The Dying Poem by Robert Budde

"The question becomes, am I part of the script? Am I in it?"

the dying poem is prose poetry, like Robert Budde's earlier novel Misshapen. It is less about events in the world, than the interplay of those events and the meanings they dress themselves in, as they are absorbed by people trapped in the involuntary art of living. Or in the case of the dying poem, seduced by the finality of death.

I recommend reading this book slowly, in sips. It makes sense as overlays of lives and images. Art and artists. It is about death, and the meaning death can give to a life that had worn itself thread bare with the hunt for meaning, with only indifferent success. But it is not a celebration of nihilistic ennui. It is about three artists, Henry, Jay and Dee, whose lives are drawn together over the enigma of Henry's suicide, and ultimately resolved through art itself. They cannot touch each other except through their art, as if on another plane, where only the abstract is real.

The poetry of the book, cast as prose, is gentle and lush despite the harsh subject, sparingly told.