from is a rose press

War Surrounds Us, by Michael Dickel

Paperback ISBN 978-0-9896245-2-7
(Pocket size, 5″ X 7″)
$10.00 + $1.50 shipping & handling

Michael Dickel’s third book of poetry collects poems he wrote during the Israel-Hamas conflict of summer, 2014. The poems evoke a resistance to the violence all around, and make acute observations of its effects on family and daily life—from the provocations before, through the disruptions of rockets falling on Jerusalem and devastating loss of human life during attacks on Gaza, and past the line of failed cease fires to an uneasy truce. The closely observed incongruence of daily life while war rages comes through as the poet witnesses his young son’s responses and considers the question of the future we want versus the one that is coming.

Michael Dickel’s new book is an explosive tour de force. From Breaking News to all that shivers beneath the surface, it takes us on a visceral ride as the rockets are falling through screaming surfaces, tunnels cease fires and death tolls; rocketing all night through missiles, mortars, sensors, sirens, shadows and eclipses, shelters and hope. As night slopes through shivers of light, War Surrounds Us will rocket your world with an escalation of unprecedented gravity.
—Adeena Karasick, author of This Poem (Talonbooks, 2012) and The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (NeoPoiesis Press, 2014)

Michael Dickel

Michael Dickel has two previous books of poetry: The World Behind It, Chaos…(2009) and Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour (2012). He was managing editor for arc-23 (2014) and co-editor of Voices Israel 2010: Poetry from Israel and Abroad (Vol. 36). His poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in print and online journals since 1987. His poetry has been translated into Italian, Romanian, Tamil, and Hebrew. He currently is the Chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English and teaches at HaKibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts in Tel Aviv.