These Extremes: Poems and Prose (Southern Messenger Poets)

An LSU Press paperback original In his first collection of poetry and prose, award-winning fiction writer Richard Bausch proves that he is also an accomplished poet. Penned over a span of many years, the poems in These Extremes deal with a wide variety of subjects. Many focus on Bauschs own family and relationships. In one long, touching poem, Barbara (19431974), the poet memorializes his oldest sister, who died young. He also offers two prose memory pieces, recollections from his childhood and adolescence. In these brief essays, Bausch draws loving but unsentimental portraits of his father, mother, and other relatives as he reflects on the sense of belonging that he gained from his familysomething he hopes to pass on to his own children in this violent, chaotic world. In Back Stories, the center of the book, Bausch effortlessly weaves poems around familiar characters from history, literature, movies, and popular cultureincluding Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeares Falstaff, Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and Sam, the piano player from Casablanca. Decidedly accessible in form, theme, and expression, These Extremes will surprise and delight lovers of poetry and fans of Bauschs stories and novels. Richard Bausch is the author of many books of fiction, most recently the novels Peace and Thanksgiving Night, and Wives and Lovers: 3 Short Novels. His stories have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, New Yorker, GQ, Playboy, Harpers, and in the anthologies Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and Pushcart Prize Stories. Recipient of the Hillsdale Prize for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the PEN/Malamud Award, Bausch lives in Memphis, Tennessee.. Contents......Page 8 I War......Page 10 II Lei Flower......Page 16 III Her Pictures......Page 26 IV Back Stories......Page 42 V Prose: Those Years......Page 56 VI Garden......Page 78