Charles Rafferty - Böcker

In this fascinating new collection by longtime poet Charles Rafferty, evocative prose poems insert strange and mysterious twists into otherwise mundane middle-class scenarios. With wonderful intelligence and imagination, these compact, revelatory poems show us what is possible when we jettison accepted devices of thought for methods that are stranger, and much truer.Charles Rafferty is the author of six collections of poetry, one collection of stories, and two poetry chapbooks. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT, where he works at a technology research firm, directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College, and teaches in the Westport Writers' Workshop.

Charles Rafferty’s latest collection of prose poems turns philosophical. In A Cluster of Noisy Planets, Rafferty captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside. With a knowing nod to the passage of time—day to day, year to year, epoch to epoch—these lyrical poems form a record of the profound, ephemeral joys, losses, and echoes of commonplace moments.

As a second-wave veteran of the form, Charles Rafferty has emerged as one of America’s greatest living prose poets. Rafferty’s new collection, The Appendectomy Grin, is a model of the sort of bemused, domestic poeticism (or is it pessimism?) that only a master prose poet can deliver.Compact in size, but massive in scope, these poems explore the death of self, country, and planet, while remaining grounded in humor and the miracles of everyday life. In a world that is changing faster than ever, The Appendectomy Grin is a deep breath, a meditation, a rhythmic tickle fight, a slightly off-kilter manual on how to remain present and lucid in a world that seems intent on destroying itself.The result is an argument you cannot disbelieve by a poet leaving his unique scuffmarks on the linoleum kitchen floor of the world. Does the executioner have a rationale for the order of our beheadings? Ask Charles Rafferty. The answer is in the book.