Conundrum Press

Join us for Denver’s most exciting evening of literary and...

calebjseeling — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:14:48 -0600

Join us for Denver’s most exciting evening of literary and artistic goodness. Conundrum in RiNo, June 14 from 7-10p. Get your free ticket at conundruminrino.eventbright.com.

If you’ve never heard Chris Ransick, former poet laureate...

calebjseeling — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:10:10 -0600

If you’ve never heard Chris Ransick, former poet laureate of Denver, read his poetry and speak about living life well, you’re in a for a treat. Listen here as he reads three of his poems and talks about the craft of poetry and the aliveness of literary culture. His newest collection is forthcoming from Conundrum Press, June 2013. He will read from his new collection Language of the Living and the Dead on June 14 in Denver. Join us! More info here.

—from Colorado Public Radio’s “Showcase” with David Fender, re- aired April 12, 2013.

Those Evenings When All of God's Conundrums

calebjseeling — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:47:38 -0600

from Letters from a Stranger
Winner of the Colorado Book Award
by James Tipton

Those evenings when all of God’s conundrums
arrive at once, I look for something solid,
like the cook, caught in the lick of thyme,
when she looks into her red soup, pondering
the interminable tomatoes of the past,
or like the old man in the cathedral in Cuzco,
muttering under his breath, “Jesus be damned,
and the one good eye of the Pope too!”

These evenings when God’s conundrums arrive,
I remember the dead universities,
the knowledge that grew there like extra fingers,
until the hand was no longer able
to find a glove that fit against the cold;
I remember the words that fell like brilliant rain,
dazzling the dark out of the hair,
turning it this unruly and early white.

These evenings when all of God arrives at once—
conundrum and clumsy shepherd, three-personed and
inconclusive, like water filled to the brim with jugs—
He asks me whether I have any wool,
whether I have any weather left in me
to turn this drift of sail to land.
Only one answer comes to hand:
“Yes Sir, yes Sir, three bags full.”

When all the evenings conundrum together
to this single lost star moment,
God gathers around me—and I stare,
with the intensity of the feeble minded,
at some gap in space that leaves the ganglia flattened,
a gap that like some heavy iron passes
over these buttery cells, until even the very soul
seems to be only breakfast for some imbecilic chorus.

“We’ll be together yet, mi campesina,” I sing,
while guns and conundrums bugle out God
to the winds not yet born, to the lazy hearts,
to the ladder of day, to the fetal angels,
to the distances that always repeat themselves,
to mouths that open like sockets of eyes,
to the delirious roses that bloom on the cheeks of love,
to the herds on high, the horse that swallowed the sea.

That campesina conundrum also is not satisfying,
arriving like a country Madonna, a fixture on a tomb,
like gold faucets in the homes of the wealthy,
that campesina, that piece of bread, that rosy God
always just out of reach, that benign and treacherous
presence that sighs out hope and the false peace
of future possibilities, that siren against which
I have hoarded the wax of bees.

These evenings when God’s arrival
all at once conundrums, what I lack
in purity of spiritual intention I compensate for
with purity of desperation; and some compensation,
unexpected, sets in, like the subdued pain in the ring finger
from the bite of the Black Widow six weeks ago;
like the soft ecstasy that is sinking into me now
while I sip this delicate tea of mangos and marigolds
I received today in the mail from a stranger.

Click here to order a copy

Spring

calebjseeling — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:21:54 -0600

from Memory’s Rooms
a forthcoming collection by Eleanor Swanson
releasing June 2013

Clusters of bright yellow
dandelions have sprung up
in the already-verdant grass.
The branches of apple trees
are lavish with white flowers.

A girl throws her arms around
her father’s waist as he rakes
thatch into tidy piles
light as shorn hair.
A shirtless man strides
down the sidewalk whistling.

When the autistic boy finally speaks—
thin arms flapping like wings—
words burst from his mouth,
as if riding in iridescent bubbles.
He clutches his patient listeners,
one in each small hand,
a purple lilac bush and a rake.

I wish the bush and rake
would nod once in a while
just to keep him talking.
This is what his mother
wishes too—just
keep him talking.

She watches from a window,
tears trickling down her face
like spring snowmelt,
clean and clear.

Click here to pre-order your copy for 10% off!

