The Little Book of Guesses

by Gallaher, John

• ISBN13: 9781884800771
• ISBN10: 1884800777
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-01
• Publisher: Four Way Books

Summary

The Little Book of Guesses takes place in a 21st-century world where we've "accustomed ourselves to our customized dogs" and "honed the idea of ideas there in the obstacle race / that'll never catch up." But while it's a world we're not unfamiliar with--"in the New Age tourism is the answer"--Gallaher's turn of speech is at once unique and exact, making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Serving as our escort through scenes including "The War President's Afternoon Tea" and "A Moment in the Market of Moments," Gallaher offers us several guidebooks: "to the Afterlife," "to When Things Were Better," and a "Pocket Guide to Some Foreign Country." Even as these poems guess, they are confident in the form and lyricism. Abundant with comedy, they contain more than a dose of irony and cynicism, and still find room for the quiet anger of frustration, of knowing that what seems most surreal about this world often turns out to be reality itself.

Author Biography

JOHN GALLAHER is the author of Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls and co-editor of The Laurel Review. His poetry has recently been published in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Field, jubilat, The Journal, and Ploughshares. He holds graduate degrees from Texas State University and Ohio University and lives in rural Missouri.

Table of Contents

In the Little Book of Guesses	p. 3
You & Your Lover Embodying Silence	p. 4
Landscape with Suicides	p. 5
Valentino Ponders the Ineffable	p. 6
Measure Twice, Cut Once	p. 7
Daily in the Birds of the Sky	p. 9
The Other Confession	p. 10
Only Lovers & Believers, Please	p. 11
Statements as Questions	p. 12
On Your Brilliant Escape	p. 13
How to Haunt the Living	p. 14
Campfire Girls at Sunrise Hill	p. 15
Anecdote of the Field	p. 19
Pretty, Popular, & Without Secrets	p. 20
Our Recent Stay in Thataway	p. 22
Thicker	p. 24
Sunshine for No Regrets & No Residue	p. 25
My Life in Alcohol	p. 26
For Your Married Lover	p. 27
Opportunities for Seeing Things	p. 28
& the Quonset Hut as Well	p. 29
Pockets of Resistance	p. 30
A Guidebook to Everybody's Business	p. 31
Cocktails at Six, & It's Like We Won	p. 32
In the New Age	p. 35
Happy Birthday to Everyone	p. 36
In the Book of the Disappearing Book	p. 37
A Pocket Guide to Some Foreign Country	p. 38
The War President's Afternoon Tea	p. 40
Bomb Went Off	p. 41
The Cloud from the Machine	p. 43
Hot House Hottentots	p. 44
Cursing the Darkness & What's It to You	p. 46
Ephemerana	p. 47
The Perspective of Disappearance	p. 48
A Guidebook to the Afterlife	p. 51
A Guidebook to When Things Were Better	p. 52
A Moment in the Market of Moments	p. 53
Concerning Our Stunt Doubles	p. 54
All These Effortless Afternoons	p. 56
In the Book of Nothing	p. 57
General Conversation & the Like	p. 58
Ghost Children	p. 59
No Encores. No Autographs	p. 61
There Is No Mercy in Heaven	p. 62
When I Say World I Mean Please	p. 63
Lost in Our Creations, We No Longer Believe in Falling	p. 64
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