Drought: & Say What You Like [Paperback]

Debra Di Blasi (Author), Debra DiBlasi (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

What I love about Di Blasi's Drought is that sense of compression, not only in the language, but in the place itself. --Randall Brown, for Flash Fiction

[Di Blasi's] minimalist style, in Drought & Say What You Like, is brilliantly detailed, like the eye of a camera looking outward at carefully chosen elements of the landscape that make an impression of the whole.
--Voices in Italian Americana

Di Blasi is a bold talent and succeeds in a teasingly abrupt style.

--BookLovers

What's interesting about Drought is how it sustains the tension between the generic elements of tragedy and its precise manifestation in the mundane details of everyday life. --The Review of Contemporary Fiction

A stunning piece of writing... spare and lean, sexy, psychologically charged and extremely visual.... A compelling journey into [Di Blasi's] own heart of darkness. --Neon, Nevada Council for the Arts Magazine

360
Ache
Baby
Bankruptcy Worm
Blood
Buzzard
Cafe
Cicada
Cloud
Dead Calf
Dky
Drowning In Air
Drowning In Water
Drunk And Poor
Dust
Feast
Handwriting
Heron (1)
Heron (2)
House
I Desire
I Want
The Illusion Of Reain
In The Beginning
It's A Small House
It's Hot
Landscape
Last Breath
Letter
Letter
Letter
Light
Lullaby
Man
Moon
Mosquito
My Turn
Name
Pond
Praying Mantis
Precipice
Prey
Radio (1)
Radio (2)
Rain
Rape
Resemblance
Richard
Route
Say What You Like
Self-portrait
Singing
Sold
Song
Spinning In Circles
Storm
Target
Target Practice
This, Our Life
Too Bad
Town
Tropical Heat
Waitresses
We Have Each Other
Woman
Woman, Man
Wound
Writer
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 89 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; First Edition edition (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213323
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213325
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,496,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Debra Di Blasi (www.debradiblasi.com) is founding publisher of Jaded Ibis Press and president of Jaded Ibis Productions (jadedibisproductions.com). She also curates mini-exhibitions of work by emerging artists, and frequently teaches and lectures on topics related to 21st Century narrative forms.

In addition to her publishing role, Debra is an award-winning multi-genre writer and artist whose books include The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions (FC2/University of Alabama Press); Drought & Say What You Like (New Directions; New York); Prayers of an Accidental Nature (Coffee House Press; Minneapolis), What the Body Requires (Jaded Ibis); and Skin of the Sun (forthcoming). She has been favorably reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and in many other publications.

Awards include a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Thorpe Menn Book Award, Cinovation Screenwriting Award, and Diagram Innovative Fiction Award.

Her writing has been published in a many leading anthologies of innovative and experimental writing and has been adapted to film, radio, theatre, and audio CD in the U.S. and abroad. Her essays, art reviews and articles can be found in a variety of international, national and regional publications.

The short film based on her novella Drought was directed by Lisa Moncure and won a host of national and international awards, including being only six US films invited to the Universe Elle section of the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival. Her visual art has been exhibited at galleries and museums in the U.S. and virtually.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This one must be experienced., January 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Drought: & Say What You Like (Paperback)

Half prose, and half poetry, this story is hard to categorize as far as form. But it grabs you, as does the style and voice. It grips you and won't let you turn away. After finishing this story, and it is a short read, I started right back in on it, to see if what had just happened, actually happened.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Postmodern American Gothic, June 14, 2000

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drought: & Say What You Like (Paperback)

The review title is borrowed from the blurb on the back of the paperback. It is as good a description of this unique writing style as you will get. The list of poems making up Drought is a bit misleading - in general the segments are prose poems ... or prose. However, there is a narrative line - a very powerful tale of the death of a relationship within the stress of drought.

The second piece "Say what you like" is less memorable than "Drought". In this case the relationship includes abuse - and when the relationship disolves the identity of the individuals is rendered uncertain in the best postmodern style.

A new poet/author's whose work is well worth watching.