If One of Us Should Fall

by Nicole Terez Dutton

“Nicole Terez Dutton’s fierce and formidable debut throbs with restless beauty and a lyrical undercurrent that is both empowered and unpredictable. Every poem is unsettling in that delicious way that changes and challenges the reader. There is nothing here that does not hurtle forward.”

—Patricia Smith

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Ben Houge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought this was really fantastic, some experiences close to my own (music gigs, "the filth of Boston Harbor") and some that are not (watching someone pulled from a car and flung across a hood "like laundry"), but all rendered bracing, fresh, and urgent, "born of a pure velocity." "Let the sun bleach the bones of words you no longer need."

The latest entry in the changing table poetry series. Unfortunately, as my little one gets bigger, attention in poetry seems to be flagging somewhat, but I shall persevere, and hopefully we'll be done with the changing table before too much longer anyway...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a surrealist dreamy musical tour/travelog and love story all in one.
It breaks the language and makes it have meaning beyond what it means.
Poetry always speaks beyond what it says and strokes those strings in the soul even when the mind can’t hear the message. For example from “You and I Here: “Gesture is not cathedral. Cathedral is the moment / the body flies beyond its dirty brogans. It is bus fare / and sky beyond all wingspan, certain details / of importance, for example, you here and I here— /the great, naked kingdom of that.”
I know it is older (2012), but this was one of my favorite poetry collections I encountered in the last year.

[Kylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this a while ago and I really liked it a lot. It conjures images of old things and new and being hurt and being in the south and being in cities. I saw this poet perform poems from this book at the Dodge Poetry Festival and bought the book there that day. I am really glad I did. I am also sad.

[Jessica]

“Plague of little post-prairie prairie houses. Compulsory Carolina exodus parade from mangrove to dustbowl...The whitewater river running through it. Klan hand-blasted visage of four dead presidents in the mountains of the promised land.”

—from poem “Westward, Expanded Definition”

[Chaneli · Rating 4 out of 5]

<3
can't wait to read this again years later and discover something new

[Rachel Atakpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal, will be rereading this many times over.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection. A lot of references to music and life on the road (in a band, for example).

Favorites:
"The Killing Wait for a Telephone Hello"
"Tourists #2"
"On Holiday" - at the beach with friends

Silence and hard Utah light rain down on us like hammers.
- "Holding Us, This Away"

A woman with whom he would never have conversation, a woman, therefore, perfect, and permanently on her way elsewhere
- "Desolate"

You are 42 years old. You will always be so. Will always be the last sigh before sidewalks empty, the familiar emptiness of airports, a train nosing away. You are well missed.
- "Almost Note #2"

He loaded the film the way he does everything: fast, confident, almost right.
- "36 Unexposed Frames"

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Every Answer is Yes" was by far my favorite poem in this collection.

[Frank Vasquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully alive, evocative, and soaring.