The Pushcart Prize XLIII: Best of the Small Presses 2019 Edition - Hardcover

Henderson, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1888889888 ISBN 13: 9781888889888

Publisher: Pushcart Press, 2018

Synopsis

“More good poems, essays and stories are found in these presses than any other place on the planet.” Richard Ford

This 43rd edition of the annual Pushcart Prize – the most celebrated literary series in America – is further proof that these days the heat and heart of contemporary writing is often found in small presses scattered around the country and the world, far from the pressures of commercial centers. As the variety of selections in PUSHCART PRIZE XLIII indicates, it is a diverse community constantly infused by new stories, essays and poetry from small press authors with a vision of what is honest and vital. Over 70 authors are included from more than 50 presses.

Winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, the Poets & Writers/Barnes & Nobel Writers For Writers recognition, and named with Pushcart Press as one of the most influential publications in the development of America publishing over the past century by Publishers Weekly, the Pushcart Prize presents over 600 pages of literary brilliance from both new and established authors.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Henderson is the founder and editor of the Pushcart Prize. He received the 2006 National Book Critic Circle’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Poets & Writers / Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. He is also the author of several memoirs, including All My Dogs: A Life. The founder of the Lead Pencil Club, Henderson lives on Long Island and In Maine where he runs the Pushcart bookstore – “the world’s smallest bookstore.”

More than 200 Contributing Editors and CO-Editors help select the annual volumes of The Pushcart Prize. The Pushcart Prize Editors come from almost every state in the USA and around the world. Every year more than 8,000 nominations are received for the Pushcart Prize.

From Kirkus Reviews

This year's Pushcart anthology of small-press literature is the biggest yet--which means more gems, and yet more dross surrounding them. This year's crop of short stories mostly consists of straightforward depictions of working-class life and death. In this vein, the stand-out is Ron Carlson's ``Oxygen,'' a vivid account of a late-'60s summer spent delivering oxygen to invalids in Arizona. Meanwhile, Pamela Painter's short study ``The Kiss'' addresses a question on many minds lately: What is it like to kiss someone wearing a dumbbell-shaped rod through his pierced tongue? The Pushcart's forte remains literary criticism and memoir. This year features strong contributions from Charles Baxter on the relation between poetry and prose, Lewis Hyde on the place of the aleatory in art, Charles Simic on his days as an unknown poet in New York, and Gretchen Legler on her passion for hunting. Once again the selection of poetry is fairly uneven. A contribution from Robert Pinsky finds the US poet laureate at his most pedantic, while selections like Julia Vinograd's ``For the Young Men Who Died of AIDS'' (which asks, ``How can people go on buying toothpaste / and planning their summer vacations?'') court bathos. A shorter, more surreal poem succeeds, however: David Hayward's speech in the voice of a combative minor-league baseball mascot, ``Davy Cricket.'' Similarly surreal and successful prose efforts include Susan Daitch's dreamlike ``Killer Whales'' and Tomas Filer's ``Civilization,'' an intriguing tale of how the borders between life and movies blurred in the California of a lifetime ago. The baseball-team mascot Davy Cricket from Heyward's poem provides a kind of emblem for the Pushcart. If the anthology, like the blue-foam-suited Davy, can appear bloated and overly loyal to the performers it celebrates, to complain would be churlish. For the Pushcart's cheerleading calls our attention to some wonderful literature, and, what's more, to the wonderful variety that redeems the existence of more mediocre work. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pushcart Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1888889888
• ISBN 13: 9781888889888
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 620
• Editor: The Pushcart Prize