At Fifteen

calebjseeling — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:44:00 -0600

from Some of These Days
a forthcoming collection by Robert King
releasing June 2013

At the first hard shock, a first love
overturned in the instant of a letter,
I was burned by the hurt, if not

in the heart, that tight affectionate knot,
then in the chest, an ache swelling up.
That night I lay in bed watching the rain

burst over our small troubled trees
and cried, mostly from pain but partly,
that young, in tune with the storm’s torrent,

until I stopped. But then, wanting back
that bitter pang, I counted up
every lost thing until I broke out again,

glorying in my new sadness,
delighted to feel it, to feel, my small life
as large as the worldly rain.

Click here to preorder your copy for 10% off!

The Spring

calebjseeling — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:08:00 -0600

from Thread of the Real
by Joseph Hutchison

Your chest’s like a grave
at a crossroads, and the dead
within it shiver: their spirits
rush … make your backbone
bend and dip like a hazel wand.

You touched your breast, told
the curious: “Here. Sink your well
here.” The timid refused. But one
labored to split you open—worked
with teeth gritted against even
your own curses—and drew up,
in the end, buckets of shadow,
nothing but shadow …

Then others came, called
hopefully into your depths;
now only the echoes flow
inside you, moaning
in fear or delight—
who can say? But the ache
of that music makes you thirst,
bowing to the secret spring
you’ve never learned
to drink from.

Click here to order a copy.

Mud Season

calebjseeling — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:11:00 -0600

From Wire Song
by Mark Todd

Tires chew into the soft,
April earth, drop easily
into ruts that sluice
the passages of spring
through country roads.

The fields still linger
with five months’ snowwash,
stock trails crisscrossing
the meadow-white. No longer
content with aging bales,

the horses search, paw
at the crust thaw, hungering
for the shootgreen grass
that surely lies beneath.
Across the pasture

I ease the truck
toward their gate,
a weary struggle
against mud channels
that later will lead to home.

Click here to order your copy of Wire Song.

A Screwball Rispetto

calebjseeling — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:29:38 -0600

Your target—his hands clenching the bat.
Grip the ball with a falcon’s claw and roll
over the top as you release, snapping that
red seam down into the plate’s black hole.

Heat it hard so the pitch comes fast
and a bit wild, inside middle so it breaks
in toward tender knuckles as he takes
a stuttering stride and swings right past.

Click here to pre-order your copy for 10% off.

If You Had Such Wings

calebjseeling — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:21:39 -0600

from Language for the Living and the Dead
new poems by Chris Ransick

If you had such wings, then where?
Soar, circle, dive, hover,
come back down to Earth from the air.

Does a body dream better up there?
Imagine the wind as your lover.
If you had such wings, then where?

Fly away and until you’re aware
the horizon is all we discover.
Come back down to Earth from the air.

Come back to the bed you share.
A gift means the most to the giver.
If you had such wings, then where?

At the table, your empty chair
can wait for you forever.
Come back down to Earth from the air.

Live as you are, if you dare.
Let your feet know the ground you cover.
If you had such wings, then where?
Come back down to Earth from the air.

Click here to pre-order your copy for 10% off.

Baptismal Drowning

calebjseeling — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:09:29 -0600

from Crazy Chicana in Catholic City
by Juliana Aragon Fatula

Poverty eats up souls.
Terror lies in children’s hearts.
She plays with gringos on the streets,
sits at the river, and wonders
how long it would take to sink
to the black bottom like la Llorona’s babies.

Mexican dirt drips down her face.
She prays on the edge of the current
flowing east; the amber sphere
vanishing in the west.
She prays for a reason not to slip
into the icy water.

He saves two lives,
God’s seed miracle:
she feels her son kick
on her fourteenth birthday.

Her son in the womb
swims upstream,
fights the mud that clings like licorice,
learning to surf rough waters.
He saves lives and baptizes souls,
thumps his fists against their lungs,
sings life into their bodies.
This little dark man with cosmos eyes.
His heart vast as the ocean.

Click here to buy a copy of Crazy Chicana in Catholic City.

These Awkward Efforts to Be Alive

calebjseeling — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:56:00 -0600

from Letters from a Stranger
Winner of the Colorado Book Award
by James Tipton

These awkward efforts to be alive,
to wade through our own debris,
toward shore, toward other people,
we take too seriously.

Our ships wreck, and we survive;
our hearts, stolen by pirates,
are not ransomed; but we
cannot weep forever for these lost things.

The sea, not the ship, is our mother.
The waves are never clumsy.
They know when to break,
to give up, to go back.

Click here to buy a copy of Letters from a Stranger.

