Lost in the Hours by River Dixon
Potter’s Grove Press, 2020
If I recall correctly, I first got acquainted with River Dixon’s writing at Morality Park, a gorgeous literary collective I was once a part of. That was a few years ago, and I’m still regularly reading his poetry blog, having also read all the books he’s written so far: The Stories in Between—a dark and at times humorous collection of short stories; Colder—an emotionally driven collection of poetry and prose; Left Waiting: and Other Poems—a philosophical book, broadening our understanding of “who we are and why we do the things we do;” Beyond the Field—a heartwarming tale of friendship; and The Smell of Cedar—a chilling novella, full of unexpected surprises.
Whether he writes poetry or prose, whether he’s gloomy or playful, realistic or experimental, one thing is undeniable: River’s ability to tell a story with a few words, always new and fresh, is truly fascinating, his writing being a mirror image of life itself, deceptively simple, and yet endlessly complex.
His latest full-length poetry collection, Lost in the Hours, is no different as it is incredibly beautiful and smart in its exploration of both the symbolic and the material. While the author (sometimes) lets his tender tone shine brightly in his love poems, when addressing socio-cultural reality in a self-narrative approach, he writes in a more somber mood. That being said, most of the poems are a bit of a blow, a bitter pill to swallow, since he doesn’t shy away from offering us the core of his views on the individual and society, managing to grasp our troublesome, often solitary, existence without sentimentalizing it. The poet seems to be in desperate need of a critical point of view, which includes the examination of universal topics such as truth, pain, hypocrisy, regret, time, routine, “the illusion of safety,” oblivion, envy, “a fall from grace,” “the weight of understanding,” “failure and missteps, worry and promises,” wondering if he would have done things differently, as he writes, “If I was given the gift, or curse / Of knowing…”
Although River Dixon frequently highlights the physical qualities of concepts and objects to convey meaning (“It’s a deep hole, perhaps the only thing / That’s not shallow about me” or “In the dark, drowning / Where no water / Can be found”), his sentence structure generally remains that of somebody trying to put things simply, as simply as possible, to get a better understanding of the fundamental issues of human existence and find a meaning in this seemingly meaningless world of ours.
In the end, however obvious the poet’s darkness and melancholy are, Lost in the Hours will actually show us a person who presses on, against all odds, turning a shell over and over, hoping there’s some precious pearl inside and “That what awaits is better / Than what’s left being,” screaming at the top of his lungs, “There’s only / One way / To live, / With a full heart.”
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Serbia-born and Germany-based, Bojana Stojcic is a teacher with a torn ligament (read: a limited range of movement) and a mom who needs to keep walking against all odds. Her work has recently appeared in Entropy, 11 Mag Berlin, The Daily Drunk, Loud Coffee Press, Failed Haiku, and elsewhere. She is often up until the wee hours reading and remembering every stupid decision she’s ever made.