Departures - Dillon, Mike

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Résumé :
The narrative of poetry and prose begins on the eve of Pearl Harbor. An old Croatian fisherman rows across Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island to light the kerosene lamps to guide the ferries in, as he does each night. Christmas lights decorate the cottages scattered around the harbor. The lights of Seattle glow to the east. A star falls from the wayside of infinity. The next morning, a Sunday, brings the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The owners of the Bainbridge Island Review, Walt and Milly Woodward, work into the wee hours to publish a special edition. Walt Woodward reminds his neighbors, I am positive every Japanese family on the Island has an intense loyalty for the United States of America and stands ready to defend it. Up and down the West Coast, however, hatred is stirring. Little more than two months later, President Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States. On March 30, 1942, 227 Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, under bayonet guard, are marched aboard the ferry Kehloken bound for Seattle and a train waiting to take them to Manzanar, a barbed-wire camp in the central California desert. Many of their island neighbors turned out to see them off. Not a few of them weep. The author, using historical sources and family recollections, has crafted a poetic narrative of one of the most conspicuous injustices in American history, and explores how the healing goes on....

Biographie:
Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle, Washington. He is the author of five books of poetry and three books of haiku. Several of his haiku were included in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, from W.W. Norton (2013). His most recent full-length book is Departures: Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island's Japanese Americans After Pearl Harbor, from Unsolicited Press (2019). American Book Award winner Anna Odessa Linzer wrote of Departures: This collection finds me at a loss for words to describe the perfect beauty, the searing pain held in his words. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook, The Return, in 2021, which was reviewed by British editor and poet Matthew Paul in The Sphinx in the U.K., who noted Mike Dillon's quiet, almost effortlessly-crafted poetry which asks deep questions.

Sommaire:
Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on the Salish Sea northwest of Seattle, from where he writes poetry, essays and occasional book reviews. The former publisher of a group of community newspapers in Seattle, he is the author of six books of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, and three books of haiku. His essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Kyoto Journal, Rain Taxi, The Galway Review, Northwest Asian Weekly, and other venues in this country and abroad. Among his journalism awards is a first place from the Society of Professional Journalists for a three-part series on sex abuse. He is also editor of Notes from the Garden: Creating a Pacific Northwest Sanctuary, by Madeleine Wilde. Several of his haiku were included in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, from W.W. Norton (2013)....