Learning to Read Poetry

hgr14 — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:22:00 -0700

Most of the poetry I’ve read in the past has been mandatory. Only recently, because of Conundrum Press, have I started to pursue poetry recreationally. However, that doesn’t suddenly make me an expert. I haven’t had a stroke of genius. I struggle quite a lot with poetry, and though I’m trying to ‘expand my horizons’ in my reading choices, I still find poetry quite hard to understand. I’m only seventeen, so there’s hope for me yet, but I thought I’d take you along on my journey to learn to read poetry.

Poetry is like any other piece of writing in that it has a story behind it. The only difference is poetry has no back-story or explanation and therefore leaves the reader to interpret at will. This is an amazing opportunity to explore the meanings behind the words and metaphors, but it also leaves a lot of room for confusion. One of the best ways to approach poetry is with someone or a number of some ones to help you through it. The discussion of the work is almost as enjoyable as the work itself.

Gather a few of your favorite people, preferably people who also enjoy poetry or at least are willing to try. Read a poem, or a series of poems. Then read them again. And again if needed. Read until you have a firm grasp on your opinion of the poem. When everyone is done grasping at the straws of their understanding, discuss. If no one knows where to start…Welcome to the club of poetry illiterates. There are a lot of us.

Start slow. The first question I always ask myself is ‘What was the poem about.’ This question can be surprisingly hard to answer, but you can’t understand something’s meaning if you don’t know what it’s about in the first place. A lot of poetry is vague. Even with helpful titles you might not know what the poem is about. This is where re-reading comes in handy. As I read a poem, as with any piece of writing, an image starts to form in my mind. The image shifts and takes focus the more I read. Sometimes the image I form on the first run through of the poem is completely different by the time I read the poem multiple times.

So, if no one knows where to start, share the image that formed in your mind while reading. It might be exactly what the poem is about, or it might be completely different; but what matters is how you interpret the poem. And your view of the poetry can change. During the discussions I’ve had, I find my ideas change as the talk progresses.

If you’re not ready to have a group discussion, start small. Write your impressions down and go through a series of questions with yourself. The point of all my ramblings is to void silent reading. I remember in elementary school, when silent reading was assigned I never felt comfortable talking about my opinions with my classmates or teachers. I felt I had to come up with an amazing deduction about the book I was reading all on my own. But ideas thrive with conversation. They grow and shift and change form completely. Share your thoughts and talk about what you’ve read. Get someone else’s viewpoint and develop your own views. Poetry is sometimes difficult, but if you compare notes with others, you get a broader understanding of what you’ve read.

I for one would have no clue how to proceed with poetry if it wasn’t for a few wonderful discussions with some knowledgeable people. So help me out, have you ever had poetry discussions? How did you approach it? Any and all suggestions are very much appreciated.

Happy Reading!

Hayley

What we've been doing at Conundrum this summer

conundrumeditor — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:59:00 -0600

You may have seen our Facebook updates as the warm spring turned into hot summer, and if so, you know we’ve been busy behind the scenes preparing our spring and summer books. We’ve also been reading ahead and are in the process of choosing the next lineup of books, so if you haven’t heard from us about your pending manuscript, you will, soon. Thanks for your patience.

What we have published so far, three new titles and and three redesigned re-issues, are fantastic.

OUR NEW TITLES

Lost Sheep: Aspen’s Counterculture in the 1970s, A Memoir, by Kurt Brown
Both the Aspen Times and Aspen Daily News have reviewed this book, with lots of kudos to Kurt for capturing a beautiful snapshot of this iconic town.

Thread of the Real, Poems by Joe Hutchison. Conrad DiDiodato said of this collection, “It’s always been a habit of mine to read transfixed to a single impression, to one significant moment and place: to the one truth that seems to speak for the rest. And when I’d found it in Joseph Hutchison’s book of verses Thread of the Real, I knew I could now begin.”

Let the Birds Drink in Peace, Stories by Robert Garner McBrearty
This is the first new book from Conundrum in ten years, a glorious and funny set of stories about everyday people. Gorgeous. Jenny Shank reviewed this book in the High Country News and says, “In Colorado writer Robert Garner McBrearty’s fresh and funny new story collection a boy tells his mother he plans to do something great when he grows up. “Everybody feels like that when they’re young,” she replies. And yet, in several stories in this collection –– McBrearty’s third — regular guys do experience an instant of greatness as they save other people from danger –– and then struggle with the consequences.”

