Oberlin College Press

Russell Edson

THE TUNNEL

Paper $19.95 (ISBN 0-932440-65-7)

There simply isn't anything, anywhere, that is quite like the crazy, painful, wildly funny and oddly inexorable work of Russell Edson, the most extraordinary American prose poet of the twentieth century. This volume gathers his best work from seven collections over thirty years.

"The Tunnel is a magnificent book. The microscopic precision and intuitive leaps evident throughout the book confirm that Edson is not merely an offbeat original but a profound contemporary poet deserving of wider recognition."
--Rain Taxi

THE PHILOSOPHERS

I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on the head, therefore I am.
No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.
So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.
You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit, cried the man.

...I think, therefore I am, said the man.
I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets hit, said the man's mother.
But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am, and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it...

--Russell Edson