Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

Triptych disrupts conventions of book authorship. Between two covers are three books, The Three-Legged World by Peter Grandbois, In Time by James McCorkle, and Orpheus & Echo by Robert Miltner. Of course, books converse with other books, and poetry, rippling from unmeasured sound into rampant forms, is especially polyphonic. Etruscan brings these three books together because they exerted upon our editors a gravitational pull, causing the shadow of one to fall across the reading of another. Sufficient on their own, these books achieve new altitudes when aligned. Triptych launches no school. It backs no cause. What these books share is not easily labeled. None follows narrative conventions. None dwells on confession. None abides predictable meter. None is easily parsed. Each climbs eerie heights where ego finds no purchase. Each takes a kaleidoscopic view of selfhood. Each takes flight toward apotheosis. Each blesses the moments “Before we turn into air,” or give way to “tongue of trees, language of clouds,” and before “Gods and dogs begin their talking back,” before birds “are falling through their late bodies.” In Miltner’s ogham-deep caesuras, in McCorkle’s speech-song, and in Grandbois’s cadences which whisper like ghostly passersby, “sound is emanation,” and emanation asks, “what would this line be without the words?”

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Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

Triptych disrupts conventions of book authorship. Between two covers are three books, The Three-Legged World by Peter Grandbois, In Time by James McCorkle, and Orpheus & Echo by Robert Miltner. Of course, books converse with other books, and poetry, rippling from unmeasured sound into rampant forms, is especially polyphonic. Etruscan brings these three books together because they exerted upon our editors a gravitational pull, causing the shadow of one to fall across the reading of another. Sufficient on their own, these books achieve new altitudes when aligned. Triptych launches no school. It backs no cause. What these books share is not easily labeled. None follows narrative conventions. None dwells on confession. None abides predictable meter. None is easily parsed. Each climbs eerie heights where ego finds no purchase. Each takes a kaleidoscopic view of selfhood. Each takes flight toward apotheosis. Each blesses the moments “Before we turn into air,” or give way to “tongue of trees, language of clouds,” and before “Gods and dogs begin their talking back,” before birds “are falling through their late bodies.” In Miltner’s ogham-deep caesuras, in McCorkle’s speech-song, and in Grandbois’s cadences which whisper like ghostly passersby, “sound is emanation,” and emanation asks, “what would this line be without the words?”

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Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

Triptych: The Three-Legged World, In Time, and Orpheus & Echo

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Overview

Triptych disrupts conventions of book authorship. Between two covers are three books, The Three-Legged World by Peter Grandbois, In Time by James McCorkle, and Orpheus & Echo by Robert Miltner. Of course, books converse with other books, and poetry, rippling from unmeasured sound into rampant forms, is especially polyphonic. Etruscan brings these three books together because they exerted upon our editors a gravitational pull, causing the shadow of one to fall across the reading of another. Sufficient on their own, these books achieve new altitudes when aligned. Triptych launches no school. It backs no cause. What these books share is not easily labeled. None follows narrative conventions. None dwells on confession. None abides predictable meter. None is easily parsed. Each climbs eerie heights where ego finds no purchase. Each takes a kaleidoscopic view of selfhood. Each takes flight toward apotheosis. Each blesses the moments “Before we turn into air,” or give way to “tongue of trees, language of clouds,” and before “Gods and dogs begin their talking back,” before birds “are falling through their late bodies.” In Miltner’s ogham-deep caesuras, in McCorkle’s speech-song, and in Grandbois’s cadences which whisper like ghostly passersby, “sound is emanation,” and emanation asks, “what would this line be without the words?”


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780999753422
Publisher: Etruscan Press
Publication date: 05/05/2020
Series: Etruscan Press Trilogies Series
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Peter Grandbois is the author of eight previous books, the most recent of which is This House That (Brighthorse Books, 2017). His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over one hundred journals. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is a senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.

Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, James McCorkle is the author of Evidences (selected by Jorie Graham for the 2003 APR-Honickman First Book Award) and The Subtle Bodies (Etruscan Press 2014). He received an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and is a recipient of fellowships from Ingram Merrill and the NEA, he teaches at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York.

Robert Miltner’s prose poetry collection is Hotel Utopia (New Rivers Press), winner of the Many Voices Project poetry prize; his prose poetry chapbooks include Against the Simple (Kent State University Press), winner of a Wick Chapbook award, and Eurydice Rising (Red Berry Editions), winner of the Summer Chapbook award; his book of brief fiction is And Your Bird Can Sing (Bottom Dog Press). A recipient of an Ohio Arts Council award in poetry, he has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence, and the New York Center for the Book chapbook prize. An Emeritus Professor of English at Kent State University and the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing (NEOMFA), Miltner edits The Raymond Carver Review. He lives in the historic Vassar Park neighborhood in Canton, Ohio, with his wife, the writer Molly Fuller.

