List Books » In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction: A Gathering of Brief Creative Nonfiction
Authors: Mary Paumier Jones (Editor), Judith Kitchen
ISBN-13: 9780393314922, ISBN-10: 0393314928
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Date Published: July 1996
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Mary Paumier Jones lives in Rochester. Jones, who teaches creative nonfiction, has a degree in library science.
Judith Kitchen, poet, novelist, and essayist, lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where she and her husband have established a low-residency writing program. She is poetry reviewer of The Georgia Review.
Welcome to the first anthology to identify and celebrate a new nonfiction form: the Short!
Even readers skeptical of short-attention-span publishing will find these short-short (fewer than 2000 words) essays addictive. They're like a plate of Cheese Doodles at a party: not every one is crisp and perfect, but many are, and so the reader keeps going, waiting for the next flash of brilliance. The short-short essay form seems to inspire people to write about nature. Though some are flaccid, the best, such as Kathleen Norris's paean to rain and Donald Hall's wry notes about the joy we take in suffering bad weather, connect natural events to humanity. Short memoirs are poignant, and the form cuts away any sentimentality. In three paragraphs, Stuart Dybek recalls the summer nights when drivers would occasionally pass through his neighborhood with their headlights off, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. gives his family's reasoning about why white people are poor cooks. Within such a short form, the spaces between things become paramountand in the best cases make exposition unnecessary. Judson Mitcham tells of feeding his mother in the hospital, then spotting a mass of starlings on his way home. In recalling the 50 pounds of moose meat her father gave her when she departed for college in the '60s, Brenda Peterson easily explains the food chain and her place in it. The editors contribute a cogent introduction on this innovative form, and Bernard Cooper writes in his preface about how small events become powerful, then demonstrates just that principle with a concluding meditation on sighing that is both sad and funny. (July)
Preface: The Disproportionate Power of the Small | 17 | |
Editors' Introduction | 23 | |
Lights | 31 | |
All-Out Effort | 32 | |
Volar | 34 | |
Around the Corner | 37 | |
Enough Jam for a Lifetime | 39 | |
An Unspoken Hunger | 44 | |
Three Voices | 45 | |
Proofs | 48 | |
Tino & Papi | 55 | |
Last Shot | 57 | |
LZ Gator, Vietnam, February 1994 | 60 | |
Culloden | 62 | |
Afternoon Tea | 65 | |
The Shock of Teapots | 68 | |
Harbour | 72 | |
The Opposite of Saffron | 74 | |
In Praise of the Humble Comma | 79 | |
Suspended | 83 | |
The Blues Merchant | 85 | |
The Usual Story | 87 | |
Joe Turner's Come and Gone: The Play | 90 | |
Sunday | 92 | |
Mint Snowball | 94 | |
Borrowed Time | 96 | |
Loose Ends | 98 | |
Nostalgia | 100 | |
Across the Street | 102 | |
A Wind from the North | 104 | |
Snow | 107 | |
Decoy | 110 | |
Growing Up Game | 115 | |
Rose Vegetables | 120 | |
Interlude | 123 | |
Orange Who? | 125 | |
Hands | 128 | |
The Signature of God | 131 | |
My Children Explain the Big Issues | 133 | |
The Complaint | 136 | |
My Mother in Two Photographs, Among Other Things | 138 | |
Ice Cream | 142 | |
On the Street | 144 | |
Call Guy | 146 | |
Locker Room Talk | 149 | |
White Men Can't Drum | 152 | |
Cat-Like | 157 | |
MRI | 162 | |
On Two Wheels | 165 | |
Running Xian | 168 | |
A Note About Allen Tate | 172 | |
Fernando and Marisela | 175 | |
A Voice for the Lonely | 178 | |
Museum Piece | 183 | |
An End to the Still Lifes | 185 | |
Three Fragments | 191 | |
Inheritance | 193 | |
Modern Times | 194 | |
Nostalgia for Everything | 198 | |
On the Way Home | 200 | |
Falling Stars | 201 | |
Three Yards | 203 | |
The Tree Beyond Imagining | 206 | |
December Meditation at Camp Polk Cemetery | 210 | |
Notes Toward Identifying a Body | 215 | |
A Match to the Heart | 219 | |
Rain | 221 | |
Proud Flesh | 223 | |
April 15 | 227 | |
Walking | 229 | |
Into the Storm | 233 | |
Crazy Horse | 237 | |
Nacoochee Indian Mound: Helen, Georgia | 239 | |
The Stories Tell the Land | 241 | |
Sanctuary | 244 | |
Buckeye | 247 | |
August | 251 | |
Stonehenge and the Louvre Were Cool | 253 | |
Winter | 259 | |
Natural Edges | 261 | |
Good Use for Bad Weather | 264 | |
Greenhouse | 268 | |
Nature's See-Saw | 270 | |
Outside's Not What We Think | 275 | |
Falling | 280 | |
Grubby | 281 | |
Children in the Woods | 284 | |
We Are Distracted | 288 | |
One Human Hand | 293 | |
Mute Dancers: How to Watch a Hummingbird | 295 | |
Farder to Reache | 299 | |
The Fine Art of Sighing | 301 | |
Biographical Notes | 305 | |
Permissions | 321 | |
Index | 329 |