After The Fact: Scripts & Postscripts

by Christopher Merrill, Marvin Bell

Overview

"Prose was always meant for colloquy, risk, and intimacy. With these rich and conversant prose poems, Marvin Bell and Christopher Merrill return spoken language to sport—sometimes competitive, but often cooperative, exploratory, even humanely probative. What is a friend? Bell and Merrill demonstrate friendship is drawn from imagination."—Stephen Kuusisto, author of Letters to Borges

"The best conversationalists intuit and respond to unspoken questions and interstitial meanings, sidelong concerns and secret subjects. They also know how to listen to another's story and hear the line or inflection that calls forth their own tale in a way that enlarges, well, everything. Marvin Bell and Christopher Merrill's stunning epistolary paragraphs illustrate the inner workings of just such an intimate, agile, and sustained conversation. This collaborative, high wire act offers up profound truths in exactly the way the most exciting poems take shape—by leaps of imagination and complete trust in the power of association to bring up riches, songs, and wisdom from the depths."—Lia Purpura

After the Fact is a lively and imaginative conversation between two legendary poets. Marvin Bell, writing from Iowa City and Port Townsend, and Christopher Merrill, writing from around the world, give us an intimate look into collaboration at its best.

Christopher Merrill's recent books include Boat and Necessities. He is the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Marvin Bell's works include collaborations with poet William Stafford and volumes of an original poetic form, most recently collected in Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935210887
Publisher:	White Pine Press
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Marvin Bell: Marvin Bell’s works include collaborations with musicians, composers, dancers, poets and photographers—among them, poet William Stafford and photographer Nathan Lyons—and volumes of an original poetic form most recently collected in Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems.

Christopher Merrill's recent books include Boat (poetry), Necessities (prose poetry), and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War (nonfiction). His work has been translated into over thirty languages, and as the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa he has conducted cultural diplomacy missions in more than fifty countries.

Table of Contents

Preface 9

Scripts

#1 Reunion 13

#2 Joe 14

#3 The Red Balloon 15

#4 Burke 16

#5 Aztec Two-Step 17

#6 Code 18

#7 The Score 19

#8 Frankie 20

#9 Prayer Rope 21

#10 Kenny 22

#11 Stories 23

#12 Sylvester 24

#13 SOS 25

#14 Nat 26

#15 Greystone 27

#16 Mr. Pople 28

#17 The Lake 29

#18 Staircase 30

#19 Breach 31

#20 The Dock 32

#21 Combs Hollow 33

#22 9/11/01 34

#23 9/11/11 35

#24 Aesthetic Wobble #₁ 36

#25 The Unwritten 37

#26 Skippy 38

#27 Fodder 39

#28 Celebrity 40

#29 Yasnaya Polyana 41

#30 Afterward 42

#31 The Fountain House 43

#32 At the Point of Death 44

#33 The Bridge 45

#34 Carlyle 46

#35 Conference 47

#36 Aesthetic Wobble #₂ 48

#37 Fairy Tale 49

#38 The Evangelicals 50

#39 After the Workshop 51

#40 Luxury of Circumstance 52

#41 From the Vineyard to the Sea 53

#42 Forensics 54

#43 Afghanistan 55

#44 The Scope 56

#45 Tactics 57

#46 Aesthetic Wobble #₃ 58

#47 Proverbs 59

#48 Aesthetic Wobble #₄ 60

#49 A Note on Aesthetics 61

#50 On Time 62

#51 Holding Action 63

#52 The Revolution Needs a Song 64

#53 Tamara Khanum (1906-1991) 65

#54 Jack 66

#55 The List 67

#56 Aesthetic Wobble #₅ 68

#57 Angkor 69

#58 Thermal 70

#59 Utopia 71

#60 Bled 72

Postscripts

#61 Meteor 75

#62 Brown vs. Board of Education 76

#63 Relativity 77

#64 Radioactivity 78

#65 Clive Wearing, March, 1985 79

#66 Hiatus 80

#67 V 81

#68 Haze 82

#69 Kitty Hawk 83

#70 Petty 84

#71 Nu descendant un escalier n⁰ 2, 1912 85

#72 The Names 86

#73 Brain 88

#74 The Hat 89

#75 The Performance 90

#76 Critical Point 91

#77 White Lines 92

#78 Heat Lightning 93

#79 The Act 94

#80 Feverish 95

#81 Soldier Aristotle 96

#82 The Headless Horseman 97

#83 Dolly 98

#84 Effluent 99

#85 Russell 100

#86 The Dolly Zoom 102

#87 Guff and Jive 103

#88 Medicine 104

#89 Happmess 105

#90 The Ladder 106

About the Authors 107