The Mind Creative March 2014
Here are some works from well known exponents of this literary
style.
Russell Edson is an award-winning American
poet, novelist, writer and illustrator
There was a man who didn't know how to sleep;
nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional
sleep. Sleep that he'd grown so tired of sleeping. He
tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him
to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so
tired of sleeping . . .
He needed a sleeping master, who with a whip and a
chair would discipline the night, and make him jump
through hoops of gasolined fire. Someone who could
make a tiger sit on a tiny pedestal and yawn . . .
Gary Eugene Young is an American poet,
printer and book artist. In 2010, he was named
the first ever Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz county.
My son is learning about death, about the
possibilities. His cat was killed. Then Mark died, then
Ernesto. He watched the news, and saw soldiers
bulldozed into the earth after battle. Down the road,
a boy his age was found floating in a pond. My son
says, we're careful about water, and splashes in his
own warm bath. We don't want to die, he says, we
want to live forever. We only just die later, he says,
and nods his head. Death is comprehensible; what
comes later is a week away, or two, and never arrives.
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