Spell

Dan Beachy-Quick

Dan Beachy-Quick confirms the promise of his first book and greatly extends the range and scope of his writing with this brilliant fantasia on a theme by Herman Melville. This multi-layered poetic work engages with Melville's text as well as with myth and with the ideas of spiritual quest, the role of the writer, and the nature of language. Rewarding multiple readings and affording continual discoveries, Spell is a major work for the new century by an assured and gifted poet.

“Taking a powerful, lyrical sweep through one of the country's most charged and versatile symbols, Dan Beachy-Quick opens Moby-Dick into yet more meanings and directions in this book-length reverie, perfectly sustained by his intricate sound play and impeccable phrasing. Intelligent, compassionate, exquisite, Beachy-Quick’s is a unique voice in contemporary poetry.” —Cole Swensen

Dan Beachy-Quick teaches in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His first book, North True, South Bright, was published in 2003.

A sample poem from the book

Moby Dick

A prophet is a man with a river-bed

For a face and no water.

Reeds bend in wind to speak, and he tells them:

No. Breathe dust. He is dust speaking

To dust. A prophet does not speak

for himself. Then Whom? A river

Empty bleeds into an ocean full. Go to ocean.

Put my hand beneath water, and my hand

Is held by what it cannot hold, belongs

To the wave's cresting arm, to the wrist

Whose pulse ripples back from shore:

I learn so to make myself not my own.

The White Whale below water holds his breath—

He is breath by water held. As I am dust

Stitched into skin, a whale is water thickened

Into skin, a depth unknown. A god

Erases himself to make himself known. At fathoms

Whale, at fathoms, I'm the bent reed beside you

Asking you . . . as men on ocean do . . . asking you

Why fill your lungs at latitudes no man knows?

Why must I next to you be but a speaking mote?

Not true. I'm a river-bed. I've tried

To imagine in you a silt-layer of words you

Will not speak. Will you, Dumb God?

No river flows to you to answer for you

Your “No.”