Alex Dimitrov: Together and By Ourselves

Together and by Ourselves, Alex Dimitrov’s second book of poems, takes on broad existential questions and the reality of our current moment: being seemingly connected to one another, yet emotionally alone. Through a collage aesthetic and a multiplicity of voices, these poems take us from coast to coast, New York to LA, and toward uneasy questions about intimacy, love death, and the human spirit.

Dimitrov critiques America’s long-lasting obsessions with money, celebrity, and escapism — whether in our personal or professional lives. What defines a life? Is love ever enough? Who are we when together and who are we by ourselves? These questions echo throughout the poems, which resist easy answers. The voice is both heartfelt and skeptical, bruised yet playful, and always deeply introspective.

Cocaine

People disappear.
And go looking for a place to be looked at.
All the way down Wilshire and above us: like a sheet of indigo tile.
As we waited, our nicotine glowed in the distance like flies
to some heaven, some high road.
“Who sat on mountaintops in cars reading books aloud to the canyons?”
Like gods and at home being extras at best.
I almost believed love then someone new called me
and time’s been repeating. Time’s on like a show.
(. . .)
When the car you steer best is not yours; or the body.
The house and the job. Rooms of white lines. Gold lobbies.
We cringe at these lists but without them, who’s counting?

From the book: Together and By Ourselves
by: Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dimitrov
Together and By Ourselves
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
$16.00, paperback, 2017
isbn 978-1-55659-510-3

cover-photo: Francesca Woodman

fleursdumal.nl magazine

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