Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

by Peter Grandbois, James McCorkle (Contributor), Robert Miltner (Contributor)

Triptych disrupts conventions of book authorship. Between two covers are three books, The Three-Legged World by Peter Grandbois, In Time by James McCorkle, and Orpheus & Echo by Robert Miltner. Of course, books converse with other books, and poetry, rippling from unmeasured sound into rampant forms, is especially polyphonic. Etruscan brings these three books together because they exerted upon our editors a gravitational pull, causing the shadow of one to fall across the reading of another. Sufficient on their own, these books achieve new altitudes when aligned. Triptych launches no school. It backs no cause. What these books share is not easily labeled. None follows narrative conventions. None dwells on confession. None abides predictable meter. None is easily parsed. Each climbs eerie heights where ego finds no purchase. Each takes a kaleidoscopic view of selfhood. Each takes flight toward apotheosis. Each blesses the moments “Before we turn into air,” or give way to “tongue of trees, language of clouds,” and before “Gods and dogs begin their talking back,” before birds “are falling through their late bodies.” In Miltner’s ogham-deep caesuras, in McCorkle’s speech-song, and in Grandbois’s cadences which whisper like ghostly passersby, “sound is emanation,” and emanation asks, “what would this line be without the words?”

248 pages, Paperback

Published May 5, 2020

About the author

Peter Grandbois is the author of fifteen books, including: The Gravedigger, selected by Barnes and Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” program, The Arsenic Lobster: A Hybrid Memoir, chosen as one of the top five memoirs of 2009 by the Sacramento News and Review, Nahoonkara, winner of the gold medal in literary fiction in Foreword magazine's Book of the Year Awards for 2011, a collection of surreal flash fictions, Domestic Disturbances, a finalist for Book of the Year in Foreword magazine’s 2013 awards, three novella collections or “monster double features,” Wait Your Turn, The Glob Who Girdled Granville (Honorable Mention for Best Fantasy of 2014 in the IndieFab Awards), The Girl on the Swing (Silver Medalist for Best Fantasy of 2015 in the IndieFab Awards), the poetry collection, This House That (Honorable Mention for Best Poetry Collection in the INDIES Awards 2017), the memoir in essays, Kissing the Lobster, the novel, half-burnt (Finalist for Best Multicultural Fiction in the INDIES Awards, 2019), the poetry collections The Three-Legged World, Everything Has Become Birds, and the Snyder Prize winning poetry collection, Last Night I Aged a Hundred Years, a collection of fictions entitled Domestic Bestiary, and a novel/novella monster double feature, Cat People and Dream Memories of the Fifty Foot Woman. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in over one hundred magazines and been shortlisted for both the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is the Poetry Editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.