Table of Contents

THE THREE-LEGGED WORLD
Peter Grandbois

I

There is no one to write this 21
[Sometimes when I wake] 22
[Sometimes I think I hear] 23
All that can be heard 24
[Sometimes when I look at myself I see] 26
There are no secret lives 27
As if darkness doesn’t come drop by drop 28
Calling us back 29
That we do not perish 31
Now begins the silent season 32
[When the body forgets] 33
The breaking of tongues 34
Something like faith 35
[All we know of stone] 36
Here is the river here is the dream 37
What mud-drunk song waits 38
A long way back 39
Someone not 40
[This winter bone-house] 42
Here is the watery grave 43
Three January Sonnets 44
II
[Why not this other dream] 49
Someone lit my memory on fire 50
The bridge 51
[My body haunts itself] 52
[My body faded like a shadow] 53
[Hollowness seeps in when I wake] 54
[The universe is like a corpse] 55
The doctor said he was fine 56
The ballet of the broken 57
Sometimes I’m not sure what memory is worth 58
To the one who no longer walks these streets 59
The veil between worlds is thin 60
The alchemist is thinking of his secrets 61
III
To return to things their stillness 65
Only in the dark 66
This mad dance 67
Sometimes I want to ask 68
A prayer to fall like dust in search of a home 69
The way we push through light 70
The color of hands 72
What the night has to say 73
The way sky moves 74
Waiting for revelation 75
Say it is the world 76
Rain 77
[How am I only] 78
So close to steam over a river 79
What pulls toward clearing 80
Light water beneath the dark 81
[Maybe only without] 82
Sleep 83
The sacrifice of things hurts at first 85
Here is where it ends 86
IN TIME
James McCorkle
The Visible World 91
Drift-Lines 93
May Days 95
Azulitos 98
Measures 100
Summer Solstice 102
Peonies 105
Cicada 107
Falling Birds 109
September Notes 114
Hornets 116
The Saffron Gatherer 117
Fox Sparrow 120
====== 124
The Water Column 125
Fire Regime 130
Anthracite 134
Euphrates 138
====== 146
Dog Fox 147
On Recollection 148
February Journal 149
Owling 150
Thule 152
Barn Fire 154
Source Code 159
Updraft 160
Fusillade 161
May’s Velocities 163
House Crickets 164
In Time 166
May Suspensions 167
Kill Holes 168
Notes 172
ORPHEUS & ECHO
Robert Miltner
Orpheus: invocation to the muses 177
I island apple trees in bloom 181
Eurydice: symphony in green & gold 182
water lilies 183
coincidence of distance 184
idleness & indolence[love song] 185
shore line: epistle to Eurydice 186
portrait of Eurydice as a charcoal sketch 187
coincidence of direction 188
adrift: a draft 189
Eurydice rising 190
epithalamium [dream song] 191
alchemy calling 192
Eurydice waiting 193
three gossips: ballads for a blue guitar 194
II studio studio session [sound check] 197
summer’s ending [song] 198
snow at Louveciennes & rain in Arles [song] 199
Eurydice: coincidence of remembrance [dream song] 200
Cupid & Psyche [love song] 201
Paris: ghost of a chance [unrequited love song] 202
green door [tone poem] 203
painting the town wine [cover song] 204
Narcissus Boulevard[selfie video with soundtrack] 205
clatter of jackdaws: Eurydice as sorry sight [alternate take] 206
portrait of Eurydice as theater & thespian [dream song] 207
number ten [fantasy] 208
portrait of Echo as Camille Monet in a red cape [song] 209
lost at sea: Hart’s song 210
satyr rock [bootleg] 211
Orpheus: photo booth [fantasy] 212
III underworld blue islands 215
Orpheus: a ruin of willows 216
black nasturtium 217
autumn peninsula 218
Narcissus: the day I drowned 219
Echo to Narcissus [dream missive] 220
sugar & salt 221
the river Nox & the caves of Hypnos [fantasy] 222
alackaday the winter orchard 223
scatter my heart you three-sistered muse 224
Morpheus: changeling in the looking-glass 225
mockingbird [blues jam] 226
Orpheus in Vegas [dream song] 227
Orpheus: once a traveler 228
Echo: coda & envoi [found song] 229
notes 230
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