Russell Edson

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About this author

Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself "Little Mr. Prose Poem," is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson's typical "recipes" for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed--both figuratively and literally--by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and th...more

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Books by Russell Edson

Average rating: 4.16 · 1,125 ratings · 140 reviews · 23 distinct works

	The Tunnel: Selected Poems 4.37 avg rating — 337 ratings — published 1994 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Tormented Mirror 4.22 avg rating — 105 ratings — published 2001	My rating:
	The Rooster's Wife 3.92 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 2005 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Reason Why the Closet-Man Is Never Sad 4.50 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 1977 — 2 editions	My rating:
	See Jack 3.63 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 2009	My rating:
	The Clam Theater 4.62 avg rating — 24 ratings	My rating:
	The Wounded Breakfast 4.57 avg rating — 23 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Intuitive Journey and Other Works 4.47 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 1976	My rating:
	The Song of Percival Peacock 3.95 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1992	My rating:
	The Very Thing That Happens: Fables and Drawings 4.75 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1964	My rating:

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Quotes by Russell Edson

“ Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....

Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’
tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips
in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given
to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which
saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in
vanity....

Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,
whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man
who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for
dessert served himself a chilled fedora.... ”
― Russell Edson

3 people liked it

“I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly
hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head,
therefore I am.
No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.
So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.
You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit,
cried the man.

. . . I think, therefore I am, said the man.
I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets
hit, said the man's mother.
But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he
could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am,
and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it . . .”
― Russell Edson

1 person liked it

“Perhaps I should kiss the face of the kitchen clock for luck. Perhaps its little hands with rapture would encircle my neck and we might be happy. I am sure happiness is not too far away”
― Russell Edson

1 person liked it

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Poetry Readers Ch...: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice. Edited by Gary L, McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek.	7	11	Mar 03, 2011 02:43pm

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