WINNER OF THE 2017 FUTURECYCLE POETRY BOOK PRIZE. Each of Diane Furtney's lyrical narratives in The Blue Man: Poems of the Ordinary shows us some odd or unnoticed aspect of what seems at first commonplace. That aspect might be provocative, reassuring, whimsical, alarming, delightful. The poems notice, among other things, the typical but disguised agendas in marriage, an unexpected limitation resulting from psychosis, the uniquely huge outlook of an impoverished poet in North Beach, a possible etiology of loss of belief in God, the way in which serious illness can become ordinary even as it reveals more offbeat qualities in the world, the goofy un-ordinariness of being in love, and the anything-but-ordinary information from dreams. The enjambed-couplet form also jostles the reader's expectations, with the result that taking anything for granted in our preposterous, familiar world becomes just a little difficult. The reader will find it easy to be intrigued, thoughtful, and moved.
