The Clam Theater

by Russell Edson

Book by Edson, Russell

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Global warming, forest fires, water scarcity, shrinking jungles, overpopulation. What's to be done? One possible mode of action is outlined in this Russell Edson prose poem. From his collection of prose poems, The Clam Theater.

THE DIFFICULTY WITH A TREE
A woman was fighting a tree. The tree had come to rage at the woman’s attack, breaking free from its earth it waddled at her with its great root feet.
Goddamn these sentiencies, roared the tree with birds shrieking in its branches.
Look out, you’ll fall on me, you bastard, screamed the woman as she hit at the tree.
The tree whisked and whisked with its leafy branches.
The woman kicked and bit screaming, kill me kill me or I’ll kill you!

Her husband seeing the commotion came running crying, what tree has lost patience?
The ax the ax, damnfool, the ax, she screamed.
Oh no, roared the tree dragging its long roots rhythmically limping like a sea lion towards her husband.
But oughtn’t we to talk about this? cried her husband.
But oughtn’t we to talk about this, mimicked his wife.
But what is this all about? he cried.
When you see me killing something you should reason that it will want to kill me back, she screamed.

But before her husband could decide what next action to perform the tree had killed both the wife and her husband.
Before the woman died she screamed, now do you see?
He said, what...? And then he died.

[Glenn Russell]

The Clam Theater by Russell Edson - an 80-pager published in 1973 by Wesleyan University Press. Here are seven of the dozens of prose poems forming this collection. As you read Russell, feel your mind cracking and running over the rug, oozing out of the house, all the way out to the mica glitter of stars . . .

THE ANCESTRAL MOUSETRAP
We are left a mousetrap, baited with cheese. We must not jar it, or our ancestor's gesture and pressure are lost as the trap springs shut.
He has relinquished his hands to what the earth makes of flesh. Still, here in this mousetrap is caught the thumb print of his pressure.
A mouse would steal this with its death, this still unspent jewel of intent.
In a jewel box it is kept, to keep it from the robber-mouse; even as memory in the skull was kept, to keep it from the robber-worm, who even now is climbing a thief in the window of his eyes.

THE ANT FARM
In spite even of Columbus the world collapses and goes flat again.
The sky is a bell jar where a child in another scale watches his ant farm.
When the bored child yawns two thousand years pass.

Someday we have crashed to the playroom floor, the careless child knocks us over with his fire truck . . . All that dirt lying in its broken sky.
Swept up, it is thrown into a garbage can at the back of the universe.

APE AND COFFEE
Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said, animal did you get on my coffee?
No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
You're sure you didn't spill on my coffee? said the man.
Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.
Well you sure don't look human said the man.
But that doesn't make me a fluid twittered the ape.
Well I don't know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man.
I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.
i don't care if you are a liquid, you just better stop splashing on things, cried the man.
Do I look fluid to you? Take a good look, hooted the ape.
If you don't stop I'll put you in a cup, screamed the man.
I'm not a fluid, screeched the ape.
Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.

THE FAMILY MONKEY
We bought an electric monkey, experimenting rather recklessly with funds carefully gathered since grandfather's time for the purchase of a steam monkey.
We had either by this time, the choice of an electric or gas monkey.
The steam monkey is no longer been made, said the monkey merchant.
But the family always planned on a steam monkey.
Well, said the monkey merchant, just as the wind-up monkey gave way to the steam monkey, the steam monkey has given way to the gas and electric monkeys.
Is that like the grandfather clock being replaced by the grandchild clock?
Sort of, said the monkey merchant.

So we bought the electric monkey, and plugged its umbilical cord into the wall.
The smoke coming out of its fur told us something was wrong.
We had electrocuted the family monkey.

THE FLOOR
The floor is something we might fight against. Whilst seemingly mere platform for the human stance, it is that place that men fall to.

I am not dizzy. I stand as a tower, a lighthouse, the pale ray of my sentiency flowing from my face.
But should I go dizzy I crash down into the floor, my face into the floor, my attention bleeding into the cracks of the floor.

Dear horizontal place, I do not wish to be a rug. Do not pull at the difficult head, this teetering bulb of dread and dream . . .

KILLING THE APE
They were killing the ape with infinite care; not too much or it runs past dying and is born again.
Too little delivers a sick old man covered with fur.
. . . Gently gently out of hell, the ape climbing out of the ape.

