Ceremonies in Bachelor Space

by Russell Edson, Rick Schober (Designer)

Russell Edson's debut collection of stories and poems, Ceremonies in Bachelor Space , was first published in November 1951 by the now defunct Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Ceremonies in Bachelor Space contains 31 odd, surreal poems and short stories by the then 21-year-old Edson that portend the style he would master in his critically-acclaimed prose poetry and novels later in his career. This new edition has been completely reformatted while preserving as much of the original edition's innovative layout and typography as possible.

78 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2020

About the author

Russell Edson (December 12, 1928 – April 29, 2014) was an American poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. He was the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson.

He studied art early in life and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. He began publishing poetry in the 1960s. His honors as a poet include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and lived 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 the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .

Reclusive by nature, Edson has still managed to publish eleven books of prose poems and one novel, The Song of Percival Peacock (available from Coffee House Press).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Rare photo of Russell Edson as a young man

As America's foremost prose poet, Russell Edson (1928-2014) counts a number of chapbooks, plays, short stories, fables along with two novels and many full-length prose poem collections to his credit. For most readers, when it comes to Russell Edson, the prose poems are the thing - and for good reason: Edson's prose poems are short (usually less than a page), pithy, powerful and oh, so very accessible. Here are two examples:

FATHER FATHER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
A man straddling the apex of his roof cries, giddyup. The house rears up on its back porch and all its bricks fall apart and the house crashes to the ground.
His wife cries from the rubble, father father, what have you done?

THE LONELY TRAVELER
He's a lonely traveler, and finds companion in the road, a chance meeting seeing as how they were both going the same way.
. . . Only, the road had already arrived at its end; like a long snake, its eyes closed to the distance, asleep . . .

One can ask: What kind of writing did such a unique poetic voice produce in his younger years, prior to hitting upon his distinctive, highly original prose poems? The answer is provided in Ceremonies in Bachelor Space, a collection of short-short stories, poems and notes originally published in 1951 when Edson was a lad of 21. And there's great news: this collection is currently republished by Tough Poets Press in a handsome, affordable edition.

The pieces are quirky, prickly and oh, so very Edson. As by way of example, below are the beginning of two of the stories, the first lines of two poems and two of the notes. I highly recommend this collection, most especially for Russell Edson fans.

THE FEAR
I am going to the hills. I have finished my stay here. They ask me where I will go; I do not know; but that I crave hills, I shall be that place of hills.
How I miss this landscape - the shadow-drift of the area. Shadows gaining into the mind, engraved there as scenery of the mind.

THE VILLAGER
I have an ugly face though my mother and father were considered good looking. They say, I must be a throwback to some rather ugly ancestor, who, being so long ago, is not remembered by any in the village, though I imagine many in the village sit at night trying to recall the ugly ancestor of mind. Of course it is none of their business; but they feel it is, since all of us in this village are related somewhat to each other, and they feel it is in a way a village blemish. Their thought is obviously totalitarian.

OH MOTHER MOTHER IT IS BROKEN
Oh mother mother it is broken
Trees and days
And leaf taken
And the clatter
And the sky bladder
And mother
And all sky
And all things
Such as things seem

REMEMBRANCE
A wingless person walks
on the scopes of land,
Unvisioned as we see,
And rarely so
And so constant of the forest -
Til perhaps the house beyond the sight -
And he submerges in a rock or valley below -
Stumbles on the saplinged hill -
Enters behind a window and is still.

NOTES
Salid is a green and glorious death; eat it, turn it earth. Turn your head - Speak; and deliver not the greenery on your breath when you speak so
. . . Nor rump-steak recall most vivid bull who fought to lead, and now lies passive to my plate. Nor drapes recall the fields of flax. Relax, for the wine is not grape nor wine nor sun; nor anything . . . . . Speak!

I remember when first I stopped in spring and heard little winters filling my mind; then was your name applauded in my lips, as babbler harlot, I caught all things to heart.
Till land is rust: my autumn come.

[Adam Lazarus]

This was hard to get in to compared to The Tunnel: Selected Poems. Towards the beginning, I battled the questionable notion that I picked up throughout middleschool/highschool that poetry is something to be deciphered and deconstructed. It was much more thrilling, curious and energetic once I allowed myself to ditch those notions.
To me, Edsons writing in this book is situated (or not situated) in this space where language and form isn’t necessarily meant to serve the reader anything on a silver platter- it exists candidly on the page as a phenomena spat out by Edson, as an intermingling place of thought, feeling and intimacy which the reader taps in to. The writing is stream of consciousness and simultaneously very considered, unforgiving yet generous. This style of his writing keeps me always on the edge of feeling or knowing or enjoying, on the edge of something pinpoint-able but still cloudy.
It’s interesting to see how his later poetry, in comparison to this book, still deals with similar themes but with more poignancy while maintaining the risk factor and playfulness of what is represented in this book of earlier stuff.
I like how the layout of this publication had a similar sense of playfulness as the works that comprise it, by jumping between prose and poetry, capitalization and bold, etc.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the small amount of Edson I’ve read now, I like his later work more, but this still has some shiners. I’m curious to know if this Tough Poets Press reprint is pretty true to the original manuscript in terms of the varying typefaces/font sizes, poem titles placed at the bottom of the page, etc. I can’t imagine that was an editorial decision—insane, and how?—- but maybe the zaniness would have been gentler were I leafing through a stained piece of ephemera, and not a new possibly printed on demand book.

“I have an ugly face though my mother and father were considered good looking. They say I must be a throwback to some rather ugly ancestor who, being so long ago, is not remember by any in the village, though I imagine many in the village sit at night trying to recall the ugly ancestor of mine.”

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a few poems to get used to Edson's style but then I got really into it - thrown into intimate, honest spaces I didn't know were coming. There is a rawness to this poetry, which is a deceptive rawness. In fact, each piece is quite composed. This is my first exposure to Edson but certainly won't be my last.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gertrude Stein wanna be ("The rosen hill, Rose, we upward the rosen hill . . . / Rose after, Rose fore. Rose is my secret door"), including verbs as nouns nouns as verbs and other "make it new"-isms, that make the poetry so new you'd swear it was blather. Note to self: Avoid all poetry requiring secret decoder rings.

[edmondegreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book.