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No secrets in Things I've Never Told Anyone
By Erik Opsal
Library Communications
Posted 10/8/2007
MADISON, Wis. – Like Woody Allen, CX Dillhunt, author of the latest Parallel Press chapbook, is in constant conversation with himself. In Things I've Never Told Anyone, Dillhunt's thoughts often ramble in quirky directions, ultimately arriving at curious insights.
In a collection of 21 poems, Dillhunt writes mostly in long paragraphs using traditional, though often fragmented sentences to create prose ranging from finding one's true self to his own wandering thoughts.
In "I’ve Never Told Anyone," Dillhunt explains the feeling and frustration associated with losing yourself when he writes, "Once, last fall, I was at a supper and I realized I wasn't there, just for a split second and I don't think anyone noticed, but eventually they will and either you explain or you don't. You just stop trying. You don't worry about arriving home with yourself anymore."
Dillhunt continues in this conversational style, offering his own musings from which readers draw their own conclusions. This style shines in "What I Meant to Say," which shows Dillhunt's thoughts taking on unique shapes. He writes, "I'm only a block from home and I put on my brakes just in time as the cars speed by but my thoughts keep on going. Go on without me. Thinking."
Born in Green Bay, Dillhunt grew up with his five sisters and six brothers in a house near the Fox River. He is the co-editor of Wisconsin Poets' Calendar: 2006 and also co-author with his son, Drew, of the chapbook Double Six.
Dillhunt's haiku are a regular in the international journal Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem, where many of his prairie and travel haiku, coming from his experiences in numerous countries including Mexico, the Czech Republic, Costa Rica and China, are published. He also volunteers as a tutor and poet in the Madison Public Schools and teaches writing at Elderhostel.
The Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Things I’ve Never Told Anyone is its 52nd chapbook. For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection from "I Want to Be Spring, Spring Wants to Be Me ":
I want to be spring, to rise, flower and bloom, but spring won't let
me. Spring wants to be me, wants to wander and walk around, to
shout and move about talking all about herself, but I won't let her.
Without you, says spring, without you, I say. We stand still for
awhile. Go nowhere. We wonder who should speak next. Should
we go together or part ways. There is no one here to tell us what to
do. As we wait, a quiet crow flies by, the hill slopes, the cloud hangs
in the sky, a tree stands, and the ice out on the lake is thinner. We
are out of words, out of sorts. Spring, I say. Today, says spring.
I couldn't ask for more, I say. I am asking for more, she says. I
couldn't ask for more. I am needing more. More time to be with
you. I was afraid of this. This was afraid of me. It has happened,
I say. Now, I will never die. And I have never been more on fire.
