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God Bless the Experimental Writers
“One beginning and one ending for a book
was a thing I did not agree with.”
Flann O’Brien from At Swim-Two-Birds
God bless the experimental writers.
The ones whose work is a little
difficult, built of tinkertoys
and dada, or portmanteau and
Reich. God help them as they
type away, knowing their readers
are few, only those who love to toil
over an intricate boil of language,
who think books are secret codes.
These writers will never see their names
in Publisher’s Weekly. They will
never be on the talk shows. Yet,
every day they disappear into their
rooms atop their mother’s houses,
or their guest houses behind some
lawyer’s estate. Every day they
tack improbable word onto im-
probable word, out of love, children,
out of a desire to emend the world.
Grow Fins
“These days of disinheritance we feast on human heads.”
Wallace Stevens
There’s a rumble like
glass unmaking itself.
I look at my hands and
they’re not my hands.
This tergiversatory life
is as difficult as the word
tergiversatory. Werewolf,
bat, manticore. I once
loved you and was a simpler
man then. Back when
the nights were shorter
and less rampageous.
It’s beastly, to put it mildly.
***
COREY MESLER is the owner of Burke’s Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Yellow Silk, Pindeldyboz, Green Egg, Black Dirt, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. He has worked in the book business all his adult life, if he has had an adult life. He is also a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf and BookPage. He’s been a pirate, a pauper, a puppet, a poet, a pawn and a king. A short story of his has been chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel, published by Algonquin Books. He also claims to have written, “All Along the Watchtower.” Talk, his first novel, appeared in 2002 from Livingston Press.. He is now at work on a collection of linked stories, built from poorly remembered history and bent mythology. He enjoys racquet sports and ‘rough toweling.” Most importantly, he is Toby and Chloe’s dad and Cheryl’s husband.
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