……………. by & about D.A. (Daisy) Hickman ………………

Oakwood Magazine: Literature and Arts of the Northern Great Plains, April 2023
Hickman, D.A. (2023) “Reverberations,” Oakwood: Vol. 5: Iss. 1, Article 28. 

Reverberations

Eyeing the country house with its
scruffy yard, the lone redbud tree

with its bare soul exposed, I edged
closer, steps precise, deliberate ...

Brevity, February 28, 2023: In Praise of Conversation: Celebrating Montaigne on National Essay Day

Maybe I’m simply partial to “talking it over.” I love to turn an intriguing topic upside down, rattle it around. I still see tremendous value in sharing experience and knowledge even if disagreement is inevitable. Thought-provoking dialogue, substantive and honest, also defuses the loneliness engendered by hectic, techno-based lifestyles seldom focused on meaningful human interaction.

Braided Way, February 23, 2023 (poem): And Yet the Ages Speak

Despite the ceaseless motion of survival 
Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, may have wished 
to convey in The Tower of Babel, the world 
danced around the year 1563 as if dates 
were firm, fixed, and lasting …

Edge Magazine, August 23, 2022: Two Worlds Destined to Collide

Most of us lead solitary lives to a point, yet, I believe many adults harbor unresolved feelings about their childhood years – the town, the place, the home. Perhaps, many even yearn for the courage or passion to forsake ambitious monetary and career goals, culture and convenience, expert medical care, alluring coffee shops and innovative restaurants, even tempting French pastries, to return to their planetary roots.

Author interview, by Richard Gilbert (author, teacher, editor): We Need Memoir — Daisy Hickman on grief, youth suicides, finding the story, and self-publishing.

Eventually it occurred to me that life is more than an ending. That despite the trauma of my son’s loss and everything leading up to it, there IS something more. I will always be a dedicated student of society looking for the essential story, the universal message: a path with less suffering, deeper awareness. —D.A. Hickman, The Silence of Morning

Jonathan Franzen’s memoir The Discomfort Zone, book review

But I forgot to mention how much he loved the work of Charles Schultz as a boy, spending many pages in the book discussing Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and Lucy.  It was most endearing.  And it effectively revealed the heart of a young boy groping to understand the world around him through comic relief.

Brevity, October 11, 2019: Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

As I noted the two-year anniversary of Pirsig’s death this past year, on April 24, 2019, and gingerly anticipated the 2020 anniversary (Will the planet still be here? What might the noted author tell us about motorcycle trips and the creeping power of climate change?), I felt extremely grateful for an insightful warrior who wrote a book that, unlike us, will never expire. Not even when allowed to collect dust on an old bookshelf.

Lead poem, “Hearing Discord,” Oakwood Magazine, 2018

HEARING DISCORD 

Conformity is the dullest kind of reality,

brittle waves crashing against the shoreline

like water seeking land, again and again

I hear its straining, pounding

its poorly hidden sorrow …

Brevity, March 11, 2019: Windswept Terrain: Finding a Way to Write About Grief  

What is left to be said after death, when everyone has left the cemetery, gone home and mailed you a lovely sympathy card, and you feel more alone than ever before?

The Good Men Project, May 19, 2019: Anxious Addictive Culture Seeks Worthy Stopping Point

Clearly, we are a restless, malcontent world—people with issues—and a growing number seem unable (or unwilling) to weather the storm without turning, consciously or otherwise, to some form of addiction. The avenues to addiction are endless; it can be misleading to exclusively focus on drugs, per se. Gambling, sex, food, alcohol, video games, shopping, television, even sugar. Hard drugs are simply a deadlier form of addiction.

Author Feature, 1106 Design: D.A. Hickman, The Silence of Morning: A Memoir of Time Undone

Hickman sees memoir as an opportunity to reach out to those who think they are alone when enormous problems flow into their lives. In that spirit, Ms. Hickman wrote The Silence of Morning: A Memory of Time Undone with the goal of sharing “a profound experience that exposed, in many ways, the vagaries of the human condition.” As an author with a spiritual, sociological bent, D. Hickman was interested in the deeper, more insightful, story… .