Dobby Gibson

Dobby Gibson Poems

Dobby Gibson Biography

Dobby Gibson (born 1970) is an American poet. His first book of poetry, Polar, (Alice James Books, 2004) won the 2004 Beatrice Hawley Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Minnesota Book Award. He is also the author of a second collection of poetry, Skirmish (Graywolf Press, 2009). A third collection, "It Becomes You" (Graywolf Press) is forthcoming in January 2013. Gibson's poetry has appeared in many publications: Ploughshares, Fence, Iowa Review, New England Review, Conduit, among others. He is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the McKnight Foundation. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he earned a B.A. from Connecticut College in 1993 and an M.F.A. from Indiana University in 1997. He currently lives in Minneapolis.)

The Best Poem Of Dobby Gibson

The World as Seen Through a Glass of Ice Water

There are a billion reasons to look down
into a casket, but just one way to lie in it dead,
which proves there isn't anything
you can think of that isn't here for the living,
who are each alive for a short time
in a very different way.
After she moves out, one tears up grass blades
to watch which way the wind blows.
Just over there, another buried his favorite dog
and now look at that tree!
Would you like to model for me?
says the lousy painter
to every woman who walks within earshot.
Feeling a little dead?
Maybe you spend a weekend
faking a French accent,
maybe you buy an even more expensive stereo
and build a separate and self-sufficient world
inside the garage.
Something happens something happens something happens.
Repetition repetition repetition.
The saddest painting I ever saw
was on the carpet in my friend's hallway
where he tripped one night
carrying a gallon of red.
This was just before the divorce.
Just after he told me he was trapped
inside some idea of himself,
one he swore bore no relation
to what the rest of us had been seeing.
"Nice shirt" has always meant too many things.

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