Before the Borderless

“Rader’s prismatic and experimental latest . . . transcends descriptive or observational commentary to engage with the work of visual artist Twombly in psychic conversation. . . . Loss reverberates in these striking pages that thoughtfully and innovatively consider Twombly’s work while highlighting the echoes and tensions between poetry and painting.”—Publishers Weekly “Rader’s responses to Twombly’s elegiac body of work are as physical and emotionally ignited as they are intellectually apprehended. . . . His poems glitter and bestow knowledge derived from the surrounding art of Twombly. In turn, Twombly’s images invite us to appreciate the visual movement of Rader’s poems. Just as Rader’s elegiac unknown waves ‘its wand, / and a beam of light disappears into the sky’s black hat,’ the living conversation of poems and paintings in Before the Borderless puts the reader in touch with the ‘everything [they] need to know.’”—Elena Karina Byrne, Los Angeles Review of Books “We come to poetry to take pleasure, and to ingest and face profundities in shapes our ears and eyes prefer to prose. How does Dean Rader help make sense of them all? Dear Reader, count the ways.”—The Rumpus “…poems in Landscape Portrait Figure Form flirt with the metaphysical – i.e., can talking about art still be art? – while presenting something definite: an experience that comments on the artistic but also delivers it, even guiding the reader along.”—The San Francisco Chronicle “Dean Rader reads his past, reads the landscape of his native land, especially Oklahoma, through the lens of previous poets, such as Hesiod, his first tutelary guide, who lead him to a vibrant, innovative, and fresh new poetry, who point the way to his own formal making, his poignant American version of life and labor, Works & Days.”—Edward Hirsch ""In this extended exercise in ekphrasis, Rader presents lyrics, prose poems, and experimental forms that interrogate the artwork of the eponymous American painter, sculptor, and photographer. Bright images of Twombly’s creations appear throughout the collection followed by Rader’s response. The poems meditate on Twombly’s use of color and imagery and the philosophical questions raised by each piece as well as speak to Twombly himself in letters addressed to the artist. . . . The collection considers what it means to be an artist, the connections between visual art and poetry, and the way art can function as a mirror for the audience, becoming a tool for self-reflection.""—Poets & Writers ""Given that 'art both fills and empties a life,' Rader deliberates on what any artist’s medium can offer the grieving, what meaning is presented or refused by light, color, repetition, depth, time, or silence. But he also hopes the eclipses and asymptotes of language present more than elegy for the grieved.""—Cindy Juyoung Ok, Harriet Books at the Poetry Foundation ""Ekphrastic poetry is a form that isn’t about the shape or rhyme or meter of the poem, but about the poetry’s subject: visual art. In this case, Dean Rader worked his way through the art of Cy Twombly and created this stunning collection of poetry.""—Book Riot