Dan Beachy-Quick, Elements & Offerings

 

N.

Of noman—
that name is an echo in the blind monster’s cave— 

What grammar keeps these ghosts at their labor?

The silent letter h—. The silent letter g—.

Of gnomon—
the spindle on the sundial that is the one that knows—.
You do your thinking by sunlight or torchlight—. You
make a shadow to see—. But who are you? 

Nomon. Gnomon. Here’s my shadow—. 

Tell me what day it is. What day is. What is time. (“Library of –”)

The latest from Colorado poet, editor and translator Dan Beachy-Quick is the collection Elements & Offerings (Baton Rouge LA: LSU Press, 2026), an assemblage of poems patterned with stitched lines and lyrics set in curious rhythms. The book is organized with opening poem, “The Song Dynasty,” and three sections: “An archive,” made up of the lettered sequence “Library of –”; and two cluster-sections of shorter poems, titled “A braid of.” and “& offerings.” There are curious visual and rhythmic elements that Beachy-Quick employs, including placements of em-dashes and periods, offering a sense of the extended, the open-ended (akin to Vancouver poet Daphne Marlatt in the 1960s and 70s not closing her own established multiple parenthesis within poems), suggesting both a continuation and a kind of leap, over a break or a pause. They’re used sparingly, often at the ends of titles, and they intrigue, in part for how carefully they’re utilized. The opening of the opening poem, “The Song Dynasty,” suggests it more of a visual cue than anything rhythmic, not a pause or a break at all, beyond the line-break itself:

One way to make snow in mountains is
to leave the paper blank
& ink in the crags & pines—
a scholar’s hut by the flowing stream,
such cold water for the tea—
but there are other ways. The mind 

makes its equal signs & leave them
unspoken.

What is the purpose of these em-dashes beyond what is already there, I wonder? The dashes not mid-line but at the end of a line. Pointing to elsewhere, the open space; a diving board, or the classic pirate ship’s plank, upon which dead men are forced to walk. Visually intriguing, the structure he hints at in the opening poem really comes alive in the book’s second section, a poem in twenty-six lettered sections, extending across a lyric of halt and stagger and staccato; of joyful collage and lyric play, an abecedarian of swashbuckling measure. As the fourth poem in the sequence begins: “Desire is the space between / stars. Distance is / the space within // an apple, a bird, a brain. / A dream of daughters in heaven / diagramming sentences: // The moon is bright. It’s not / a light.” While that example might seem structurally rather straightforward, the poem otherwise holds pause, poise, fragment, impossibly quick turns, visual elements of collage, hush and halts and italicized highlights, staccato and sound, built as a sequence replete with sprinklings of em-dash, whether followed by line break, comma or period. Does Beachy-Quick’s em-dash hold too much weight? Only, one might suppose, if the eye is meant to linger there too long.

Even across the poems of the further two sections, the play and patter is evident, but often more subtle, at least than evidenced within his abecedarian, allowing as a means to an end across lyric distances within shorter bursts of lyric. His poems don’t tend to move in a straight line, but the thread remains, articulated through a delightful array of ebbs and bobs, pauses, punches and quick turns. The movement of the poem, however subtle, propels each piece to sparkle.

Auricle

            —for Sasha Steensen

No lamb I know asks
    the question—
but I only know one lamb.
Though the coal burns
    bright orange
behind the dark iron
slats, no tiger I know
    asks—
but I don’t know any tigers.
When the child misspells
    good as god
I correct her. You need
another o. Oh, she says,
    okay. A dog
with no legs and no tail
sleeps on her throat
    at night.
A lamb lies down
under the yellow stars
    painted
on her sheet. She never
asks, either. Silent as her
    pet lamb. Okay?
Silent as her tiger that can’t
bother to exist.