Tracing the Shape

From title to final line, Daniel Dissinger’s Tracing the Shape never permits us to forget that a poet must be proximal to the subject, and a reader must be in contact with the world. One may sketch from afar, but to trace, well, then one must touch. Language exists not only in our mind but in our mouth. It shows up on our plate. It lives in our hands. And sometimes, it might evens deign to join us in bed. Words—like humans, like nerves—are exquisite vehicles for pleasure and trauma. Dissinger’s poems bring the corporeality of this truth to the fore, read these poems out loud “with a flick of your wrist an edge of your tongue.” And feel. And believe. Believe these poems were meant to touch us with “a collage of fingers.”