Nocturne

Mike Dillon's Nocturne: New & Selected Poems, features his best work from six books of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, and three books of haiku.
In That Which We Have Named he writes: eyes that long for the windless/light of Heaven must, in the end/show proof of earth. This quest for ultimate things grounded in daily life is the common thread running through all of Dillon's books. Along the way, the poet's eye swerves to the margins, away from the crowd, to find a patch of sunlit moss, or a fleeting moment of silence. A tender regard for the marginalized is captured in this much-celebrated haiku: the last kid picked/running his fastest/to right field.
Dillon grew up on Bainbridge Island, west of Seattle. His Departures: Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island's Japanese Americans After Pearl Harbor, evokes the tragedy and heroism of that time, delivered with the terse evocation, sharp detailing, and devastating humanity of a Netsuke carving. It was written during the rise of Trumpism.
Across Agate Pass from Bainbridge Island lies the Suquamish reservation, burial place of Chief Seattle. For a middle-class white boy, Suquamish was a source of mystery and wonder, opening a door to another dimension: A white marble cross, flanked by two cedar poles, /marks the great chief's grave, /his feet aimed east, he writes in Suquamish and Other Poems.
Mike Dillon's poetic quest searches for the crossroads of time and eternity, where the world appears as glimmering immanence.

American Book Award winner Anna Odessa Linzer on Mike Dillon's Departures: Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island's Japanese Americans After Pearl Harbor: "This collection finds me at a loss for words to describe the perfect beauty, the searing pain held in his words."

Reviewer Mathew Paul, in Sphinx (U.K.), on The Return: Mike Dillon "seems to be seeking a silence just out of reach, bearing the influence of haiku, tanka, Chinese poetry and the likes of Snyder and Rexroth. At his sparest, his poetry takes on a rare limpidity worthy of those influences."

Of Mike Dillon's work in haiku, Jim Kacian, co-editor of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, wrote that his voice "possesses a quiet authority that makes his best work seem inevitable. He evokes the feel of a small-town sensibility without ever sacrificing a more worldly perspective."

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).

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