OUR REPRINTS

Crazy Chicana in Catholic City, poems by Juliana Aragon Fatula
Sandra Cisneros said of Fatula’s work, “[She] writes histories so terrifying they feel as if they were written with a knife.” We agree.

No Stranger Than My Own, poems by Michael J. Henry
Acclaim for this collection: “Michael Henry’s poems are a skilled, luminous negotiation with the surfaces of life and the shapes of memory. His poems, shot through with feeling and perfectly crafted, are as happy sounding the dark classical themes of poetry as they are finding the saving glisten of the everyday.” —Eli Gottlieb, author of Now You See Him

A Return to Emptiness, stories by Chris Ransick
In its original edition, this collection was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. It’s a collection of short stories about life, loss, and love. In thinking back about writing these stories and what they mean to Ransick now, he says, “Loss is common to us all, yet multifarious in individual experience. I wrote these stories not primarily to describe loss but to circumscribe it-which is to say that I drew a circle of narratives round the experience to both locate and limit it. I was vaguely aware of this at the time of the writing. It’s quite clear now.”

Pearls

calebjseeling — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:04:06 -0700

by Zsolt
from Living, Loving, and Other Heresies

When he wrote the essays in Living, Loving, and Other Heresies, Zsolt was suffering from a progressive, debilitating neuropathy that eventually killed him. The essays began as letters to loved ones, but slowly evolved into group emails not only about his disease, but also about life in general. They functioned as a kind of blog—with the exception that as Zsolt was writing the entries, he was simultaneously losing the ability to play music, ride a bike, walk, speak, and even take care of himself in the most basic ways. Indeed many of the essays were written using word-recognition technology on a keyboard, one very slow letter and return keystroke at a time. Living, Loving, and Other Heresies is a testament to a carefully examined and purposeful life. It is a book of witnessing and testifying, intensely personal and yet expansive, characterized by careful art throughout.

In the essay this excerpt is pulled from, Zsolt has just described losing or accidentally breaking all but one of his treasured pearl necklaces.

Learning to get about with walkers and wheelchairs is one thing. Having to give up one’s pearls is quite another, though I suppose it must be done at some point and better strand by strand than all in a lump. THAT would devastate. I am afraid it will not help for you to say, “But Zsolt, my dear, they were mere costume jewelry.” This is rather like the Prince saying of a woman who has just died, “Oh, she was just the milliner.” Milliner or not, she had her stories.

Regardless, all of these pearly tragedies point up the fact that it is always easier to dispose of things oneself than to have them wrenched away by the hand of Destiny. Somehow, at times like this, when you thought you knew Destiny well, the feel of his hand is not quite what you remember.

With this in mind it is a queer thing that we continue obsessively living an illusion of Life as Accretion and Ownership: how we painstakingly accrue degrees, years, objects, wrinkles, honors; we have children, grandchildren, defenses, spouses, houses, sex. In fact we are so damn confident of the ownership of our accretion, rather like plaque on the teeth, that it is quite a joke when, somewhere in all the fuss of Having, we begin to find that the dominant feature of life is not Accumulation, but Loss. Quite likely in our earlier years we lost a kitten, or a toy, or a friend, or a grandparent, even a parent. As we age, however, and even with the persistent amassing of birthdays, we find ourselves losing everything from muscle tone to memory, pearls to hair. As the dust piles up and inflation grows, as undone chores multiply and wrinkles are added daily, many of us begin questioning whether our glittering personal empires are stable enough to maintain themselves to the end.

***

Yes, I am growing accustomed to living life without the exuberance of dancing, without the thrill of bicycling, without dimly-imagined futures that never came to pass, and as I contemplate my own future I am gradually coming to peace with the thought of living without this object or that, without the full use of my legs, without the playing of music, without much of what has previously defined me, both in my eyes and in the eyes of others. Oddly enough, though, this persistent dissolution of things, whether real or conceptual, is leaving me feeling ever more alive, not less. What remains, however vulnerable, is yet tough and brilliant as a diamond. And on each facet of that diamond is reflected the face of someone I love.

It is here where I most resist having to dismantle my life: those I love. Thankfully there is no need to dismantle them at this point. And perhaps there never will be. While we are often told that we will have to take that last step alone, I wonder if this is true, for in some queer way the love we have been given, part of a magnificent universe, as well as the love we have lived and shared is not only who we are but also that into which we will step at the threshold of death. Even if it be dust to dust, some kind friend is bound to plant a seed in it and watch with awe as it sprouts into luxuriant growth whose berries vaguely resemble pearls.

