Product Description

Russell Edson's prose poems constitute some of the most original American art of the 20th century. Like the boxes of Joseph Cornell, each is a miniature world, eerie in its logic, unsettling in its ruthless fun, dazzling in its invention. Much of Edson's corpus has been out of print or difficult to find for some time now. This new selection offers his own favorites from seven previous collections, restoring Edson to his large and international audience and introducing him to new readers who are committed to what is truly original and illuminating in language, imagination, and poetry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #295364 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback

Review
"The Tunnel selects from nearly three decades of writing by the perversely unique Russell Edson, who occupies a closet in the house of American poetry that most readers (and writers) dare not even open.... A magnificent book. The microscopic precision and intuitive leaps evident throughout the book confirm that Edson is not merely an offbeat original but a profound contemporary poet deserving of wider recognition" -- Rain Taxi

Customer Reviews

Great selection of odd, dark prose poems
Edson is one of the most prominent poets working in the field of prose poetry; this collection contains some of his best work from many different books. The poems are short and often have a dark and absurdist feel to them, as in "The Damaged Ape" wherein a family discovers that the ape they recently bought has defects when a little piece of its nostril falls off. This is probably my favorite poetry book, I highly recommend it. There are some good web pages about Edson where you can read some of his work; he is IMHO one of the best-kept secrets in modern poetry.

Broadly accessible prose poems, rewarding, and unique.
I read this book with a poetry reading book club and it was one of the club's favorites. Edson writes often surreal philosophical fables which are easy to enter into because of their familiar, "There once was a woman who..." language. However, this river runs deep.

Great fun, and sometimes profound
Don't let yourself get all tangled in the arguments over what is and isn't a prose poem, or even if such an oxymoronic creature is possible. It doesn't matter what you call them, these things by Russell Edson are great fun and great reading.

Most of these pieces are about a page long, and many are considerably shorter. They are moments of dreams, newsreels from some surreal purgatory, portraits of impossibility. In this world, "Mr Is went into the woods to think about his wooden head," and "A woman had given birth to an old man." Within the oddity and amidst the strangeness are moments of tenderness, passion, horror. Read slowly and carefully, these words somehow seem to reflect the world we trudge through and the life we lead, and so add contours to our boring reality. There is a lot of melancholy here; it comes perhaps from the confusions and juxtapositions, but there is nothing to fear, and plenty to love, for, as Edson writes, "In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy..."