Prime Directive

by Bryan D. Dietrich

Bryan D. Dietrich's new book is about Star Trek. It's about tenyear-aids and Talos IV, Kirk and Klingons, captains and colonels. It's about a suddenly single Air Force father who introduces his son to a TV show, one that brings them both together, offers them both new life if not new civilization, preparing them both to go where neither has gone before. Prime Directive is a book about a man with Alzheimer's who doesn't have long before beaming out of this world, but it's also about his son, father himself now, learning how to take the helm once his captain, his Colonel. is gone.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bryan Dietrich’s book length poem, Prime Directive is probably the most unique title (fiction, non-fiction, pulp, poetry, you name it) I’ve read all year. The book takes its title from the television series, Star Trek. It’s a deeply personal book, where memory, myth, identity, Alzheimer’s, comic books, Captain Kirk (and William Shatner!), father and son, all unite in a wonderful – and heartbreaking memorial to the author’s father, as well as being a love note to the author’s own son. There’s an autumnal wisdom to this book that reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. That’s very high praise from me. It also guarantees that I will be reading Prime Directive again. I have a ten year old boy with whom I want to share, to pass on, the Wonder.

[Michael Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bryan Dietrich's Prime Directive is a moving elegy is the truest sense. The book length poem is about mourning, not only of a father, but a father's mind, and of a world that crumbles around one during loss. Wrapped with the myth of Star Trek, this book provides a fascinating journey. Dietrich covers, of course, life and death, but also deftly handles the ideas and ideals one wrestles with when one encounters one's own mortality.

Full disclosure: Bryan is a friend of mine from graduate school. But I can easily say that had I never known him and I came across Prime Directive, I would still think of the poem as a modern In Memoriam.

Full review at Monk Notes: http://mnmwrite.blogspot.com/2012/03/...

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won't say much, but it was good...really good.