Bøger af Poe Ballantine

Fans of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and John Berendt's In the Garden of Good and Evil will embrace Poe Ballantine's Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere. For well over twenty years Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, and wondering the big whys. At age forty-six he finally settled with his Mexican wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America and its people, but one day in 2006 his neighbor, Steven Haaja, a math professor from the local state college, disappeared. 95 days later the professor was found burned to death and tied to a tree in the hills behind the campus where he taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened. Love and Terror is not only a six-year examination of this case, but of Poe's eccentric High Plains town, its kooky residents, his rocky marriage to a beautiful Mexican woman, and his purportedly autistic son.

Poe Ballantine's risky, personal essays are populated with odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer. He takes us along on his Greyhound journey through small town America (including a detour to Mexico) exploring what it means to be human. Written with piercing intimacy and self-effacing humor, Ballantine'stories provide entertainment, social commentary, and completely compelling slices of life.

Gobshite Quarterly Summer/Fall 2018, #31/32 features: Every Edge a Centre is an ongoing series of mythopoetic reasoned rants and essays: Nebraska novelist & O. Henry nominee Poe Ballantine looks back at a 1960s relationship with a legend in "Every Edge A Centre: Another zucchini bar, Ken?" (in Eng./Sp./Croat.); Adelaide-based poet & essayist Judith Steele writes about escaping the age of Trump, even in the Outback, in "Every Edge A Centre: Travelogue Monologue, Flinders Ranges, So. Oz." (in Eng./Sp./Croatian); Germ. film scholar Janina Bocksch & Barcelona-based Oz essayist & cineaste Adrian Martin write about Charles Laughton's classic noir & chess in "Night of the Hunter: Black is to Move" (in Eng./Span./Croatian). We have two comics: Award winning Little Beirut, Oregon poet & artist Leanne Grabel graces us w/a life of Dorothy Parker for children of all ages, "A Sad Story About a Big Brain: Illustr." (in Eng./Span./Icelandic/Croatian). Rotterdam-based illustrator Tânia Cardoso collaborated w/ writer Joana Vardona for the comic book "Garandinha"-excerpted (in Eng./Portuguese). & we have an Indonesian Dragon fr. Japanese artist Midori Oki, & Croatian illustrator Dusan Gäi¿ has a very pictoral "Diary" (in Croat./English). Bestselling Swiss novelist Christoph Keller, who divides his time betw. St. Galen & N.Y.C., offers us 5 Jazz flash fictions inspired by jazz classics & the lives of the musicians who wrote them ("Solo Flight"/"Blood Count"/"New Rhumba"/"My Friend Mindy"/"Sound Seekers"). Fr. Bowling Green Ohio, Michael Lohr gives us orig. bad boy & eternal rock-'n'-roller Edgar Allen in "The Ghost of Poe" (in Eng./Icelandic/Finnish/Sp.). Little Beirut writer Davis Slater observes a very very very angry carney in "9 Kinds of Sucker" (Eng./Span./Croat./Japanese). & we've got poets fr. all over: Greek poet & editor Dinos Siotis ponders paradoxes of "Faith" (in Greek/Eng./Lithuan./Span./Japanese). Croat. editor & poet Ivan Herceg visits "Limbo" & thinks "About Impossible Faces" (in Croat./Eng./Span./Lithuanian). Award winning Croatian poet Lana Derkä comes to a "Conclusion" & makes an appointment with "Doctor January" & enters a "Covenant with Dust". Also fr. St. Galen, Clemens Umbricht visits "The Room of False Things" & hangs "Untitled" on a wall & gets lost in "Rain-washed Amsterdam" & then takes "A Stroll in July" (in Germ./Eng./Croat./Spanish). Award winning Slovenian poet & E.R. doctor Veronica Dintinjana goes to midnight mass to visit the "Cathedral Lions" & then loiters "Outside the City Gates" (Slovenian/Eng./Lithuan./Russian/Croat./Spanish). South Oz expat Jan Herschel has lived on the Left Coast since 1982, & makes a wistful wish in "Add to Cart" (Eng./Span./Russian/Icelandic/Finnish). Adelaide poet Judith Steele, winner of the Red Earth Poetry Award discovers "Quiet" (in Eng./Russian/Croat./Spanish). Little Beirut drive-by poet Pecos B. Jett tells us the one about "Snoring Beauty" (in Eng./Jap./Russian/Finnish/Spanish).