The Wounded Breakfast

by Russell Edson

Poems deal with the brain, the future art, friendship, exploitation, love, tradition, freedom, marriage, death, nature, and fiction

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Russell Edson (December 12, 1928 – April 29, 2014) was an American poet, novelist, writer, and illustrator. He was the son of the cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson.

He studied art early in life and attended the Art Students League as a teenager. He began publishing poetry in the 1960s. His honors as a poet include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and lived there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself "Little Mr. Prose Poem," is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson's typical "recipes" for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed--both figuratively and literally--by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .

Reclusive by nature, Edson has still managed to publish eleven books of prose poems and one novel, The Song of Percival Peacock (available from Coffee House Press).

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

No better way to transition into a new year than by a batch of Russell Edson prose poems along with some medieval art. Enjoy!

THE WOUNDED BREAKFAST
A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of the night...
He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth.
Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots the huge shoe over the earth...

Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth...

The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding...



THE LOVE AFFAIR
One day a man fell in love with himself, and was unable to think of anything but himself.
Of course he was flattered, no one had ever shown him that much interest...

He wanted to know all about himself, his hobbies, his likings in music and sports.
He was jealous he had not known himself as a child. He wanted to know what kind of a boy he had been...

When asked if he thought it would lead to marriage, he said that that was his fondest wish, that he longed to have babies with himself...



A ZOOGRAPHY
A man had a herd of miniature elephants. They were like wads of gray bubble gum; their trumpeting like the whistling teakettles...

Also, he had a box of miniature cattle. When they lowed at sunset it was like the mewing of kittens...
He liked to stampede them on his bed...

In his closet a gigantic moth the size of a dwarf...



ON THE EATING OF MICE
A woman was roasting a mouse for her husband's dinner; then to serve it with a blueberry in its mouth.
At table he uses a dentist's pick and a surgeon's scalpel, bending over the tiny roasting with a jeweler's loupe...

Twenty years of this: curried mouse; garlic and butter mouse; mouse sautéed in its own fur; Salisbury mouse; mouse-in-the-trap, baked in the very trap that killed it; mouse tartare; mouse poached in menstrual blood at the first moon...

Twenty years of this, eating their way through the mice.. And yet, not to forget, each night one less vermin in the world...



YOU
Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which is simply a path leading through an archway called adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you.
And it is here the future lives in the several postures of arms on windowsill, cheek on this; elbows on knees, face in the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into the ceiling...This into nothing down the long day's arc...



Russell Edson (1935-2014) with wife Francis in their backyard on Weed Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One literary critic wrote: "The first Russell Edson prose poem I ever read was Counting Sheep. The poem begins: “A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders if he should try to shrink a pasture for them. // They are like grains of rice.” The poem was written at the same grade-level as USA Today, but it took the top of my head off per Emily Dickinson’s dictum —it moved me as much as any so-called real, immortal art. And, to my amazement, the lines were free from the self-congratulation that Wallace Stevens warned against."

Likewise, this collection of Russell Edson prose poems took the top of my head off. And his work moves me as much as any writing I've ever read. Here are three of my favorites below. Hope you enjoy!


YOU
Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which is simply a path leading through an archway called adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth.
Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you.
And it is here the future lives in the several postures of arm on windowsill, cheek on this elbow on knees, face in the hands; sometimes the head thrown back, eyes staring into the ceiling . . . This into nothing down the long day’s arc . . .


THE WOUNDED BREAKFAST
A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of the night . . .

He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth.

Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe over the earth . . .

Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth . . .

The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding . . .


THE RAT'S TIGHT SCHEDULE
A man stumbled on some rat droppings.
Hey, who put those there? That's dangerous, he said.
His wife said, those are pieces of a rat.
Wait, he's coming apart, he's all over the floor, said the husband.
He can't help it; you don't think he wants to drop pieces of himself all over the floor, do you? said the wife.
But I could have flipped and fallen through the floor, said the husband.
Well, he's been thinking of turning into a marsupial, so try to have a little patience. I'm sure if you were thinking of turning into a marsupial he'd be patient with you. But, on the other hand, don't embarrass him if he decides to remain placental, he's on a very tight schedule, said the wife.
A marsupial, a wonderful choice, cried the husband . . .

[Andy McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russell Edson is a new favorite. Fantastic prose poetry.

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost the size of night . . .
He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth.
Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look fro the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe over the earth . . .

Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth . . .

The man turns to his breakfast again, bu sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding . . .
- The Wounded Breakfast (pg. 19)

The influence of Samuel Beckett is evident throughout the prose poems of The Wounded Breakfast. Nowhere is it more evident than in "Twins", a prose poem reminiscent of Beckett's short play "Act Without Words II"...

Identical twin old men take turns at being alive.
One stays in bed all day, dead. The other eats a cracker; then goes to the bathroom and evacuated the eaten cracker.
He brushes his hair with a toothbrush.
If someone knocks on the door he opens it and says, hello, may I help you?
Then the person who knocked says, no, I don't think so.
But no one knocks . . .

The next day it's the dead old man's turn to be alive. So he gets up and eats a cracker; then goes to the bathroom and evacuates the cracker.
He brushes his hair with a toothbrush.
If someone knocks on the door he trembles.
But no one knocks on the door, and still he trembles . . .

At dawn he dies, and it's his twin brother's turn to be alive again . . .
- Twins (pg. 42)

Edson aligns himself with the postmodernists by using a postmodern device that was popular at the time (now redundant). That is, writing himself into his story...

A group of dead people are given electrical treatments. Their hair stands straight out from their heads. The doctor is pleased.
One of the corpses develops an erection. The doctor is pleased again.
These are signs of life! he cries.

A dead woman begins to blink violently, as if waking from a bad dream. This goes on for hours until one of the lids rips; the other breaks and slides off her cheek to the floor, still blinking, until the doctor steps on it, screaming, too much juice!

The corpse with the erection finally ejaculates.
The dead are producing life! cries the doctor.
He takes a smear of the ejaculate and puts it under a microscope, screaming, but the sperms are dead!

A nurse wipes his forehead and says, doctor, you're such a nice man, don't feel bad, yours are the sorrows of Dr. Frankenstein.
But, nurse, that's fiction.
Like this.
No no, this is real life, says the doctor.
No, says the nurse, Russell Edson is writing this.
No no, we are our own selves giving electrical treatments to the dead that they might live again! cries the doctor.
But we don't even live, says the nurse, so how can we make the dead, who, in fact, are not really dead, live?

Stop it, nurse, because you are running my life; won't feel like getting up in the morning anymore; nothing's real; drifting I drift into fiction; from the window I see the trees of fiction, everything is turning to fiction; the real clouds are found to be only Edson's mentality . . .
I end up at the funny farm, and am told that this is just another of Edson's fictions - Lost, lost! I| end up nutty as a fruitcake, maybe nuttier!
- Edson's Mentality (pg. 52)

My favourite prose poem in the collection...

A man had two feet. One was a woman, the other a man.
Appropriately one wore a woman's high-heeled shoe, the other a rough work boot.
And this was true of his hands and his nostrils and eyes. And this was true of his testicles, one of which was an ovary . . .
- The Half-and-Half Man (pg. 11)

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Edson, but sometimes I feel he can be too much of a comedian who relies on "dick" jokes. This book is one of those. He's a smarter and better imagination than some of these prose poems as he's shown in many other books.