Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee

by James Tate

"Fiction lovers who come to this book with an open mind will find themselves challenged and entertained by a brilliant writer with a very fertile imagination."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)

"When he turns to prose, this Pulitzer Prize-winning poet exhibits a surprisingly uncomplicated style."--"Details"

James Tate seems both awed and bemused by small-town life in these forty-four stories full of legends, flights of fancy, tragedies, and small ruptures in ordinary existence. His narrators speak in an idiom that is odd and completely American.

James Tate is the author of fourteen books of poetry and the recipient of numerous awards: fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim foundations, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2001

About the author

James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He taught creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he worked since 1971. He was a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi.

Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange.

He published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Tate's writing style is difficult to describe, but has been identified with the postmodernist and neo-surrealist movements. He has been known to play with phrases culled from news items, history, anecdotes, or common speech; later cutting, pasting, and assembling such divergent material into tightly woven compositions that reveal bizarre and surreal insights into the absurdity of human nature.

Reviews

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five Stars for me, Three for you, so let’s go with Four


As another reviewer pinged, not so strange. And that by itself makes noodles of ones brow. The poems are SO weird, and you’d think that shortform—the wildest lands in the landscape of literature, would be more so. No so. But you can kind of see it if you fuzz your eyes and look out a window sideways.
Flawed and at its worst middling, sure, but I only expect short story writers to pen bombass stories. Novelists are wannabees, but poets, poets don’t usually leave the beltowers and when they do it’s to sometimes write art criticism like Ashbery, or maybe a memoir.

The aboutness: (go ahead a pass on if you don’t care about aboutness, I only sometimes do, usually not) It’s classic want-not-have. Characters usually hit the gas to find their missing puzzle piece. Co-dependent as well, the buildings of life are made flesh. Both character and setting are the same thing, and speed limit that can’t be broke is that of banality. It’s like, what thee characters need, is a funkyass poem, but they can’t get it because their author isn’t going to have his characters pick up a book of his poems and go, “Wow, that funkpoem was so creatively satisfying, I feel both relived and encouraged.” Dissatisfaction moves more feet forward then its opposite: I don’t want to get all James Tate the Poet here, but, perhaps a shrink ray, a second invisible moon, Godzilla with a goat on him, you can hear it in the wind if you’re listening invisibly.

[Trinie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time faves...I bow down to this book.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very short stories (44 in just over 200 pages) that straddle the fence between poetry and prose, slightly weird, surreal and funny.

[Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

44 stories at about 25 cents each, well written, with a quirky yet depressing sense of humor. You'll find yourself absorbed into the voice without realizing it, and then, one day, you'll start talking like Rodney Dangerfield.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd expect Tate is a love or hate proposition - I'm definitely a fan, though. With this book he makes the jump from his later story-like poems to actual short stories, and it works.

[Patrick Healy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. His sharp wit is really present in these short stories. I hope he comes out with another collection soon.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifully, oddly normal

[Darby Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

clean, not necessarily extraordinary

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of my favorites by one of my favorites.

[Tom Romig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come one, come all for offbeat characters and a twist in every plot! James Tate has a talent for revealing the absurd that's all around us. Always funny, often touching.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I better read this, as I've always been interested in the intersection of prose poetry and flash fiction, and Tate--by volume, if nothing else--seemed to be at the heart of that. The problems he faces here are the problems anyone encounters with flash fiction. When it works, the depth of emotion and worlds rippling out are fantastic. But more often than not, flash fictions are merely pieces of longer stories that aren't fully realized. They're easily ignored. What I like so much about James Tate is that he was hugely successful with his early poems, which were far more representative of poetry at that time, which was short, elliptical, jazz-inspired. He could've continued in that vein his whole career, but later on he became interested in prose poems. I don't think his prose poems are uniformly great, but I love reading those books nonetheless, and frankly he's a lot easier to understand--and arguably more entertaining--after shifting to narrative poetry. I love that Tate felt the freedom to shift course. You see that freedom in "Dreams," and also a joy in crafting these stories. I think that's what Tate was searching for a writer: he wanted to keep things interesting for himself. And his boundless creativity can't be emphasized enough. A lot of his prose poems tend toward the surreal, but the fictions in "Dreams" are surprisingly grounded. They are vignettes of small-town life, encounters, people who are loners or outcasts, sickness and death. I don't know a lot about Tate's life, but it's amazing how little he seemed to fall back on his own background as source material for his stories. Almost everything here seems to be based on observation of those around him. The book itself isn't fantastic. If you're not already a fan of Tate's, then you might skip it. But if you like James Tate's work, then I think it's essential to read this in context, and truly there's plenty to smile at and enjoy in "Dreams."

