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Today's poem is "January"
from Whittling a New Face in the Dark

Black Ocean

DJ Dolack was born in Livingston, New Jersey. He has written for Coldfront magazine and is the creator of the Tourist Trap, NYC video series. He teaches writing at Baruch College and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Books by DJ Dolack:

Other poems on the web by DJ Dolack:
Three poems
"Age and Her and I"
"For the Engagement"

DJ Dolack's Website.

About Whittling a New Face in the Dark:

"The poems in Dolack’s scrupulously crafted debut are determined to make something distinctive and even beautiful out of their speaker’s sense of apartness from this world and its fellow occupants. That they manage to do so despite persistent doubts that words can adequately bridge that apartness as they “fumble forth / a wet mess like a soft // but definite new fawn” makes Whittling a New Face in the Dark a complex, hard-won, and ultimately affirming achievement."
—Timothy Donnelly

"Dolack’s voice is steadfast, unflappable—he never apologizes for the conditions under which our affection must be born. What is the difference between love and admiration? These poems intimate: Be grateful you are alive, even though it is hard. Love your chaotic home. Whittling a New Face in the Dark 'is / what’s come of / people giving it to people straight.'"
—Paige Ackerson-Kiely

"DJ Dolack’s mouth is 'pistol-clean...oiled' so he can sing, 'the heart’s animal / heaves up terrific things and rests / against the ribcage like a fighter been already cut.' These exquisites will burrow so deep inside your chest they will steal your breath. Dolack writes beyond consequence. Yeah. He’s fearless."
—Peter Jay Shippy



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