“When we consider the title of D. E. Oprava’s epic poem “American Means” we have two directions to go. It can shed light on a rusting nation or give you the average sum of all of America’s parts. I think he attempts to blend these two together and then smudge the lines. Oprava begs you to re-evaluate how fiercely you wave the stars and stripes and to what ends it is done. “American Means” is unafraid to show the world the harrowed underbelly alive on the streets, in the small towns and behind closed doors. The journey follows our favorite deadly sins and some not so deadly through a grand personification. They are made to come alive and distract you from force-fed newsreels. This book gives America back to Americans, merging common truths understood by the everyday man and well-told poetics to which both lay and academic persons can relate. The language is smart and maintains a playful cynicism that comes from despising something you can’t help loving, America.
What we can glean from this book is a candid and frank look at how America is seen today from both the inside and the outside; from someone who grew up in these not so virgin lands, but now has distance in which to shed some light on this nation; this place of blended faces and races; this place of beaten hope; this place of cracked dreams and small victories. D. E. Oprava sets the country straight one stanza at a time. “American Means” says out loud all the things we hold in deep about what we feel in this country, but are just too damned afraid to say it. It is a book of fine poetics and truth and even hope in the darkest of places.”
-poet Aleathia Drehmer
"In a country where the corpses of political poems often litter our streets, with very little meaning being left behind, the poetry of
Oprava offers an intense hope through the examination of a variety of issues, facing not only America, but the world. "American Means" offers readers of modern verse a narrative forum on homelessness, gay marriage, religion, corporate greed, health care, history, pop culture, nostalgia, and the end of the ice age. In this one book, Oprava has accomplished what many writers spend their whole literary careers working toward, he has given value back to our dreams."
-poet John Dorsey
