can be mixed around, as in 'and get busy yearning'. In English English not every reader would understand that. Living in the States for years has served me well.
It's a pity the publishers left a typo on the back cover because these poems are fantastic. I recommend you read it.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2022His love of language and imagination draws us into his insight and observations, both moving and funny. I'm eager to read his next book as well. A unique voice.