The Nervous Filaments [Paperback]

David Dodd Lee (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lee's fourth book is hard to interpret, but hard to ignore: a priest shouldn't have a tattoo of Darth Vader, the title poem remarks, before depicting little silver penguins holding trays. Exclamatory, vivid, bizarre, and sometimes redolent of the surrealists, Lee's single-line stanzas and sentence fragments suggest a life impossible to sustain, a set of emotions and recollections unmoored from any life story that might serve as guide: They shredded the moon again she said about the falling snow. Lee remains conscious of region and locale (just think of the Midwest/ as a giant Nativity Scene): yet his ambitions, and his targets, seem to take in almost everything he can see. A style that some readers find disorienting will seem to others all too familiar; it's not clear whether his disorienting style is really anything new. And yet Lee's sharp way with single images, single sentences, almost convulsively fleeting visions, should not be denied. (Mar.)
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Review

"...As electric and unsettling as anything the art world has seen in years. Urgent, indifferent, his lines scatter in all directions as you read them, as if the page were a skull in a puddle that when you inspect it turns out to be full of eels... You will find yourself coming back again and again." (Jordan Davis )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 90 pages
• Publisher: Four Way (March 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188480005X
• ISBN-13: 978-1884800054
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,237,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An urgent music, March 3, 2010

By 

Louise A. Mathias - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Nervous Filaments (Paperback)

A sophisticated deconstruction of the self, the past, american culture, masculine energy, art, film and more, this book achieves a devastating and unsettling emotional logic all of its own. Utterly different from his other work yet retaining the same kinetic, brazen music and imagery we have come to expect from him, the book is highly "readable" for those that don't insist on the linear. A break through book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Transcendent Step Into A Parallel Sphere, March 8, 2010

By 

Charmien A. Keranen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Nervous Filaments (Paperback)

David Dodd Lee's fourth full-length collection of poetry, The Nervous Filaments, is a transcendent step into parallel sphere. Lee wastes no time in asserting his right to hold and examine the reader, the world, in fact, upside down, backwards, by the heels. When he says "I could see ambulance spelled/backwards" we know the emergent world isn't in Lee's rear view mirror, but he's facing it head-on, all the while trying to make sense of the incoming messages, as frantically jumbled as they appear. In a gesture towards Günter Grass's Tin Drum, "I could see the eels spilling/out of the horse's head," Lee prepares the reader for a view of the disturbingly tragic world of survival, the one in which we all traverse but often fail to see. He points out, however, "...here is your/story/coming from a different direction." Indeed, we meet Lee at an unlikely intersection, but it is an intersection worth exploring as each poem reveals new vistas. "After all that's your head in the window/looking out/through rain/through snow." Certainly. Isn't that why we're here?

LOVELESS, THE GRAVEL

Here is your
story, in my

horizonless competence,

a nevertheless fine
kettle of

mockingbirds

I could see ambulance spelled
backwards

I could see the eels spilling
out of the horse's head

a crawdad sits in a cold
pool importantly praying

(cumulus nimbus)

and here is your
story

coming from a different direction

a couple of shaved ideas

3 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nervous Filaments Not as thought provoking as I'd hoped, March 1, 2010

By 

Nina Hodges "Nina" (South Bend, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Nervous Filaments (Paperback)

I got a hold of one in a class. It seems there is a disingenuous tone about it. Like someone with attention deficit disorder is trying to improve but is a prisoner of himself and just can't.

I found no unifying theme. Like a quilt but no pattern, and you so wish it was soft instead of scratchy and threadbare.