Figures for an Apocalypse

by Edward Mullany

This is a collection of episodes about eternity. It’s vast, precise, and unhurried. It could go on forever, in the way that reading a novel can feel as if a new branch of reality is revealed to you, and the world will continue in the mode of its insight forever. The sustained thinking and intense concentration in these poems is what we expect from literature. Edward Mullany wants to understand the world, and he does. He is diligent and comic in his pursuit of endlessness and likeness in these emotional word problems, prayers, moral fables, possible outcomes. This book gets there, where Gertrude Stein says there is no there. Like reading Kafka and Calvino, great stylists who know that style contains philosophy, Mullany conveys elegant, hard-won knowledge about the way of the world. – Arda Collins, author of It Is Daylight

Genres: Poetry

198 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2013

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The longer pieces are really great. I loved, loved, loved Reunion, which is a must read. The Contagion is also wonderful. Some of the pieces just... didn't work for me. The flippancy, perhaps. Lots to enjoy here, overall.

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how the darkness of apocalypse strings the pieces together, and us along with it. Clever, as Mullany always is, but with a stronger dash of seriousness than his previous book. Not all are as connected or brilliant, but the book is a small masterpiece nonetheless.

[Zack]

I read this in like an hour and a half long sit. it was really dark and fun. I liked how so much was bubbling just beneath the surface of these odd little poem-stories. probably will come back to them, this book is a keeper.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is fucking awesome.

[Ty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of my favorites here were some of the shortest ones, the ones that give little clues about the uneasy brotherhood of faith and doubt.





THE WARDEN'S WIFE

When he was at work,

she prayed or thought

about praying.




THE GOOD PAGAN

Where there are woods,
let there be more woods,
and where there are oceans,
let there be oceans.




THE SEA OF GALILEE

At night, a man
walks and then
runs and then walks

along the shore.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems will not let me go.

[Tyler Crumrine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Halloween chaser / fall reading / reminder of decay.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

cool, but not "for me".

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://nanofiction.org/weekly-feature...

[Robb Todd]

Edward Mullany possesses a vision like no other, and that's the space where great writing can live. And the space Mullany chooses here is usually a tight space.

If I had to pitch his writing like a movie, I'd say: "It's like if Lydia Davis and Donald Barthelme had a baby and that baby was possessed by the the ghost of Mitch Hedberg."


Edward Mullany is not that, though. He is his own, and there's nobody else like him. Nobody else could have written "Seconds," which is a single sentence that I can't get out of my head even though I want to--but also I don't want to:

"Finally the woman whose head had been picked up by the man who'd beheaded her died."

This book is a series of portraits that paint either the apocalypse or the world we live in right now. It's hard to tell, which is why it's so effective.

Not every piece in the book lands hard but they're not all supposed to because this is also pointillism or a mosaic. The title of the book is appropriate.

Mullany engages in world building, a grain of sand at a time, and that world is filled with characters who, in the end, form an unexpected whole that lasts long after the book is set down.

[Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 bumped up to 4 because Publishing Genius is generally awesome.

These poems were very interesting. Some were really short, others longer. There were a lot of choices. Most of them didn't change anything, some of them did. The apocalypse in the title lurks behind all the poems in their sense of inevitability. Only occasionally does it make an explicit appearance.

I feel like I will read this again.

THE TWO HORSES

The first one died.
The second one died.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A string to pull, only small fabrics break from their master to give what they keep secret. An exercise in brevity speaks of an end, a final pull, the goddamn apocalypse.