DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS

Book excerpt: Dina von Zweck (1933-2012) was a prolific award-winning writer and painter who left a large trove of poetry. Lyrical, graceful, and eminently beguiling, their often dazzlingly concise, cryptic stanzas open larger realms and vistas. Each poem is a portal—like a window with Venetian blinds suddenly opening and revealing startling sights, then closing again. Dina’s immediately engaging poetry also serves as a portal for the rest of her voluminous literary legacy—five novels, several novella, twenty-three stage plays, numerous screen scripts, libretti, operas, and essays. Poets always have something unexpected up their sleeves, being able to perceive and materialize what otherwise eludes our imaginations, to make unlikely and confounding connections. Silly Putty non sequiturs and fractured metaphors juxtaposed with an illumined madcap juggle of tropes create whimsical fissions of logic that can suddenly make more sense than sense.