Keynote
Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Major Jackson
Book Title
Scratching the Ghost
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- "[Scratching the Ghost] draws equally on prayer and past injury, sacred attention, and unholy substance. . . . A thoughtful first book."—Publishers Weekly
Poem Excerpt
The stub of your left leg dangles
as I hold you up, my hands inserted under your arms
like a child. You are complaining about the itch,
the burn; scratch the ghost of your calf and heel.
—from “Scratching the Ghost”
as I hold you up, my hands inserted under your arms
like a child. You are complaining about the itch,
the burn; scratch the ghost of your calf and heel.
—from “Scratching the Ghost”
Body
Dexter Booth’s ruminations on loss in this award-winning debut are rooted in a time past but one still palpable and persistent. Here are memories of love lost, family mourned, a father absent, ghosts of hometowns and childhood. Here too is a “Short Letter to the Twentieth Century” and, finally, a “Long Letter to the Twentieth Century,” as if across this collection the poet is mustering up the force to speak back to history.
“In Dexter Booth’s Scratching the Ghost, a cracked egg means the universe is splitting, the slap of a double-dutch rope is a broken-throated hymn, and splitting a squealing hog is akin to love-making. These are poems loyal to their own intrepid logic and reckless plausibility. Yet, lest the reader get too giddy in a fun house of mirrors, here, too, are the melodic laments and remarkable lyric passages of a poet who acknowledges the infinite current of melancholy that underlines his journey.”—Major Jackson
“In Dexter Booth’s Scratching the Ghost, a cracked egg means the universe is splitting, the slap of a double-dutch rope is a broken-throated hymn, and splitting a squealing hog is akin to love-making. These are poems loyal to their own intrepid logic and reckless plausibility. Yet, lest the reader get too giddy in a fun house of mirrors, here, too, are the melodic laments and remarkable lyric passages of a poet who acknowledges the infinite current of melancholy that underlines his journey.”—Major Jackson
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About the Author
Credit: Scott Montgomery
Praise
- “Booth’s first collection exhibits stylistic versatility and thematic range seldom found in first books.”—Booklist
- "After finishing these 69 pages I found myself cut off from some of the best writing I've read in a long time, without a library of work to feed my incessant need for more Dexter Booth. Here's to hoping he comes out with more entrancing work in the near future."—NewPages
- "These poems are in the tradition of a very few brilliant first books that are utterly memorable."—Norman Dubie
- “These are poems loyal to their own intrepid logic and reckless plausibility. Yet, lest the reader get too giddy in a fun house of mirrors, here, too, are the melodic laments and remarkable lyric passages of a poet who acknowledges the infinite current of melancholy that underlines his journey.”—Major Jackson, Cave Canem Prize judge
