Bøger af Charles Rafferty

Charles Rafferty works in miniatures. These short short stories explore the small disasters of desire. They investigate the problems that ensue when, inevitably, his characters get what they wish for and what they deserve.

"In the world made by Charles Rafferty's poems, men travel with hawks in their suitcases, clouds of bees disrupt wedding receptions. Rafferty sees through "the concussed air of streetlamp, mall and interchange" to the small wild heart fluttering in the center of our mostly-tamed lives. But in these poems where "a bracelet of barbed wire, a pendant of living bees" might be decorations lies a love for all the risk and beauty of being human. Charles Rafferty is a poet of vision and imagination, and The Unleashable Dog is a mature and beautiful collection." -- Al Maginnes (from the back cover)

Charles Rafferty¿s latest collection of prose poems turns philosophical. In A Cluster of Noisy Planets, Rafferty captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside. With a knowing nod to the passage of time¿day to day, year to year, epoch to epoch¿these lyrical poems form a record of the profound, ephemeral joys, losses, and echoes of commonplace moments.

"Moscodelphia is extraordinary. Terrifyingly spare in its language and pace, this debut novel by one of our best poets unfolds into a tale that holds dystopic caution and the hunger of love in two steady hands. Readers of Rafferty's poetry will know he is a master of the dramatic monologue and the prose poem, and here he has brought those talents to bear on a narrative that depicts a nightmarish future with irony-laced realism. J.C. Ballard would be proud, and a little scared." -Andrew Krivak, author of The Sojourn and The Bear "Moscodelphia is a weird and wonderful book, a vivid tightrope walk between surprise and inevitability. While immersed in its pages I felt like I was reading a nineteenth century Russian novel, set in a dystopian future yet written in sparkling contemporary prose. How can that all be true? Reader, do yourself a favor and find out." -Tom Hazuka, editor of Flash Fiction Funny, co-editor of Flash Nonfiction Funny and Flash Nonfiction Food Magda Puzanov knows three things about her world: the taste of angel meat, the perils of loving an albino, and the smudge of pollution on her horizon, which is all she can see of Moscodelphia -- the city that can end her poverty. Magda is a farm girl who falls in love with Anton Petrovich, an albino reputed to have magical powers. When the crops begin failing across the countryside, Anton's neighbors grow hungry and fall back on their old superstitions. It is Magda's own brother who cuts off one of Anton's fingers for a charm, and Magda realizes that Anton must flee to Moscodelphia, alone. Magda bides her time on the family farm until she is captured by a team of "collectors." These men are in charge of extracting the countryside's wealth and shipping it back to Moscodelphia. This includes marriageable girls. Ever the optimist, Magda sees her kidnapping as a chance to reunite with Anton. But Magda is bid upon and purchased by Josef Rabinovich, a bureaucrat rising through the ranks of the Ministry of Opulence. At first, Magda is astonished at the luxury Josef provides, but she leads an increasingly brutalized life until she finds Anton again, years later, in an open-air market. They conduct a love affair and plot their escape from a city full of poison and an ongoing plague of falling toads.

Though it might not be yet apparent, what the world hungers for-not just the poetry world but all sentient beings-are the rapturous, precise, lyrical revelations in Charles Rafferty's Appetites, a startling collection full of poems that chart desire through an abandoned couch transformed into redeeming ecstasy, that channel the "popcorned and sawdusty air" of the circus tent where folks gather to turn away from themselves, that show us the subversive art of souvenir-taking in the form of a sliver of Picasso's signature smuggled under a fingernail, and that give us a "Prelude" for our time. In the vein of Stephen Dobyns and Denis Johnson, but ever original and even more expertly-crafted, Rafferty is a major American poet. If you don't know his work yet, you owe yourself this chapbook. -Ravi Shankar

Prose poems that turn conventional thought on its head, allowing magic to spring from mundane details of middle age life.