Overview

Fred Dale's full-length poetry collection say, said, winner of the Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize is a lyrical exploration of a life through a blending of voices, pop culture, and language experimentation. Dale utilizes form by playing with punctuation and spacing to create something both uniform and surprising. A lifetime collapses into a sequence of stories told by a distinct and powerful speaker. This collection, in its interrogation of a life, is lush and imagistic, with themes of masculinity, family, love, the natural world and Catholic iconography. Saints populate the rugged American territory. The speaker searches for truth in the past and, in doing so, invites the reader into a contemplation built on genuine understanding. Dale's voice is meditative and searching. It is also, at times, comic. This book is populated with characters who speak through persona, and with natural metaphors, birds, fish, and bees, which splash and flit through every page. say, said does not focus on a single place, rather, it travels through America, particularly the South, like a road trip through memory and the interactions that make a life. say, said is for fans of lyric poetry, history, religion, myth, and for anyone wanting to understand what it means to cultivate a meaningful, loving life.

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9781949065404

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Reviews

""From the gates, Fred Dale declares that the brain will 'not tell you about the pain that's coming, ' and here in this ecological moment reminiscent of biblical times, where the dead are 'picked from us like burrs, ' and memories of the past form brackish water with the present, say, said, holds tender testimony to the remarkable treasures and wounds of the everyday. So fine is Dale's attunement and movement between the natural and human worlds: the insides of trees, 'a gentleman in an unwinding tux, ' a marsh hawk. I would have highlighted this whole book if only that wouldn't make it harder for me to reread or offer as a balm for others to read. This lyric wrests me from despair and reorients me toward the hard-won remarkability of wonder."" -Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Ghost Of and Root Fractures ""There's a man in full-lives first, writes second-in this book, these poems. His name is Fred Dale, the same as on the cover. Poetry, for him, is language in its finer tunings. His company is worth your keeping."" -William Slaughter, author of The Politics of My Heart and Untold Stories""Fred Dale's say, said is a terrific, nervy collection that parses distance between present and past as an opportunity for personal and formal revelation. These poems channel pathos that will resonate for any grown child who has paused to stare at the contents of their parent's grocery cart. Yet Dale's poems think expansively as well-poking fingers into the honeycomb of wonder, seeking 'a sheep's worth of sunlight, ' interrogating the soul as a dinosaur bone afloat in the sea of time-and restlessly flash their sly wit through intriguing titles and unexpected imagery. This is a marvel of a book."" -Sandra Beasley, author of Made to Explode

Author Information

Fred Dale is a husband to his wife, Valerie, a father to my good dog, Miss Trixie, and a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of North Florida. He holds an MFA from the University of Tampa, but mostly, he just grade papers. His work has appeared in Spillway, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill Journal, The Summerset Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. He has published two audio chapbooks: The Dream of Blue Moon Flowers and A Boy's Pirating Eye. Three of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press, 2022), and of two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and North American Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press.

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