#russell edson

[iwtv]

this house has people in it (2016) / "the dog" by russell edson

[ma-pi-ma]

Ricorda, le parole sono il nemico della poesia.

Russell Edson

[whisperthatruns]

The Cottage in the Wood

He has built himself a cottage in a wood, near where the insect rubs its wings in song. Yet, without measure, or a proper sense of scale, he has made the cottage too small. He realizes this when only his hand will fit through the door. He tries the stairs to the second floor with his fingers, but his arm wedges in the entrance. He wonders how he shall cook his dinner. He might get his fingers through the kitchen windows, but even so, the stove's too tiny to cook enough food; the pots are like thimbles and bottle caps. He must also lie unsheltered in the night even though a tiny bed, with its covers turned down, waits for him in the cottage. He curls himself around the cottage, listening to the insect that rubs its wings in song...

Russell Edson, text from Sean Singer’s daily email, The Sharpener

[nsfwbible]

Like birds, and yet so human . . .

Angels

They have little use. They are best as objects of torment.

        No government cares what you do with them.         Like birds, and yet so human . . .         They mate by briefly looking at the other.         Their eggs are like white jellybeans.         Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have.         But what is there for a man to do with his life?         . . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame.         When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it 

The poem is by Russell Edson, from The Tormented Mirror (2001).

The sculpture is Damien Hirst’s Anatomy of an Angel (2008), photographed by Klaudia Karpinska.

[razorsadness]

How Things Will Be

    for James Tate

    …The kitchen will always be hungry then. The cupboard won’t even find a bone.     The bedrooms will lie awake at night, blank-eyed against the whispery shuffle of hallways wandering back and forth, like blind mice looking for their eyes.

    History in voluminous skirts waddled by knocking courage off the table.     The singing by the river turns out to be a radio plugged into the mouth of a corpse.     In a nearby field a butterfly is being folded up by a praying mantis into a small bright package.

    …A tub of arthritic blood: Mother Hubbard kills the Sphinx.     In a dresser drawer a ruined city of hemorrhoids.

    This… and the moon…

—Russell Edson, from Little Mr. Prose Poem (BOA Editions, 2022)

[ramyeongif]

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....

Russel Edson (Let Us Consider)

[manwalksintobar]

The Twilight of the Gods  // Russell Edson

A man had stuffed a huge dummy. Then he climbed up on it and sat on its knee. When he tired of this he alit and took out a small dummy and sat it on his knee. When he tired of this he would take out a tiny dummy and sit it on the small dummy's knee. Sometimes he would again sit on the huge dummy's knee with the small dummy on his knee, and the tiny dummy seated on the small dummy's knee... And all to sit there as the twilight empties slowly through the dusk...

[biblioklept]

"The Definition" -- Russell Edson

“The Definition” by Russell Edson He that puts suicide into his left ear pretends it is wax. His mother says, but it’s a bullet which you have shot yourself with. Is that how I died? he said. That’s when the funeral began, it was like a flower festival; your father asked me to marry him, and with much declining as to appear of greater value I agreed. Of the two of us, your father and I, so…

[dyediris]

[lonelychambersofmyheart]

[noleavestoblow]

“What shall I do? screamed his son. Sit until time embraces you into the bosom of its velvet quiet, cried the father. Like this? cried his son as his son became dust.”

― Russell Edson

[iwtv]

russell edson

[h00dsw0rld]

Louis Russell

[recents]

"he's nice!" well he wants to be and he could be but he isn't yet "he's mean!" well he is but have you perhaps considered why.

but no one heard the beautiful angel singing her incredibly complicated incredibly complex difficult to understand beautiful truths into the beautiful air and the two armies charged into the valley and killed each other over and over with spears adn rocks forever . andthen a new thing came out. the end

[firstfullmoon]

Russell Edson, from “The Marionettes of Distant Masters”

[ramyeongif]

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....

Russel Edson (Let Us Consider)