Read it and re-read it. And this is the kind of poetry book that you want to keep on your night stand. It makes beautiful music to dream by-- just like the unfortunate hanging man. All the poems are deeply moving with great imagery, and delicious cadence and omolioteleton (my favorite word) which is to say-- all sorts of rhyming that isn't really rhyming, but slants and echoing, and similar sounds, and morphs, and euphony, and all sorts of curl-your-tongue-in-a-smile sounds that not only sound great read out-loud, but ring with truth, and haunt you.
I certainly would recommend this to all English teachers and poetry students.
Great Book, David! Encore, Encore! --Charlie
I have read and heard several comments about "The Hanging Man Dreams",
including an article by Author-Poet Aberjhani. It seems that there is no doubt that this BOOK is on the shelves to become a bestseller.
I wish that "The Hanging Man Dreams" reach the million copies sold mark before the end of 2008... (Sorry for my modesty!)
Andre Emmanuel Bendavi ben-YEHU
Reviewed by David Perry
9/12/2007
David, after reading your poems here on AD I had to get your book. I ordered it from Amazon.com and was not at all surprised to see that it had a 5 star rating from readers. I can hardly wait!
Exactly who is this HANGING MAN? How did he end up in such a situation? And how is it that he chances to dream under such precarious circumstances? He is, in fact, only partly an invention of the poet David C. Hightower’s pen, partly a product of legends that echo through the northern hills of Georgia, and partly the stuff of whispered family history.
What is known is precisely what is reported in these remarkable pages: that a man making his way home one evening is suddenly ambushed––lynched, in fact, for reasons unknown to him. Struggle proves futile as he is overwhelmed, tied up, hung from the branch of a tree, and left there to die. Because the Hanging Man in question was white and not black, the event would seem to have been motivated by something other than racial animosity. What ensues following this attack is a long horribly dark night of one man’s terrorized, weeping, and dreaming soul.
The poetry of "The Hanging Man Dreams" is unified less by a single theme than it is by a progression of complimentary themes, like a musical score building up from its first intriguing notes to a veritable exultation of chords and choruses. Pondering the nearly incomprehensible fate of the Hanging Man, David Hightower offers an amazing vision of what it must have been like to exist inside the spinning mind, faltering lungs, and struggling heart of a life balanced on the edge of extinction and madness. The poems that come whirling out of this spiritual chaos reveal Hightower as a poet deeply rooted in the history, ecology, folklore, and personality of his native north Georgia region at the same time that he instinctively transcends it.
A further collection of poems, many from years in the Middle East, but also the California San Francisco and Central Coast areas (Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, Berkeley, etc.).
My book of poetry is being redone by me, I have a beautiful cover designed and the book will have a few more than 200 poems in it. I am going to have it printed on demand here in Canada. When it is done I will let you know when it is done and if anyo
