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The Tormented Mirror
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This is the first book in the Pitt Poetry Series by this popular and enigmatic poet, considered the foremost writer of prose poetry in America. In eleven collections over thirty years, Edson has created his own poetic genre, a surreal philosophical fable, easy to enter, but difficult to leave behind. In The Tormented Mirror, Edson continues and refines his form in seventy-three new poems.
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Book preview
The Tormented Mirror - Russell Edson
PITT POETRY SERIES
Ed Ochester, Editor
THE TORMENTED MIRROR
RUSSELL EDSON
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
The publication of this book is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Copyright © 2001, Russell Edson
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 0-8229-5763-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-7981-4 (electronic)
for Frances
CONTENTS
1
The Haunted House
The Secret Graveyard
A Letter From Home
Characters
An Old Woman's Children
Genital Secrets
Monkey Achievement
That. . .
Sweet Tooth
The Babies
The Flowerpot
The Glandular Condition
The Key
The Laws
The New Father
The Position
The Sleeper's Dark
The Tormented Mirror
Where Charity Begins
2
The Antiques Shop
Accidents
Baby Pianos
Balls
Madam's Heart
Meanwhile. . .
Pork Chops
Sleep
The Academic Sigh
A Redundancy of Horses
The Alfresco Moment
The Bloodworthy Correspondence
The Breast
The Clock
The Horse of Fashion
Sunset
Urinating
On the Writing of a Prose Poem
3
Poetry
Bread
Feathers
Medical Stew
Nocturne
One Who Bathes in Moonlight
Symmetry
The Fruit Bowl
The Joy Attendant on the Little Journey
The Message
The Passion
The Rabbit Story
Night Song
The Square Wheel
The Stuff of Dreams
The Traveling Circus
The Veterinarian
Under Great Light Flooded Clouds
4
The Grinding
Allegory
Angels
An Observer of Incidentality
Sanity
Round
Chickens
Nice
The Encounter
The Bath
The Night Invaded
The Method
The Reality Argument
The Theory
The Twilight of the Gods
Thus Spake Polly
The Rule and Its Exception
Wings
1
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
Now the house of earth was not always a house. There was a time when nothing rotted. A time only of sanitary atoms. There were no smells, no blood clots, no flowers, no mice. And the earth was with egg or sperm.
Death arrived with life. They were lovers from the beginning. They fed each other. Life fed death, but death also fed life. It was their habit, they could not live without the other.
The God said, let there be life, but let it be guarded by death …
THE SECRET GRAVEYARD
Elephants like burlap underwear. It wears better than silk and has more style.
They're shy about this appetite. Underwear embarrasses them.
When the desire overtakes them they head for the secret graveyard of elephants. No one knows where that is. They feel safe there.
Surrounded by the bleached bones of their ancestors they shyly submit themselves to the delicious feel of burlap. They feel more naked wearing it. They don't know why, and so they giggle.
Of course they cannot reenter the forest wearing underwear. A hyena might laugh. Tarzan is another thought …
Sadly they must leave their underwear in the bones of their ancestors.
They
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