Book Review: A Necessary Explosion: Collected Poems

A Necessary Explosion: Collected Poems. Dan Burns, Chicago Arts Press, June 25 2021, Paperback, Hardcover, and E-Book, 161 pages.

Review by T. L. Needham.

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” —Robert Frost

Robert Frost is the poet who launched my love of poetry. He is my gage for judging other poets. His complete works was the first poetry book I acquired and began the collection on my bookcase. I read Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening so many times I memorized them.

Dan Burns has now earned a place in my bookcase of great poets and great poetry. He is not a rookie. He has six other books to his credit, including the novels A Fine Line, Recalled to Life, and the short story collections, Grace: Stories and a Novella and No Turning Back: Stories. In addition, Burns is an award-winning writer of stories for the screen and stage. A Necessary Explosion: Collected Poems, his first poetry collection, was fifteen years in the making.

Burns opens his collection of poems with a quote from Ray Bradbury. He is a titan of American authors and screenwriters and is among the most celebrated 20th-century American writers: “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”

Midway into Burns’ collection, he gives us his poem A Necessary Explosion which yields a collection of the pressures, impressions, ideas, conflicts, and criticisms that influence the author in his daily creative frenzy. His is a poetic voice seeking release in the explosion of conflicting influences, presenting a brilliant insight into the creative process involved in giving birth to a poem.

Another poem, A Call from Home, opens with a booming phone call from a distant, unknown yet familiar voice that beckons the poet to the Emerald Isle. There he discovers and reveals his genetic lineage to the Irish people as each new face seems to be family. As a reader, I was not surprised to learn that Dan Burns is of Irish heritage, linked to a pedigree of the great Irish poets, including many of my favorites: W. B. Yeats, S. Beckett, S. Heaney, T. Moore. Burns’ poetry does justice to this great Irish heritage.

Near the end of this wonderful poetry collection, I came upon a gem titled No Words Are Necessary. This enchanting love poem touched my heart so much that I turned to my dear wife and read it to her, suggesting it could have been written just for us. The ending of this poems says it all: “I am you, and you are me.”

Thus, I close by expressing my greatest admiration for this extraordinary collection of poems. I have no criticism, only praise, and I know I will revisit these wonderful verses again and again. Congratulations to Mr. Dan Burns, very well done.