Everyday mindreading, a house full of Buddhas, and the papaya scent of the soul. An interview with Custer at a place of his choosing, “probably a steakhouse.” The ability of dogs to smell the uncool.

Hitler's barber imagines what might have been if only he'd leaned his weight into the razor. An oblivious Coronado narrowly avoids an ambush on the American plains. Freud lecherously lifts the skirt of a Mexican housekeeper who has far too much work to be bothered by “a pillar of modern thought. Or just some dirty old man.”

In lesser hands such disparate elements might fly wildly out of control. But in David Shumate's understated, brilliant prose poems, they come together in miraculously vivid riffs.

The narrator of the title poem rhapsodizes, “I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up.” Shumate's deft and refreshing collection takes us to amazing places with its plainspoken meditations.

From the Back Cover:

"David Shumate's High Water Mark is absolutely fresh and unpredictable. . . . You will be surprised by your confrontation with the utterly first rate."-Jim Harrison

"Just when the possibilities of the prose poem seem exhausted, along comes David Shumate. Beneath his deceptively simple style lurks a vision as haunting as Kafka's and as playful and intelligent as Julio Cortazar's. But Shumate's voice, the authority he brings to his tales, is original and authentic. It's hard to believe High Water Mark is a first book."-Peter Johnson

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Items related to High Water Mark: Prose Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

High Water Mark: Prose Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

Shumate, David

Used - Soft cover

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