Dickinson’s road is an assembly of lines, of geometries and definitive materials in search of eternity, built to withstand time — prefabricated lines stretched across the plane, awaiting a wanderer. The immigrant walks among the verses and scrap metal. At this point, language intersects, and Dickinson’s Spanish opens a slit for introspection — for circular memories like slices of lemon, and divine journeys that end in floral flames. The relentless path remains; the lines lead forward, but also upward — a poetic pilgrimage that drags the asphalt and fuses it with a jacaranda tree in a bilingual space.

---Daniela Hernádez Rodríguez, Johns Hopkins Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.

In this deeply empathetic collection, Martin Dickinson explores “the world as it is, not as we might like it to be” and finds he has arrived at a place where all the roads he has traveled have coalesced to “become” him. He takes us along for the ride. Dickinson’s finest poems, using vivid language, convey a memorable ambience, especially in depictions of nature. I Am That Road is a work of insight and balance, evoking both the strength and fragility of our lives.

                                    —Michele Wolf, author of Peacocks on the Streets