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David Dodd Lee, Downsides of Fish Culture

(New Issues Press, 1997)

reviewed by Erin Marks

David Dodd Lee’s Downsides of Fish Culture is a collection of poetry that seems to live and breath off the page, reaching out to expose itself to unsuspecting readers. Dodd’s modern, free-formed verse speaks of the everlasting constants in life: death, violence, nature, and love in an honest and often times fierce fashion. He brings terror to the page, even, as the reader must face the harsh realities that make life the brutal experience that it is. One such terrifying yet wonderfully crafted image is created in “Watching Some of Them Live,” which ironically traces the presence of death in multiple forms. In the poem, Dodd writes of a woman who “had disemboweled herself merely by standing up/ She and another nurse had to pick up the entrails and stuff/ them/ back into the body/ She died, of course, about two days later”. Dodd holds nothing back from us, especially not the gruesome details and disturbing images that are, in fact, part of the reality of life. He writes with a blatant honesty, which can only be respected and revered for its fearlessness.
      Much of Dodd’s poetry in the collection reflects upon his own life, which has roots in Muskegon, Michigan, where he grew up. We are given bits and pieces of his memory as in the poem “1981” in which he writes “Muskegon mired itself down deep, butted up against the dunes/ and I had been twenty forever”. Dodd’s Michigan background makes his work especially intriguing to fellow Michigan residents, as they too can have an even more close connection with his words and the images he tries to convey. Such references are often made to Michigan’s natural beauties such as rivers, dunes, and the Great Lakes. By writing of the natural world around him, Dodd creates a link between him and the Michigan reader that can only be truly experienced and appreciated amongst them.
      Most often times than not, the poetry in Downsides of Fish Culture conveys the world as a place thriving with incidents and images of confusion, terror, and beauty—all forces of nature that exist, alone, then suddenly come crashing together to create the world as we know it. As he walks amongst “smoldering cardboard walls and pop-up trees,” Dodd takes us along on a journey through the mystery of nature, “that blown nothing,” and life itself “traveling speeding through the green, flickering light/ arriving, and having already arrived.” We begin to see the world through new, unobstructed eyes, as we must confront both death in life, and beauty in ugliness. Dodd shows us that in the most unlikely places and forms, there is; in fact, hope, especially in the extremely brutal corners of life. As “Watching Some of Them Live” is concluded, he sends possibly the most profound message in the entire collection: “three people have survived whatever complications/ they were made to face, and for a few brief moments they/ believe—/ standing on now what must seem like the end of the earth—/ they could live through anything.”

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Erin Marks is a junior English major at Grand Valley State University. Born in the Detroit area, she enjoys reading and writing poetry as well as nonfiction.