Black Ice, Poems by David Sullivan

The haunting portrait of a vital man's descent into dementia is the driving force of this powerful collection by David Sullivan.

Sample Poems by David Sullivan

"David Allen Sullivan’s gripping, lyric account of his father’s death by dementia sticks. Uttered often in exhale-inhale tercets, Black Ice warms. These poems will help many readers through life’s final, painful passage. Black Ice heals." --Al Young

"Dementia takes much away—eventually, almost everything— but these poems make clear that while it profoundly changes relationships, dementia does not diminish the powerful ties that existed before the illness. David Allen Sullivan’s words beautifully illustrate the necessity to see not only what has been taken away, but also, and more importantly, to observe and honor all that remains, despite the affliction."-- Robert B. Santulli

"David Allen Sullivan has given us the ultimate father and son book through brilliantly detailed short narrative poems. Domestic tragedy is what most lives encompass. If not, we have not lived. In this moving document, we hold the struggling proud victim in our arms until the black end. A great, necessary read; there’s nothing so good as Black Ice." --Willis Barnstone

Anyone who has lived through the experience of a parent’s death will find much that is achingly familiar in Sullivan’s Black Ice. At one point he questions the nature of the gods: 'What if gods are blessed with attentiveness?...never / cease their open-mouthed astonished nodding.' If true, then Sullivan joins them!" --Ellen Bass

"With courage, precision, and compassion, but also with spots of blessed lyric lightness, the poems in Black Ice trace a downward path step by careful loving step."-- Rachel Hadas

David Allen Sullivan was born in Champaign Urbana, Illinois, where his father was earning a doctorate. After a year in Palo Alto, David spent most of his childhood in Vermont, while his father taught Political Science at nearby Dartmouth College, conducted research on politicians' facial gestures, and took the family on a one-year sabbatical in Vienna. David attended the University of Chicago, and went on to study with James McMichael at the University of California, Irvine, where he earned his PhD. His first book was Strong-Armed Angels, and three of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced series of poems about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, followed. With Abbas Kadim he co-translated the selected poems of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, which was published as Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet. David teaches at Cabrillo Community College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Amina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and taught in Xi'an, China for one year: yesdasullivan.tumblr.com. His poems and books can be found at http://davidallensullivan.weebly.com/index.html.

ISBN: 978-1625491541, 108 pages

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