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Tate used to be a close acquaintance of mine when I lived and worked in Amherst, Massachusetts. I used to manage a video store there and he became a regular customer and we quickly became friends. I loved to recommend various films to him and on occasion we went out for a drink. I told him some stories of mine about growing up in Shamokin, Pennsylvania and he loved them. When this book came out years later, I read a review in PW and was amazed to find that there was a story about me included. James had literally lifted my stories and made them into his own. I was flattered and I think about him often now. He was a great person and a very talented writer. These stories display some of the things that made his poetry great as well: the absurdity of life, impossible situations, strange happenings, unusual behavior. People striving to make sense out of life even though it seemed impossible. Seek this book out and read it. No one else comes close to writing like Tate did.

[Margo Perin]

Zero. I loved one of James Tate’s poems and read a few more but they didn’t do anything for me, so I thought I’d try reading his short stories after coming across a rave review in the NYT. Yawn yawn. Yet another bunch of stories featuring hapless men hard done by women. Normally I recycle books in my neighborhood free library once I’ve finished reading them, but this one I’m not only going to stop reading but also throw straight into the recycling bin. Who needs one more misogynist book? Sickening that it’s so popular. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised in the kind of world we live in. At least they’re not well-written, the language surprisingly dull and poorly constructed for a poet.

[Jenshaines · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways, these pieces feel more like "long form" versions of Tate's poetry. Sometimes there's a more sequential narrative and sometimes it's a character musing or reflecting in the very original way that Tate's narrators within his poetry tend to do. Some of the pieces were much stronger than others and while I was curious about reading this work, ultimately it felt less affecting to me than his shorter poetry work.

[Claire Schomogyi · Rating 3 out of 5]

a weird book but oddly addicting to read. if you are in the mood for 44 short stories that you wishes ere developed into books, then this is the book for you. shoutout to the lil free library down the street for bringing me this quirky read.

[Joe Grantham · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It was really some kind of collection of humanity that is better left undescribed, backwoods mall-people with unhygienic habits, people with barely lawful fetishes, aggressive hats, and overweight children.”

[edmondegreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book.

[Margaret Weinberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book over the course of a few months; perfect collection of short stories to carry around with you... funny, moving and sometimes surreal.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

Airplane book. Went by quick because the stories were forgettable. Nothing stood out but no true complaints.

[Steve P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Electric prose. I wish the stories were longer. Most of them hit with emotion after only a few pages. I'll go back to it.

[Hans Gerwitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good movie can, over an hour or two, share a story with you. It feeds your senses with inputs that both tickle your perception and build a model world that engages your emotions. When I walk away from a movie, I don't retain many details (my episodic memory is weak) but the "feel" of the story sticks with me.

A good painting or photograph, on the other hand, can affect me similarly without telling a lengthy story. The result is just as satisfying, even if not entertaining for as long.

These "stories" are barely that, and are more like character studies. They give you just enough of a world to understand the characters, to tug at your emotions, and then end. If Kurt Vonnegut's short stories are film shorts, Tate has presented a compelling set of photographs.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some good stories in here, ones that offer intriguing characters and/or voices who lay themselves out within a paragraph and challenge us for sympathy, as well as a great ear for quirky dialogue. But there are pieces here that feel like notebook sketches yanked from the binding to fill out a full collection, as there are several that feel like they’ve only just offered a scenario and suddenly end. In fact, there were two that shocked me for how I’d turn the page for more and find the title of the next story facing me, leaving me an ending with little satisfaction. This short story collection goes the way of some of Tate’s poetry collections, alas, where I wish there had been a little more critical eye during the selection process.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Tate is a very creative and original writer. His stories are entertaining and unexpected. But while I liked the characters and their situations, I found that a lot of his characters started to be the same. Also, I understand that short stories don't have to end conclusively or anything like that, but often these stories ended so abruptly they didn't even leave room for conjecture. All in all I love the way Tate writes but I can't say individually that any of his stories were mindbogglingly well-structured.

[V.M.]

I was drawn to Tate from a prose poem the Paris Review posted after his death last year and was excited to learn he had a collection of short stories. Unfortunately, it didn't really live up to my expectations; most of the stories are, at best, very very average. I struggle to even remember the ones I read just this morning. "Robes" and "Manson" stand out somewhat.

[Shaun Gannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were a few endings that were like 'ok, that's not an ending,' but others were very similar that felt perfect for the story. Plan to re-read this later and see why some worked for me and others didn't

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://5cense.com/22/983.htm

[Nessabella]

meh. so-so.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

7,5/10

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

He was one of my writing heroes, but
these stories don't approach the humor
or absurdist edge of his best poetry.
R.I.P. James Tate (1943-2015)

[Stephanie Griffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of these very short stories ended so abruptly it grated on my nerves.