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 sixteen books, including: The Gravedigger (2006), selected by Barnes and Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” program, Nahoonkara, winner of the gold medal in literary fiction in Foreword magazine's Book of the Year Awards for 2011, the novel, half-burnt (finalist in the category of Multicultural Fiction in the 2019 INDIES), a collection of surreal flash fictions, Domestic Disturbances (Publisher’s Weekly pick for Best Book of 2013), as well as its companion volume of fictions, Domestic Bestiary (2023) and four novella collections or “monster double features,” Wait Your Turn, The Glob Who Girdled Granville (honorable mention, IndieFab award for fantasy book of the year in 2014), The Girl on the Swing (Silver Medalist in the category of Best Fantasy of 2015 in the IndieFab awards), and Cat People and Dream Memories of the Fifty Foot Woman (finalist for Best Fantasy in the INDIES awards 2025), as well as the poetry collections, This House That (winner of the Brighthorse Books Poetry Prize and Honorable Mention for the INDIES award in the category of best poetry collection of 2017), The Three-Legged World (Etruscan, 2020), everything has become birds (Brighthorse, 2021), the Snyder prize-winning collection, Last Night I Aged a Hundred Years (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021), and Story of a Pilgrim (Tiger Bark Press, 2026). In addition, he has published two memoirs: The Arsenic Lobster: A Hybrid Memoir, chosen as one of the top five memoirs of 2009 by the Sacramento News and Review and Kissing the Lobster (2018). His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in nearly two-hundred magazines, including Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Prairie Schooner, and been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and Best American Horror. His plays have been nominated for several New York Innovative Theatre Awards, have won the Best of the Neil LaBute Festival and have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor for Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.

Peter is a graduate of the University of Denver (Ph.D. 2006), Bennington College (M.F.A. 2003), and the University of Colorado (M.A. 1991). Previously, he taught at California State University in Sacramento and is currently Professor of English at Denison University.