Always Something—Jim Dodge

I am always hoping that Jim Dodge will surprise us all and finally announce the novel he has long been threatening to finish; his most recent, Stone Junction, dropped in the far-distant reality of 1990. A collection of poetry, Rain on the River: New and Selected Poems and Short Prose, followed twelve years later in 2002, but only served to whet our appetite for his deft wordplay and masterful use and abuse of the English language.

Whenever I get the itch, now that the all-mighty algorithms know everything, I’ll check in to see what the good ol’ apple picker has been up to. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Idaho’s Limberlost Press, a beautifully archaic letterpress printer of chapbooks, broadsides, and I’m guessing… manifestos, had published a new collection of poems, Always Something, in 2023.

Limberlost’s publications are artifacts from an anachronistic world of archival-quality papers and hand-sewn assembly—not a shout against the digital darkness, but more of a whispered word of kinship in a sun-dappled meadow, but I digress.

I recognized one of the poems, the sublime, Owl Feather, from a broadside that Dodge was gracious enough to send me upon the publication of my first novel, welcoming me into the guild ten years ago, so this collection has been simmering for a minute, all the better to let the flavors infuse.


I have no doubt there are powers far beyond us
Because the grey-and-brown barred wing feather
From a Great Horned Owl that I found this afternoon
While walking the old logging road above McKenzie Creek
Seemed beautiful beyond the ability to behold it…

Dodge’s capacity for wonder has always been a feature of his personality and his work, it’s in evidence here as is his prankster’s sense of humor. In A Manual of Sabotage, he incites delightful mischief.

Of course, only a heartfelt kiss can derail a munitions train,
Explode the tube in a color TV,
Destroy a computer’s mother board,
And get you so exited
You want to feel completely totaled and totally complete.

Further imaginings should be enough
To get us together to wreck more stuff.

I, for one, am ready.

Limberlost Press



Also by this author:

Rain on the River: New and Selected Poems and Short Prose