Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales!

Garrett Caples

ISBN 10: 1950268977 / ISBN 13: 9781950268979

Published by Wave Books May 2024, 2024

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 1045582

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales!
• Publisher: Wave Books May 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1950268977
• ISBN 13: 9781950268979
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Illustrator: Jacobsen, Colter
• Condition: Used
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

In the grand tradition of poet’s fiction, Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! is a collection of nine phantasmagorical stories by beloved poet and City Lights editor, Garrett Caples.

Resolutely turning its back on the ethos of traditional narrative, Proses draws on Marcel Schwob, magical realism, and speculative fiction for inspiration, projecting worlds dominated by dream logic and impossible (and often hilarious) dimensions. Spectral nuns, xenobots, explosive phraseology, and even Ringo Starr are just some of the unexpected dilemmas confronting the various protagonists of Proses. Poets such as Andrew Joron, Kit Schluter, and Claude Grind of Verdoux Books, make cameo appearances—including, at times, Caples himself! While each story is a standalone, the collection amounts to an intricate whole, as themes, objects, and even characters recur, encouraging readers to enjoy the book sequentially. Regardless of how it is enjoyed, Proses is at once a satire of the world of contemporary poetry and publishing and a celebration of that world's fantastic and infinite imagination.

About the Author

Garrett Caples is the author of Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! (Wave Books 2024), Lovers of Today (Wave Books, 2021), Power Ballads (Wave Books, 2016), Complications (2007), and The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), a collection of outtakes, The Rise & Fall of Johnny Volume (2020), and a bilingual selection, Noches Apátridas (Unstated Nights, 2019). He’s also written a book of essays, Retrievals (2014), and a pamphlet, Quintessence of the Minor (2010). He’s the editor of Philip Lamantia’s Preserving Fire: Selected Prose (2018). He is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series. He has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.