Customer Reviews

The Rooster's Wife (American Poets Continuum)

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If I could nominate a writer for the title of "Best Kept Secret in American Literature," my nominee would have to be Russell Edson. For more than forty years the reculsive prose poet has traveled on the margins of mainstream literature, establishing himself among a select group of readers as a master craftsman. His short phantasmagoric parables are at once sublime AND ridiculous, consistently entertaining, and boldly introspective. Edson uses the ordinary elements of daily life situations to launch us into a dimension of absurdist unreality that informs the reader as dreams inform the wakened dreamer.
In this, his newest book, Edson proves no less powerful, no less cunning, no less brilliant. There are new relationships between familiar objects, new objects born of familiar relationships, and acres of fresh imaginative terrain to discover. But, be warned, you who enjoy the bald "meaningfulness" so popular in American pablum-poetics (thanks, Billy Collins), THE ROOSTER'S WIFE requires all your intelligence, your full attention, and your sense of humor. So, push aside your presumptions of poetic form and meaning, and wander the impossible landscape of America's Most Neglected Master. Read Russell Edson's THE ROOSTER'S WIFE.

I have long been a fan of Russell Edson for his unique and thoroughly abstract prosetry, but this book is not his top work. Although the poems do hold true to his usual surreal writing style, many of the pieces seem forced, almost as though they were included to stretch the length of the book. Russell Edson is a wonderful poet and truly underappreciated artist, but this book is not up to snuff. If you are interested in getting to know some of his work, I would start with one of his other books (like "The Tormented Mirror") before you pick up "The Rooster's Wife".

An excellent book, but not for those who don't like surrealism or abstractness. I loved it. Wise, and inimitable.