Phoenix poet Dylan Webster is fascinated with liminality, the feeling of being between stages or places, on the threshold of transitioning. “There’s something about that expectation, the imagination involved. I think of it as an empty space that we fill with our lively imagination. It’s in that imagining that we find our life.” His poetry often visits and investigates these transitory pauses: the moments between sleep and waking, dark and light, the space between questions and answers.
Dylan has published one book of poetry, Dislocation. He is currently working on second book of poems, The Half-Life of the Living, and a novel, “a dark thriller with a setting very much based on Prescott.” His poetry and fiction have been published in many journals. He runs two poetry open mics in the Valley, at Grounded 32 and Bookmans Mesa. Born and raised in Phoenix, he’s delighted to be involved in the literary arts there, and has found a strong community in which to share his work and connect with other writers.
Dylan’s love of language and reading began early. “I grew up with books being a welcome refuge. In them, I found open-mindedness and exploration, my own haven. My grandparents always encouraged that in me, and often bought me all the books that I wanted to read.” He was home-schooled through high school and self-taught thereafter, discovering many classic, modern, postmodern and experimental poets who have influenced his work.
Dylan has always been drawn to poetry as a way of expressing himself on deeper, more fundamental levels. “Poetry has a heavy emphasis on language and imagery to convey a message. Instead of laying out a logical argument, you can paint a scene that says multiple things at once, and kind of speaks on a different frequency. There is an ancient songlike nature to poetry. I think it taps into an older part of our collective unconscious.”
The cognizance of liminality extends to Dylan’s further themes, which include religion, spirituality, self-awareness and other transcendent concepts. “Liminality feeds much of my poetry. It intersects with ideas of the sacred and the soul. Like starting on earth and seeking heaven. All that space in between, on the ascent, that’s where I want to pause and look around. I want to capture that.”
Dylan tries to get out of his own way when a poem comes to him. “I often have these disparate lines just floating around. I usually begin writing and let the words come out as they will, trying not to do anything to hinder them. I may throw a phrase on my phone if it’s rattling and I don’t want to lose it. I tend to write best at night, far past when I should have fallen asleep.” Poetry helps him think through subjects and issues in creative ways. “Anything that I cannot easily resolve in my mind tends to be worked out through poetry. I try to walk down a path in my mind and document what I see there.”
Dylan lives with his wife, an artist and writer, and their young son. They are often the subjects of his poems. He is constantly thinking about and writing poetry. “Poetry has an inherent ambiguity and mystery that always brings me back.” And he doesn’t mind being in a liminal state, feeling in-between in his life and his work, on the verge of discovery: “This path, right now: this is the magical place.”
You can contact Dylan at william22webster@gmail.com; for more: amazon.com/Dislocated-Dylan-Webster/dp/0578390795
Anatomical
Heavy air settles low,
moisture thickening the surrounding space,
much like how I search for God.
The anticipation tantalizes me,
stiffening the hairs on my arm
like the herald breath of lightning —
and they tell me it’s like the wind,
that I can see the effects
but will never grasp the mover —
and that’s why the trees bend,
without knees they yet bow down in awe,
and perhaps fear; that old grandfather.
Awe like the onset of floods;
the swirling of clouds like angels’ playthings,
enveloping the modern world in fear,
while quenching cracked desert skin.
I may never find that divine face,
yet I am still graced by awe & fear; nature’s body.
Codes and Standards
Winter cool chills the slump blocks that shape
our rectangular house,
as the breathing of mother and child
warm the interior and meet in the hall.
I lie awake at the cusp of night and morning,
a new ritual I’ve taken to –
rejuvenation in place of intoxication.
I’ve judged sleeplessness preferable
to perpetuation of inherited vice.
One of the things I’ve learned
in this mindful sobriety,
is just how thin these old windows are.
The cold has coasted over the blocks
and seeps in through the fifty-two year old seams.
The sound of tires on the freeway half a mile away
whisper through the vents like past owners’ mutterings.
I want to be annoyed by my cheap windows,
the lack of funds to remedy said cheap windows;
and when I cast my sidelong glance,
breathing threats and murder at the windows,
I hear the exhalations of mother and child,
sleeping soundly in the small, mid century slump block home.
I’m grateful for lucidity,
for my windows’ lack of structural integrity;
the odd ways a house respires.
Dee Cohen is a Prescott poet and photographer. deecohen@cox.net.
