Ed Baker - She Intrudes: Modest Proposal Chapbook, #23

original color artwork

She Intrudes

by

Ed Baker  Modest Proposal Chapbook, #23

Chapbook front cover

Chapbook back cover

Page 1 of 20

Click images to enlarge

I'm proud to announce a new chapbook, She Intrudes by Ed Baker, number 23 in the Modest Proposal Chapbook series from Lilliput Review. The cost is the always modest $3.00, postpaid ($5.00 overseas).  You will find a Paypal button at the top right of this page or can pay the more traditional way via the mail (check, money order etc. made out to "Don Wentworth," Lilliput Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA  15201).

She Intrudes is a bit of a departure from recent chapbooks in the Modest Proposal series; it is in essence one long 20 page poem, a lyrical epistostlary examination of love, inspiration, and desire, while in recent years the MP series has concentrated on shorter forms such as haiku and tanka.  Those of you who know Ed's poetry (and artwork), from the pages of Lilliput or as posted here occasionally on Issa's Untidy Hut, know him as a master of the short poem, work he likes to characterize as "shorties," eschewing the highly politicized and nominally meaningless battles over an acceptable definition of haiku in English.

However, Ed is also known for his ground breaking, innovative works in longer forms, of which She Intrudes is a classic example.   To put Ed's work into a larger context, please see Joe Hutchison's outstanding review of Ed's 515 page epic Stone Girl E-Pic.  He touches on many essential themes in Ed's poetry, such as the devotion to the Goddess/Muse, echoes of which may be found in She Intrudes.  In addition, Hutchison detects stylistic elements which recall E. E. Cummings and James Joyce, and cultural influences that predominate from both East and West.  In an essay on Stone Girl, Conrad DiDiodato enhances and furthers the larger context of Ed's work, teasing out the minimalist, haiku-like, Buddhist connections in both the short and longer forms, connecting him to previous and current contemporaries such as Cid Corman, Carl Rakoski, John Martone, and John Perlman.  If this whets your taste, you'll find Stone Girl E-Pic is still available from the publisher or amazon.

I highly recommend it.

She Intrudes is a more modest affair, perhaps an ideal entry point for Ed Baker's longer poetry.  Working with him on the manuscript has been a real joy as an editor.  The layout and typography, as you may get a hint of in the excerpt above, were a real challenge and Ed's approach, which may best be described as a constant state of revision or, more fairly, a constant state of composition, added layer upon layer to that challenge, which was at once exhilarating and exhausting.  My editorial eye, refined by a more modestly lyrical one, was constantly thrilled by the chase and, ultimately, I feel proud indeed to be able to publish this fine work.

She Intrudes is standard digest size, 5 ½ x 8 ½", laid out sideways to accommodate the long lines, 20 pages in length, and bound in a beige stock cover.

And did I mention the modest cost of $3.00, postpaid?  Yes, of course I did.

O goddess Ichihime
smile!
a meadow butterfly

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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