Unlikely Stories Presents

STEVE DALACHINSKY from sea to shining sea

To the Unlikely Stories home pageSteve Dalachinsky is a piece of abstract artGet ready to rock and roll. The poems of Steve Dalachinsky will take you on a wild ride of meaning and symbol, showing you the author's mastery with every stroke. Steve's poems are visually fascinating and lyrically intense, and his subjects veer madly and fearlessly between the political and the personal, in a way that allows us to see that there is no difference between the arenas.

Steven Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn, New York sometime after the last Big War and before lots of useless little wars...he has been writing poetry since before then and has always...he is basically self-taught...his great loves and influences are the Beats, Blake, Kafka, Camus, Harpo, surreal and abstract painting and music......especially jazz and so-called "Avante Guarde" or "FREE" jazz...

His chapbooks include "One Thin Line" published by Pinched Nerve Press, "People/Places" published by Beehive Press and the self-published "In the Book of Ice," "Blue," "White Dog," and the recent "Portuguese Letters" and "Contemporary Poetry." His work has appeared in Long Shot, Blue Beat Jacket, Night, Nomad Choir, Conections, Big Hammer, Pagan Place, Strider, Unbearable Assemblage Magazines, New York Arts Magazine, the recent anthology Downtown Poets, the catalogues of sculptor Alain Kirili and the Thunder Mouth Press anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry to name a few. He also appears on many web sites including Poetz.com. He is co-editor of the anthologies Play the Red and Intervals - the Poems and Words of Musicians. His poem "fruitflies" appears on the Knitting Factory J.A.M. compilation. He has two recent collections of poetry out: Subway Assemblages (JVC Press - 2000) and A Superintendent's Eyes (Hozomeen Press - 2000). He has completed a manuscript entitled "The Final Nite" comprised entirely of poems written while listening "Live" to the mustic of Charles Gayle between 1987 and the present, due out on Linear Arts Press, and appearing in the upcoming Unbearables anthology Self Help. He has also written liner notes for the CDs of such luminaries as Gyale, Anthony Braxton, James "Blood" Ulmer, Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell and Assif Tsahar. His 1999 CD Incomplete Directions (Knitting Factory Records), a collection of his poetry read in collaboration with various musicians such as William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Susie Ibarra, Thurston Moore, Vernon Reid and others, has met with much acclaim.

He has read his work both here and abroad including recent readings in Germany and Kentucky.

Two key elements in his poetry are spontaneity and the idea of transformation rather than description with a preference toward non-linear, non-narrative though. He resides in Manhattan where he has lived for the past 30 years. Drop him a line at skyplums@juno.com.

Steve's works here at Unlikely Stories are:

2002:
yesterday my eyes were a garden
we live in the faces on the wall
the Panama Francis Big Band in Washington Square Park - Contemporary Poetry # 2
columns of light
rear window 1
rear window 2
the rain storm
fragments from the life of a sleepwalker
Overcast
Patti Smith's Fingers
The Feminine
La Fenice
the state of the empire
the phone call (first)