See Jack

by Russell Edson

Overview

“An artist who moonlights as a dentist. A worm who's eternal. A farmer who milks his cow to death. Not to mention the guy with a belly button for an eye. Russell Edson, self-named Little Mr. Prose Poem, returns with See Jack, a book of fractured fairy tales, whose impeccable logic undermines logic itself, a book that champions what he has called elsewhere 'the dark uncomfortable metaphor.' 'What better way to die,' he writes in the final prose poem, 'than waiting for the fat lady to sing in the make-believe of theater, where nothing's real, not the fat lady, not even death . . . ' See Jack may be Edson's best book yet—proof that his imaginative powers keep growing. What a deliciously scary thought!” —Peter Johnson

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822978251
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	04/05/2009
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Russell Edson was a playwright, novelist, and poet. He authored eighteen previous poetry collections, including The Tormented Mirror, The Reason Why the Closet-Man is Never Sad, The Wounded Breakfast: Ten Poems, and The Tunnel: Selected Poems.

Table of Contents

Contents 1 Accidents The Addiction After the Concert The Applicant But Not a Couch, Dear Child Captain Cow The Conversation The Country Life Dear Self The Dear Son The Death of Goldilocks Dogs The Dummies Eggs The Endless Night The Eternal Worm The Fallen Maestro The Family Trust The Great Fall 2 The Gross Situation How the Bull Lost His Mind The Hunger The Indefinite Article The Leaking The Life of Man Love A Lovely Cloud Poem to a Dear Friend The Man with a Sudden Desire to Bark at the Moon A Man Who Went for a Walk The Man Who Would Think of the Universe Margaret’s Book The Marination Mashed Potatoes The Moonlighters The Movie Star Myopia Nature 3 Of the Night An Old Man Putting an Old Man to Bed An Old Man’s Soup One Man’s Story The Plagiarists Portrait of a Headache Portrait of a Realist The Prisms of Grief The Royal Jewels The Royal Sitting Organ See Jack The Sensual Past A Song of Likelihoods Space Journey The Theory of Jack’s Death To Stop, To Go No More The Tradition The Transfigurations Waiting for the Fat Lady to Sing Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

In his 19th collection of prose poems, Edson's imagination remains as bizarre as ever, although he breaks no new ground. Edson inflicts deformities of body and character onto his humans and inanimate objects alike, introducing, for example, "a woman whose face was a cow's milk bag" or a man who "had only one eye. In the other socket was a belly button." The humor in these passages-such as when a man puts a hat on his head and "the hat thinks he's feeding it, and begins to swallow his head," is often mingled with obscene or oddly tragic moments, as when a farmer announces to his wife that he is going to have sex with the cow he is about to slaughter. There are also rare instances of poignant beauty, such as a man whose daughter is a mouse, pressed dead between the pages of a book like a flower. Edson's fragmented tales often trail off into ellipses that alternately seem like lazy storytelling or a provocative tool. But longtime Edson fans will find as much to enjoy as in Edson's other books. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

The profundity of Edson’s genius has perhaps never been as fully appreciated as it should, in spite of his fervent following. But Edson is one of the few poets one would trust to survive an encounter with death itself and find ever new terrain for poetry. ‘See Jack’ is as much the capstone of a singular career as it is a point of departure for Edson’s ongoing practice of things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”
—Kenyon Review


“Edson continues to build his legend by writing sad, serious, strange, and funny prose poems. No one writes like Edson, though many prose poets wish they could and have imitated him for decades. This new volume perpetuates the myth, presenting fresh and insightful paragraphs on everything from internal worms to an old man’s soup to a man barking at the moon.”
—Bloomsbury Review


“Edson is one of the most significant practitioners of the prose poem in contemporary American letters.”
—Rain Taxi

“Edson’s prose poems are like fables. Each opens a window onto a world that is absurd and ruthless, funny and perverse. . . . an enjoyable new book.” 
—Pleiades

From the Publisher