Ars Poetica: A Postmodern Parable.
By Clay Reynolds. Huntsville: Texas Review Press, dist. by TAMU Consortium, 2003. ISBN: 1881515486 pbk. Winner of the 2002 Texas Review Fiction Prize. http://www.shsu.edu/~www_trp/
Well, Clay went and added a new element to his mix. He’s prolific and here he’s delightful. This novel features an aging English professor – poet and the hilarious and deadpan life within which the poetry of life occurs. The novel’s geographic locale is attributed to West Texas, but “place” elements are secondary. Clay’s a native, studied here, taught here, and written here. When he writes fictionally about the academic writers’ world, he takes off and the story tumbles onward.
Well, Clay went and added a new element to his mix. He’s prolific and here he’s delightful. This novel features an aging English professor – poet and the hilarious and deadpan life within which the poetry of life occurs. The novel’s geographic locale is attributed to West Texas, but “place” elements are secondary. Clay’s a native, studied here, taught here, and written here. When he writes fictionally about the academic writers’ world, he takes off and the story tumbles onward.
This volume is for adults; yes, you know what that means; poets do more than count syllables; apparently poets go to bed, drink, curse, and carouse, and this can affect domestic equanimity and prompt social promotion of community mores. The plot centers on an academic poet caught in the spiral of success, or failure as the case may be.
The structure is as interesting as the plot; the chapter-head quotations allude to the content and each chapter begins with retrospective perambulations before the active plot proceeds. Sensuous and sinewy.
See also: http://www.clayreynolds.info/
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