Two American Scenes Our Village
by Lydia Davis
Part of our revived "Poetry Pamphlet" series, Two American Scenes features two masters of the essay discussing "found material."
Excerpts:
It was given to me, in the nineteenth century,
to spend a lifetime on this earth. Along with a few of the sorrows
that are appointed unto men, I have had innumerable enjoyments;
and the world has been to me, even from childhood, a great museum.
-- Lydia Davis
Bad rapids. Bradley is knocked over the side; his foot catches
under the seat and he is dragged, head under water. Camped on
a sand beach, the wind blows a hurricane. Sand piles over us like
a snow-drift.
-- Eliot Weinberge
Literary CriticismPoetryAmerican
RELEASED2013
PUBLISHERNew Direction Publishing
LENGTH56
LANGUAGEEN
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From Wikipedia: Lydia Davis (born 1947) is a contemporary American author and translator of French. She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY. She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection is Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity and humour. Many are only one or two sentences. In fact some of her stories are considered poetry or somewhere between philosophy, poetry and short story.
Two American Scenes Our Village
by Lydia Davis
Part of our revived "Poetry Pamphlet" series, Two American Scenes features two masters of the essay discussing "found material."
Excerpts:
It was given to me, in the nineteenth century,
to spend a lifetime on this earth. Along with a few of the sorrows
that are appointed unto men, I have had innumerable enjoyments;
and the world has been to me, even from childhood, a great museum.
-- Lydia Davis
Bad rapids. Bradley is knocked over the side; his foot catches
under the seat and he is dragged, head under water. Camped on
a sand beach, the wind blows a hurricane. Sand piles over us like
a snow-drift.
-- Eliot Weinberge
Literary CriticismPoetryAmerican
RELEASED2013
PUBLISHERNew Direction Publishing
LENGTH56
LANGUAGEEN
From Wikipedia: Lydia Davis (born 1947) is a contemporary American author and translator of French. She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to painter Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY. She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection is Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity and humour. Many are only one or two sentences. In fact some of her stories are considered poetry or somewhere between philosophy, poetry and short story.
