<DIV><p>"Hilarity transfiguring all that dread, manic overflow of powerful feeling, zero at the bone?<I>Flies</I> renders its desolation with singular invention and focus and figuration: the making of these poems makes them exhilarating."?James Laughlin Award citation</p><p>"Reading Michael [Dickman] is like stepping out of an overheated apartment building to be met, unexpectedly, by an exhilaratingly chill gust of wind."?<I>The New Yorker</I></p><p>"These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings."?<I>The Believer</I></p><p>Winner of the James Laughlin Award for the best second book by an American poet, <I>Flies</I> presents an uncompromising vision of joy and devastating loss through a strict economy of language and an exuberant surrealism. Michael Dickman's poems bring us back to the wonder and violence of childhood, and the desire to connect with a power greater than ourselves.</p><p><I>What you want to remember<BR>of the earth<BR>and what you end up<BR>remembering<BR>are often two<BR>different things</I></p><p><B>Michael Dickman</B> was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, <I>The End of the West</I>, appeared in 2009 and became the best-selling debut in the history of Copper Canyon Press. His poems appear frequently in <I>The New Yorker</I>, and he teaches poetry at Princeton University.</p></DIV>