W o r k s & D a y s
Winner, 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2010 Bob Bush Memorial First Book Award
Winner, 2010 Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize
Released in September, 2010, Works & Days, has garnered unusual critical attention for a first book. Known for his book reviews and op-ed pieces as well as for his scholarly work in the areas of American Indian studies and visual and popular culture, Dean Rader has produced a debut collection that is an ambitious and funny series of poems that judge Claudia Keelan has described as "a primer for MFA programs everywhere."
Divided into three sections--"Works," "&," and "Days"--Rader's poems map the intersecting roads of the personal and the cultural. The first section, "Works," contains poems about works that shape how the author sees the world, like the poetry of Wallace Stevens, popular music, the art of Robert Motherwell, the mysteries of Havana, Hesiod's ruminations on duty and the divine, and Frog and Toad. "&" is a more playful experimental section that connects the themes of "Works" (poems about Michael Jackson, pumpkins, Dorothea Lange, and Frog and Toad) with the autobiographical final section. "Days" begins with the poet's 30th birthday and marks each subsequent birthday until his 41st, which loops back to the path of "Works" with a final closing poem inspired by the Estonian composer Arvo Part (and, of course, Frog and Toad).
+ Works & Days wins the Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize +
+ Works & Days named a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial First Book Prize +
+ Go here to read sample reviews of Works & Days +
M O R E A D V A N C E D P R A I S E F O R W O R K S & D A Y S
Dean Rader reads his past, reads the landscape of his native land, especially Oklahoma, through the lens of previous poets, such as Hesiod, his first tutelary guide, who lead him to a vibrant, innovative, and fresh new poetry, who point the way to his own formal making, his poignant American version of life and labor, Works & Days.
--Edward Hirsch
The sky is big in Oklahoma, but, of course, it extends further than one imagines. Thus Dean Rader’s mind in Works & Days, which begins in Rader’s native Oklahoma and moves ever onward and backward and outward in a trekking meditation on where we are (moving forward), what we are (the traveler but also the logos), what we’ve been, where we’re headed. Are we Wallace Stevens in the grave dissipating into the world’s system? Or are we Whitman admiring the long hair of graves? Are we the dust bowl farmer? Or Hesiod logging the worker’s long journey toward death? Are we the Native shaman or the old couple on the airplane? Are we Frog or are we Toad? Dallas or Delhi? The corrido or the poem of experimental form. Yes. And yes. They all and more are here, and so we become; and “all transformation is addition”.
--Brian Clements
“Don’t just sing; split us open” is the two-headed imperative in Rader’s meticulously crafted, dazzling book that elates while it simultaneously interrogates and shivs us. Caroming between labor, lineage, salutation and self-examination, Works & Days invites us to watch TV on Sunday with Hesiod as host; God, Toad, Frog as the guests who won’t leave; and O’Hara, Stevens, Neruda and Motherwell as visitors dropping by for a beer and Sudoku. Although Rader’s poems vibrate with high-voltage wit, they are equally occupied with “trespass, skin-spark, and elegy” as they lock themselves under the tongue so we may always know their necessary and sustaining song.
--Simone Muench
Dean Rader’s engaging alter-egos take the sting out of the divided self. The reader is constantly—pleasurably—at risk, compelled to think about/laugh at the human condition, as is the woman next to the narrator in seat 7D, “Because / the next line is this: / She will die before I do…” (this, in the collection’s opening poem!). But we are in such good hands – and the best party is always in the lifeboat.
--Patty Seyburn
“There is no anticipation like waiting for the poem you ordered to arrive,” Dean Rader writes. Well, the poems we ordered have arrived. Works & Days is a shipment of poetic pleasure, a care package to get readers through a dark, unpoetical time. Playful, probing, frequently philosophical (and sometimes mock-philosophical, and sometimes both), these entertaining and liberating poems know their tradition and engage with it without being confined by it.
--Troy Jollimore
Divided into three sections--"Works," "&," and "Days"--Rader's poems map the intersecting roads of the personal and the cultural. The first section, "Works," contains poems about works that shape how the author sees the world, like the poetry of Wallace Stevens, popular music, the art of Robert Motherwell, the mysteries of Havana, Hesiod's ruminations on duty and the divine, and Frog and Toad. "&" is a more playful experimental section that connects the themes of "Works" (poems about Michael Jackson, pumpkins, Dorothea Lange, and Frog and Toad) with the autobiographical final section. "Days" begins with the poet's 30th birthday and marks each subsequent birthday until his 41st, which loops back to the path of "Works" with a final closing poem inspired by the Estonian composer Arvo Part (and, of course, Frog and Toad).
+ Works & Days wins the Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize +
+ Works & Days named a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial First Book Prize +
+ Go here to read sample reviews of Works & Days +
M O R E A D V A N C E D P R A I S E F O R W O R K S & D A Y S
Dean Rader reads his past, reads the landscape of his native land, especially Oklahoma, through the lens of previous poets, such as Hesiod, his first tutelary guide, who lead him to a vibrant, innovative, and fresh new poetry, who point the way to his own formal making, his poignant American version of life and labor, Works & Days.
--Edward Hirsch
The sky is big in Oklahoma, but, of course, it extends further than one imagines. Thus Dean Rader’s mind in Works & Days, which begins in Rader’s native Oklahoma and moves ever onward and backward and outward in a trekking meditation on where we are (moving forward), what we are (the traveler but also the logos), what we’ve been, where we’re headed. Are we Wallace Stevens in the grave dissipating into the world’s system? Or are we Whitman admiring the long hair of graves? Are we the dust bowl farmer? Or Hesiod logging the worker’s long journey toward death? Are we the Native shaman or the old couple on the airplane? Are we Frog or are we Toad? Dallas or Delhi? The corrido or the poem of experimental form. Yes. And yes. They all and more are here, and so we become; and “all transformation is addition”.
--Brian Clements
“Don’t just sing; split us open” is the two-headed imperative in Rader’s meticulously crafted, dazzling book that elates while it simultaneously interrogates and shivs us. Caroming between labor, lineage, salutation and self-examination, Works & Days invites us to watch TV on Sunday with Hesiod as host; God, Toad, Frog as the guests who won’t leave; and O’Hara, Stevens, Neruda and Motherwell as visitors dropping by for a beer and Sudoku. Although Rader’s poems vibrate with high-voltage wit, they are equally occupied with “trespass, skin-spark, and elegy” as they lock themselves under the tongue so we may always know their necessary and sustaining song.
--Simone Muench
Dean Rader’s engaging alter-egos take the sting out of the divided self. The reader is constantly—pleasurably—at risk, compelled to think about/laugh at the human condition, as is the woman next to the narrator in seat 7D, “Because / the next line is this: / She will die before I do…” (this, in the collection’s opening poem!). But we are in such good hands – and the best party is always in the lifeboat.
--Patty Seyburn
“There is no anticipation like waiting for the poem you ordered to arrive,” Dean Rader writes. Well, the poems we ordered have arrived. Works & Days is a shipment of poetic pleasure, a care package to get readers through a dark, unpoetical time. Playful, probing, frequently philosophical (and sometimes mock-philosophical, and sometimes both), these entertaining and liberating poems know their tradition and engage with it without being confined by it.
--Troy Jollimore
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