Loose Cannons
Loose Cannons
Selected Prose
"These thirty-three prose inventions of Christopher Middleton constitute the fourth pillar of an extraordinary literary oeuvre, the other three being his poetry, translations, and literary essays. Whatever one chooses to call these often astonishing miniatures, they are certainly Middleton's wildest, most accessible, and most entertaining work, and they count as some of his very finest writing."-- August Kleinzahler, Foreword
These uncategorizable writings by a distinguished poet and translator are lively, erudite, and creative. Like his poetry, Middleton's prose pieces are alive with incongruity, collage, and surprising juxtapositions. This extensive collection is the perfect addition to every student's, scholar's, and avid reader's bookshelf.
Middleton's imaginative prose pieces . . . are in a league of their own. . . . Each of the thirty-three pieces in Loose Cannons contains something marvelous. Each of his sentences is a seamless synthesis of perception, information, and music.'--Hyperallergic
Christopher Middleton is a late-modernist master, renowned as a translator and poet. These short prose inventions rank among his finest writings--erudite, witty, absurdist, and altogether delightful, with the wild accuracy of Jorge Luis Borges and Guy Davenport. Across their remarkable variety--literary-historical curiosities, meditations on art history, fables, satires, fantastic travelogues, minute observations of the natural world, deft sketches of café life--Middleton's narratives bristle with intelligence.'--Devin Johnston, author of Creaturely and Other Essays
Christopher Middleton is the author or editor of more than twenty books of poetry and prose, and he is an award-winning translator of German literature. He is a professor emeritus of German languages and literature at the University of Texas at Austin.
