Crime of the Extraordinary: A Book Review by Inga Zhghent
Crime of the Extraordinary (Hawakal Publishers, 2024), a Poetry Collection by Dustin Pickering
The Quest for the Meaning through Language and Archetypes
When I first read the title of Dustin Pickering’s new poetry collection, Crime of the Extraordinary, one pressing question ran through my mind: Is it possible to convey macro themes such as the psychological and philosophical concept of Dostoevsky’s “Extraordinary Man,” absurdity and absurdism, the search for meaning in human existence and the self, and death and mortality through the compressed form of micropoetry? I then recalled Thomas Jefferson’s point about talent, stating that “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Yet the question of why a poet would decide on such a rare and difficult form still lingered. Pickering’s collection ultimately demonstrates that this decision is neither arbitrary nor accidental. Eventually, I arrived at the conclusion that one of the reasons Pickering’s artistic strategy to put complex discourses into micropoetry could be a deliberate creative decision shaped by today’s prevailing impulse to absorb more through less. The poet’s talent has demonstrated that this is indeed possible.
From this starting point, Pickering’s minimalist poems bring forth the grand themes of Dostoevsky’s voice of conscience, death, mortality, existential void, absurdity, the quest for self, personhood, and cosmic reflection in the human microcosm through allusive and metaphoric perspectives. Allusion and metaphor dominate as figurative methods to convey these themes. The book unfolds as a journey into the idea of existence across many dimensions, one of them being language. On the one hand, the poem Universal Grammar acknowledges the power of language, recognizing the sacred connection between language and mind, its structure, and human behavior. On the other hand, it declares the failure of language to carry the capacity to stipulate meaning and certainty: “Architecture of mind defines the pining field of language… Devoid of sense certainty…”
This preoccupation with paradox and contradiction is carried further into the collection’s literary allusions. In The Theater of the Double, the phrase “Love is crime of the extraordinary” appears as a reconfiguration of Raskolnikov’s transgression into a paradox of perceiving love as crime, while “I feel guilt and shame at being naked / before the muse…” from The Book mirrors Raskolnikov’s tortured conscience.
Building on these Dostoevskian echoes, the collection turns toward broader philosophical concerns. The exploration of unresolved questions of life and death, good and evil, mortality and eternity are often exposed through irony and humor. One distinct theme throughout the collection is the interrelation of life and death. Much of the book is haunted by intersections between the two, where death is explored from multiple and even contradictory perspectives. For instance, death is viewed through both horror and beauty: in Restlessness, death is envisioned as unavoidable existential awe and an embrace of beauty— “The furtive agony within the human soul … is like a flower, dangerous and kind”—while in Exodus from Reality of Life, it appears as a burden filled with the agony of escapism.
At the same time, even within this atmosphere of tension, the lyrical hero is most often heard as a tortured figure confronting agonizing and unresolved questions of life, death, absurdity, and meaning. Yet the poetic voice nonetheless stands firm in its refusal to abandon the search for life’s meaning and the true purpose of the self. In Being and Becoming One’s Self, the lines “My ego crams thoughts from archetypes and memories. / Subconscious parallel universe it seems” allude to Jungian archetypal struggles for authentic selfhood and Kierkegaard’s “becoming oneself” discourses, drawing the reader into the unresolved quest for self and personhood.
In continuation of this search, the poet also uses irony and paradox to showcase the absurd cycle of existence. In Origins, the question “What comes first? / The chicken or the egg? / The same material composes both” places unresolved existential issues on the border of absurdist and logical reasoning.
Taken together, Crime of the Extraordinary demonstrates the surprising capacity of micropoetry to address the largest questions of human existence. By compressing vast philosophical discourses into fragments of allusion, metaphor, and paradox, Dustin Pickering reveals that brevity can bear the weight of profundity.
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Dr. Inga Zhghenti is a Fulbright Scholar, translator, and literary scholar whose work bridges Georgian and American cultures. She has translated Samuel Beckett, Louise Glück, Emily Dickinson, John Updike, Diane di Prima, and leading Georgian poets, with publications in the international poetry platform Versopolis, Georgia’s leading literary journal Arili, and Upsala Literature Magazine (Sweden). Active as a reviewer, editor, and cultural advocate, she is a Visiting Professor of English at DeVry University, teaching Composition and Advanced Composition, and directs Language Arts at the Georgian-American Cultural Center Dancing Crane in New York. She speaks internationally on literature, translation, and identity, advancing dialogue across languages and cultures through scholarship and creativity. Facebook – Instagram
