Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, has published a new book of poetry, “Finding Solace in the Dictionary.” In his review, Ronald Pies writes, “Any book of poetry that begins with quotations from Franz Kafka and Groucho Marx is bound to see the world through an unusually complex lens. For Robert Deluty, this is the lens of words, in all their manifold potencies and valences. One senses, in this remarkable new collection, that the poet finds ‘solace in the dictionary’ because it is through words that we both escape and embrace Kafkaesque and Marxian absurdities, such as the couple ‘informing/ their dog his begging/ is unbecoming.’ But Deluty’s poems push beyond absurdity and enter deeply into the human predicament, as with ‘her husband/ consenting to dine out/ if there’s no talking.’ These poems cry out that there must be talking, there must be words—for, as Kafka says of books, words can ‘…serve as an ax for the frozen seas within us.'”
Copies of “Finding Solace in the Dictionary,” as well as of Deluty’s other books, are on sale at the UMBC Bookstore.
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