THE TURKEY HAPPENING
There were feathers growing on his wall. Thickly. And with pink turkey flesh beneath.
The feathers were spreading across the ceiling. And the floor was beginning to protrude in scaly bird toes like the roots of trees.

He could not tell if he had not now become himself feathers and turkey flesh.
He wondered if he was not now feathers and turkey flesh.


Russell Edson, 1935-2014

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what Edson is trying to say in many of these poems but every now and then I find one that makes reading all of them worthwhile.
If you want to read something "different" try the poetry of Russell Edson.

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 5 out of 5]

They had started a hat factory . . . Basically in a dream . . . Entirely so when you think that the very foundation begins somewhere in the brain, when the brain is unlaced like a shoe free of the conscious foot with its corns and calls.
An old brick factory full of men mad for making hats rises in the head like Atlantis once more above the waters. . . . It is remarkable how like a foot the head really is; I mean the does, perhaps ornaments of hair; the hollow of the arch must certainly find its mouth, the heel is already the jaw. . . .
This is my theatre. I sit in my head asleep. Theatre in a clam. . . .
Amidst the wet flesh of the head madmen build hats; perhaps to lay cover over the broken mind; or to say the head is gone, and all it is is hat. . . . Only hats hung on the hooks of our necks. . . .
- "The Clam Theatre" (pg. 28)

The short prose (prose poems?) of Russell Edson seem to occur "basically in a dream", adhering to a dream-logic in which animals talk ("Ape and Coffee"), facial features fall off ("The Avalanche"), and trees fight ("The Difficulty with a Tree"). The logic could just as easily be called nonsensical, comparable to Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. The imagery is surreal, and yet the pieces are too structured, too deliberate to call Edson a Surrealist...

Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said, animal, did you get on my coffee?
No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
You're sure you didn't spill on my coffee? said the man.
Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.
Well you sure don't look human, said the man.
But that doesn't make me a fluid, twittered the ape.
Well I don't know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man.
I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.
I don't care if you are a liquid, you just better stop splashing on things, cried the man.
Do I look fluid to you? Take a good look, hoot the ape.
If you don't I'll put you in a cup, screamed the man.
I'm not a fluid, screeched the ape.
Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.
- "Ape and Coffee" (pg. 13)

A weeping woman heard a slight roar.
Her tears had loosened the flesh of her cheeks and caused a small avalanche.
My goodness, she said as her left nostril fell out of her head.
But this only caused her to weep beyond even the first cause of her weeping.
My goodness, she said, now that I have something to really weep about it's ruining my face, and the more it ruins my face the more I have something to weep about.
My goodness, I must stop this weeping, even my lachrymal glands have fallen.
Soon her whole face fell. The plop of it startled her.
My goodness, she said.
- "The Avalanche" (pg. 15)

A woman was fighting a tree. The tree had come to rage at the woman's attack, breaking free from its earth it waddled at her with its great root feet.
Goddamn these sentiences, roared the tree with birds shrieking in its branches.
Look out, you'll fall on me, you bastard, screamed the woman as she hit at the tree.
The tree whisked and whisked with its leafy branches.
The woman kicked and bit screaming, kill me kill me or I'll kill you!
Her husband seeing the commotion came running crying, what tree has lost patience?
The ax the ax, damnfool, the ax, she screamed.
Oh no, roared the tree dragging its long roots rhythmically limping like a sea lion toward her husband.
But oughtn't we talk about this? cried her husband.
But oughtn't we talk about this?, mimicked his wife.
But what is this all about? he cried.
When you see me killing something you should reason that it will want to kill me back, she screamed.
But before her husband could decide what next action to perform the tree had killed both the wife and her husband.
Before the woman died she screamed, now do you see?
He said, what . . . ? And then he died.
- "The Difficulty with a Tree" (pg. 35)

[Lake · Rating 2 out of 5]

My least favorite of any edson collection ive read. Kind of just playing word games for the sport, but not even that fun of games. The ideas behind a lot of the pieces felt a bit basic or at times groan worthy. Still some decent ones in the mix but not enough to make the collection worth reading imo

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun house of arguments and unsexy nakedness and sexy nakedness and apes monkeys and trees. Ha, like Eden with glasses on that makes it so you can't quite hear.

First book borrowed with my Brooklyn Public Library card!

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part, I just take great joy in Edson's prose poems--sure some of them are yawners, or use similar strategies from others in the collection (how many mimicked dialogues can one use?), but the freshness of the most successful of these just make the book, in toto, a joy to read.