DANCING TOWARD EVENING
Poems of romance, resilience, and second chances.
DANCING TOWARD EVENING
by Jim Dulicai
Hear the rhythm, the cycle of life in the poetry of Dancing Toward Evening: Love at first sight never ends, though the dancer is gone. Still, the poet embraces the tango spirit — close and open, tender and erotic, playful and sorrowful….
Do you believe in romance? Read on.
Read slowly, let emotion breathe. Read this out loud, flow with the music of poetry, its waltzes and dirges, its swing and sonatas, its exaltation of life….
Do you believe in joy, the other side of grief? Feel it all.
Feel deeply, this harmony of love…resonating as two lives mesh, muddle through, and mature…echoing even as one life fades…then resounding as the hot jazz of new passion – if only for a while….
Do you believe it’s never too late to love again?
Say yes.
EARLY REVIEWS
“I started reading Dancing Toward Evening without intending to read it all in one sitting. But I was so captivated that I kept going from the earliest love poems right to the Coda. Sustained by the excellence of its writing and its sequential approach, the book reads as a whole narrative filled with tender, sensitive poems that move confidently from despair to renewed erotic joy.”
-Greg Vitiello, Director, The Pegasus Prize for Literature; author of Spoleto Viva, published by Rizzoli; editor of Eisenstaedt: Germany, published by Harry N. Abrams, and of Joyce Images, published by WW Norton.“True to the title, dance forms a heartfelt lifeline through this lovely collection of poems. Tango, in particular, emerges in its impassioned physicality, leaving the reader breathless with the idea of what is and what might be. Like an evening of tango, this slim volume is an emotional journey that engages all the senses — an experience to be savored and read again and again.”
– Susan Reynolds, editor (retired) for the American Psychological Association and professional tango performer.“How do you find your bearings when the centre of gravity in the soul shifts after loss? This book is a high-rope balancing act; it is as much a tribute to love, as it is a dance through the quicksands of sorrow. Jim Dulicai moves to the music left in the wake of missing the love of his life, in a culture that does not know what to do with death. Through this dislocation the poems reassert our need for connection one dance, one poem, one dinner, one story at a time. Memories and the silences between are like fireflies speaking their own language in the night of grief. Pain is word-smithed into beauty, a beauty that can transform us, if we let it.”
—Daniela Elza, PhD, the recipient of the 2024 Colleen Thibaudeau Award for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. Her most recent books are Scar/city (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025) and Is This an Illness or an Accident? (Caitlin Press, 2025)“Dancing Toward Evening is reminiscent of Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking - How through the grief of the one who lives, we come to know the one who has died, and we come to know the beautiful arc of their lives together. We see how memories – both sweet and heartbreaking - can return unbidden…and yet be welcomed, even treasured. Dulicai courageously and creatively shows us that by remembering, love is sustained, told, and made real for all time. Among the many memories that Dancing Toward Evening makes into art is this: “Tango is TENSION, release, flooow. DO IT.” That gives words to one of his wife Dianne’s central movement truths: to live with both abandon and composure, loving the dynamic act of life.”
— Sherry Goodill, PhD, BC-DMT, Clinical Professor Emerita, Drexel University Department of Creative Arts Therapies, Dance/Movement Therapist