So toss out the old toaster ovens, throw away the clothing that no longer fits, burn the moth-eaten years of your youth, your life, but the people you love, take them with you, for it is into their love that you will dissolve at the threshold.

Oh hell, take along a string of pearls, too.

Ambition

calebjseeling — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:06:32 -0700

by Bruce Berger
The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope

Think of those naturals who started right off
blowing horn
Like mad, who were born with terrific prose styles,
Who made principled campaigns for public office
Too soon. They cleared the ground so fast you thought
They’d turn you into someone who knew them
back when,
And just kept shrinking into thin air until
You forgot to watch, then forgot you forgot to watch.
Now they turn up. They look healthy, perhaps
even trimmer.
They’re just as full of subversion, puns, scenarios,
Are teaching, fundraising, doing little theater,
Have creative homes, a family started, a shot
At tenure or first percussion. They don’t even
Seem older, just a bit quieter, and it must be only
You who feel let down. Have they consciously dimmed
Their sights? Revised their timing? Or are they
withholding
Whole seasons when acedia strikes them dumb?
Even creative homes are cored with midnights
Notched on the bedside clock. Perhaps by day
They spin elaborate counsels to steady themselves.
Patience, they say. One must sit out a time
without breaks.
One has to let go to regenerate. Nothing gained
By forcing a gift till it blocks. Fruition comes
Of its own accord; meanwhile I must lie fallow,
They tell themselves. I am lying fallow.

They Also Serve

calebjseeling — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:26:39 -0700

by Burton Raffel
from Beethoven in Denver and Other Poems
(in which Beethoven returns from the dead and moves in with Raffel for extended conversations on music, politics, women, history, chocolate, mountains, love, and God)

“They pay you so much—for teaching?” Beethoven
asked.
“Universities are a big business, these days,” I assured
him after noting
That it was not really so much that they paid me, not
so much at all.
“The world of education is not what it was: time
marches on!”
He sighed and drank some beer. “In my Vienna,
Herr Raffel,
Teaching was much more a matter of public relations—
of what you call advertising today—
Than a real source of income. And what dunderhead
pupils I had!
You are fortunate, more even than you know.”
I wanted to insist that I worked for my keep, but
instead I commented that, somehow,
The Beethovens of the world seemed always to
manage—but Raffels, you know,
Well, we had to scramble. “And after all,” I concluded
with a flourish,
“How many Beethovens are there?” He blinked and
stared hard at me:
I had not noticed, before, how exceedingly blue his
eyes could become.
“And how many Raffels are there?” he demanded
bluntly—
And with such plain intent that I could not answer,
I could only look down and wish that somehow I had
managed, just this once, to keep my
mouth shut.

Author of over 60 books, including a translation of Beowulf that has sold more than one million copies since it was published in 1963, Burton Raffel is one of the most widely read American poets of the second half of the twentieth century. In addition to six previous volumes of his own poetry, he has published critical studies of T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, and many other figures.

Poem for a Cold Walk Home

calebjseeling — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:34:00 -0700

by Chris Ransick
from Never Summer: Poems From Thin Air

If I told my story, you might doubt
how high snow piled along the street,
how smooth the ice lay all about

low places in a glassy sheet,
green and black as dusk came down,
late January freeze complete.

I measured steps, a little clown,
with songs and jokes, the squirrels and birds
the only audience around.

I think they knew the tunes and words
but were too cold to sing along;
instead the wind pulled minor chords

across the weedy fields, a throng
of silver maples, branches bare,
conducting our shared winter song

with clacking tips in swirling air.
Halfway home I left the road
for a secret path in the forest where

a frozen stream, swept clean and hard,
curved off toward my father’s place
and passed the boundary of our yard.

I worked to free each frozen lace,
exchanged my boots for battered skates,
fat snowflakes falling on my face.

My mother would be setting plates
on the kitchen table, still warm
loaves of bread on cooling grates.

Then I would move with wind, the berm
of snow on either side my shield
from the now advancing storm.

I skated curves and leapt the stones
protruding from imperfect ice
until I saw the lights of home.

Sometimes I finished with a jump, twice
as high as the banks of snow,
landing with a sweet release

deep in a drift. Sometimes I know
I stopped and stared into the rooms,
dark shapes in foursquare panes, below

the chimney’s smoking plume.
So I return now, years gone by,
my memories a winter bloom.

[Watch for the re-release of Never Summer, and more books by Chris Ransick, from Conundrum Press in 2012].

