Welcome to the dream world. What you are about to encounter is the unfiltered stuff of the dream, and that is wild, terrifying, provocative, and unsettling material. In this volume, some of the best living Southern writers are offering up a feast of their dreams, wonderful and awful in equal measure, for you to enjoy. These dream stories and poems will tell you what you have always known, but what you are too afraid to say out loud in the full light of day: that we are a race of chimeras, beings made up of the incompatible parts of innumerable mutually antagonistic creatures. Our pieces do not fit together. We are, when were willing to tell the truth about ourselves, surreal at our hearts. Welcome to the Surreal South.
Contents:
The echo of neighborly bones by Daniel Woodrell
Sales call by Susan Woodring
Help me find my spaceman lover by Robert Olen Butler
Willows / The swan by Rodney Jones
The river that was my father / Poem in the ninth month by Beth Ann Fennelly
Fat lighter by George Singleton
Sautéing the platygast by Dean Paschal
Pig helmet & the wall of life by Pinckney Benedict
The drinking gourd by Katie Estill
Swans by Benjamin Percy
The Bear Bryant funeral train by Brad Vice
Night by Jacinda Townsend
Dog song by Ann Pancake
The era of great numbers by Lee K. Abbott
Decirculating the monkey by Chris Offutt
Corpse bird by Ron Rash
Mother by Andrew Hudgins
The widow Sunday by Kathy Conner
Smonk gets out alive by Tom Franklin
Witches, all by Laura Benedict
The paperhanger by William Gay
Silver man / Dinner date by Joy Beshears Hay
Crazy ladies by Greg Johnson
Cactus Vic and his marvelous magical elephant / The best chicken in Arkansas by Jon Tribble
Birdfists by Julianna Baggott
The bingo master by Joyce Carol Oates
The truth and all its ugly by Kyle Minor
Contributors biographies & notes
Language
English
Pages
380
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Press 53
Release
September 10, 2007
ISBN
0979304970
ISBN 13
9780979304972
Surreal South '07: An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry
Welcome to the dream world. What you are about to encounter is the unfiltered stuff of the dream, and that is wild, terrifying, provocative, and unsettling material. In this volume, some of the best living Southern writers are offering up a feast of their dreams, wonderful and awful in equal measure, for you to enjoy. These dream stories and poems will tell you what you have always known, but what you are too afraid to say out loud in the full light of day: that we are a race of chimeras, beings made up of the incompatible parts of innumerable mutually antagonistic creatures. Our pieces do not fit together. We are, when were willing to tell the truth about ourselves, surreal at our hearts. Welcome to the Surreal South.
Contents:
The echo of neighborly bones by Daniel Woodrell
Sales call by Susan Woodring
Help me find my spaceman lover by Robert Olen Butler
Willows / The swan by Rodney Jones
The river that was my father / Poem in the ninth month by Beth Ann Fennelly
Fat lighter by George Singleton
Sautéing the platygast by Dean Paschal
Pig helmet & the wall of life by Pinckney Benedict
The drinking gourd by Katie Estill
Swans by Benjamin Percy
The Bear Bryant funeral train by Brad Vice
Night by Jacinda Townsend
Dog song by Ann Pancake
The era of great numbers by Lee K. Abbott
Decirculating the monkey by Chris Offutt
Corpse bird by Ron Rash
Mother by Andrew Hudgins
The widow Sunday by Kathy Conner
Smonk gets out alive by Tom Franklin
Witches, all by Laura Benedict
The paperhanger by William Gay
Silver man / Dinner date by Joy Beshears Hay
Crazy ladies by Greg Johnson
Cactus Vic and his marvelous magical elephant / The best chicken in Arkansas by Jon Tribble
Birdfists by Julianna Baggott
The bingo master by Joyce Carol Oates
The truth and all its ugly by Kyle Minor
Contributors biographies & notes