Whittling a New Face in the Dark

Poetry. WHITTLING A NEW FACE IN THE DARK is a call to arms for language to rise above its inadequacy. DJ Dolack's poems are born from moments we must work hard to forget: the child's first funeral dirge; an empty, fluorescent-lit gas station in winter; at the bar, two drinks too far, ashamed and yet too aware of our surroundings. The speakers in this debut collection live in fear that the intimacy of solitude is indeed pornographic. Meanwhile, Dolack's lines are laced with a macabre, needle-sharp humor offering hymns of affliction, loss, and light: no matter the darkness, the pearl-handled whittling knife moves to do its job.

"The poems in Dolack's scrupulously crafted debut are determined to make something distinctive and even beautiful out of their speaker's sense of apartness from this world and its fellow occupants. That they manage to do so despite persistent doubts that words can adequately bridge that apartness as they 'fumble forth / a wet mess like a soft // but definite new fawn' makes WHITTLING A NEW FACE IN THE DARK a complex, hard-won, and ultimately affirming achievement."—Timothy Donnelly

"Dolack's voice is steadfast, unflappable—he never apologizes for the conditions under which our affection must be born. What is the difference between love and admiration? These poems intimate: Be grateful you are alive, even though it is hard. Love your chaotic home. WHITTLING A NEW FACE IN THE DARK 'is / what's come of / people giving it to people straight.'"—Paige Ackerson-Kiely

"DJ Dolack's mouth is 'pistol-clean...oiled' so he can sing, 'the heart's animal / heaves up terrific things and rests / against the ribcage like a fighter been already cut.' These exquisites will burrow so deep inside your chest they will steal your breath. Dolack writes beyond consequence. Yeah. He's fearless."—Peter Jay Shippy