A New Year's Poem For You

calebjseeling — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:35:00 -0700

A Horse Named Habit

by Mark Todd (from Wire Song)

You bet a Habit
Is hard to break,
You tall-standing
Son of a bitch.
I still gimp
From your knee-bust
Stomp and bronc ways,
A hit-hard lesson.
And to see you still
Too-grained full
Of yourself
While I feel only
The punched-breath
Crunch of flat
Pack and trail.
But I’ll find the cool
Of your blood yet
Between my knees,
The settle-down
Of your gait,
The steady
Of quieter days.

Backlist highlight: Living, Loving and Other Heresies

mrstree — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:17:00 -0700

“If this is heresy, we need more of it! A timeless book of compelling prose and poetry.”—Bill Moyers

In 1999, Zsolt, a writer, musician, dancer, and teacher suffered from a progressive neuropathy, and when he was no longer able to write, began a group e-mail list to which he sent out regular essays about how the disease was affecting his life.

As the illness progressed and he lost the ability to walk, speak, or even to take care of himself, he was able to continue writing by using a word-recognition keyboard program. By this means, he was able to chonicle the disease’s effect on him.

At the same time, Living, Loving, and Other Heresies goes far beyond coping with degenerative disease. Zsolt’s essays and poems range across a passionate and deeply examined life, in which his debilitating illness played but one part.

By turns tender and passionate, playful and indignant, humorous and committed, Zsolt affirms the beauty of life and transforming power of love while simultaneously confronting his own stark fate.

“Living, Loving, and Other Heresies lingers upon the absolute specter of mortality…both as the author confronts it and as the reader will one day experience it. A timeless expression of philosophy, moral dilemmas, and the pain of confronting the inevitable, written with great artistic and literary flare.”—Midwest Book Review

“Zsolt’s collection of short essays is remarkable, not only for the physical effort required in their production, but also in their unflagging optimism and fearless acceptance of death…Zsolt’s writings provide us a template for a compassionate life and the courage to face our own transfiguring dance of death.”—Lance Waring,Telluride Watch

“For the people who will not meet Zsolt in person, this book will be a bridge to an aliveness that is poetic, a sense of humor that cancels despair and beauty that can be breathed in effortlessly. Renew your commitment to living, loving and heresies of every order by journeying with the companion you always hoped would meet you: with Zsolt and his irresistible gossips.” —Barbara Riley, Southwest BookViews

The Non-traditional Traditionalist

calebjseeling — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:20:51 -0600

by Robert Garner McBrearty

My stories usually start right where the time of calm ends. I place my characters right at the moment of change, when they find themselves in new, precarious situations. For instance, four men find themselves on a life raft when their fishing boat goes down and they make awkward stabs at spirituality as they attempt to survive. A private investigator has a crisis of conscience about the woman he’s following. In “Alamo Dreams” a modern couple find themselves besieged in the Alamo.

As a writer, I think of myself sort of as a “non-traditional” traditionalist. The “non-traditional” part often shows up in quirky, even somewhat absurdist stories. Two western outlaws discuss the merits of decaf over regular coffee. The “traditional” shows up in my desire to tell real stories with movement and change, stories I hope that matter to people’s lives. One of my early writing teachers said to me once, (no doubt too generously), “You write delightfully. In the sense of giving real delight.” When she said that, it registered with me that that was what I wanted my stories to do – to delight, to transport, to carry readers away. I sometimes think of my reader as being a poor soul at 3am in a bombed out building, and one of my books is discovered amidst the ruins. With nothing better to do, the reader begins to turn the pages, at first skeptically, and now with a growing interest, as if there’s a friend out there, someone speaking amidst the ruins. I wonder if that’s why one of my favorite books is Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins. That’s sort of what that Alamo story is about, people trying to love amidst this crazy, chaotic, yet beautiful world, and I think that’s a theme that runs through my new collection Let the Birds Drink in Peace.

By delight, though, I don’t mean “light.” Keep in mind I’m a guy who found Crime and Punishment a “delight” to read, though I did skip the original Russian.

Robert Garner McBrearty is the winner of the 2007 Sherwood Anderson Writer’s Grant. A native of San Antonio, Texas, he is a 1981 MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a contributing editor of The Pushcart Prize anthology, and a consulting editor for Narrative magazine.

McBrearty’s new collection of short stories, Let the Birds Drink in Peace, was published in October 2011 by Conundrum Press. His previous works, Episode and A Night at the Y, were met with rave reviews.