Joshua Mehigan is a contemporary American poet born in 1969.
He is the author to date of one book, The Optimist (ISBN 0-8214-1611-1), which was published to acclaim in 2004.
After winning the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and upon its release by Ohio University Press, The Optimist was named one of the top-ten university press books of 2004 and chosen as a finalist for the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.
In addition to poetry, Mehigan has published occasional verse translations by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Valéry. He has also published essays and articles in magazines and on the Internet.
Born in Johnstown, a mill town in upstate New York, Mehigan was raised as an only child in a middle-class household. In 1987, he enrolled at Purchase College, where in 1991 he earned a degree in philosophy. In 1994, he received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied with the writers Mark Doty, Dana Gioia, and Thomas Lux. Since 1992, he has lived in New York City, where he has worked in communications, education, and publishing.
Mehigan's material and style are relatively diverse, and have included elegies, ecphrasis, and historical or philosophical subjects in a pure lyric or satiric vein. However, most of his work to date uses a stable mix of lyric, dramatic, or narrative modes and a variety of the plain style. "In the Home of My Sitter" or "The Pig Roast," for example, would seem to be informed by his rural childhood experience. Other poems, such as "Promenade" or "Another Pygmalion," trade on urbanity and a somewhat more heightened style, and tend to concern cosmopolitan themes.
Editors and critics have grouped Mehigan loosely with the younger generation of poets that includes John Canaday, A.E. Stallings, Philip Stephens, Catherine Tufariello, Greg Williamson, Christian Wiman, and David Yezzi, each of whom has employed traditional poetic technique in a contemporary idiom.
In general, Mehigan's poems are marked by thematic darkness, sardonic humor, and musicality, which in many cases serves to temper the saturnine quality they display.
Quotations
* (from "Promenade"): "Wish is the word that sounds like what wind means."
* (from Ohio University Press Book News) "I don't know anyone who thinks forms are really the point. And you have to be severely parochial—parochial in place and time—to think meter is marginal enough to poetry to call its proponents by a special name. A lot of poets classed as New Formalists barely use meter or rhyme! And of course many poets who were never called New Formalists always use meter."
* (from the New York Times) "The city is very definitely a good place for a poet, because there's always some sort of human drama unfolding everywhere. But it's also trying, because you're never going to get rich writing poetry, and the city's so expensive."
Sources and
He is the author to date of one book, The Optimist (ISBN 0-8214-1611-1), which was published to acclaim in 2004.
After winning the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and upon its release by Ohio University Press, The Optimist was named one of the top-ten university press books of 2004 and chosen as a finalist for the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.
In addition to poetry, Mehigan has published occasional verse translations by Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Valéry. He has also published essays and articles in magazines and on the Internet.
Born in Johnstown, a mill town in upstate New York, Mehigan was raised as an only child in a middle-class household. In 1987, he enrolled at Purchase College, where in 1991 he earned a degree in philosophy. In 1994, he received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied with the writers Mark Doty, Dana Gioia, and Thomas Lux. Since 1992, he has lived in New York City, where he has worked in communications, education, and publishing.
Mehigan's material and style are relatively diverse, and have included elegies, ecphrasis, and historical or philosophical subjects in a pure lyric or satiric vein. However, most of his work to date uses a stable mix of lyric, dramatic, or narrative modes and a variety of the plain style. "In the Home of My Sitter" or "The Pig Roast," for example, would seem to be informed by his rural childhood experience. Other poems, such as "Promenade" or "Another Pygmalion," trade on urbanity and a somewhat more heightened style, and tend to concern cosmopolitan themes.
Editors and critics have grouped Mehigan loosely with the younger generation of poets that includes John Canaday, A.E. Stallings, Philip Stephens, Catherine Tufariello, Greg Williamson, Christian Wiman, and David Yezzi, each of whom has employed traditional poetic technique in a contemporary idiom.
In general, Mehigan's poems are marked by thematic darkness, sardonic humor, and musicality, which in many cases serves to temper the saturnine quality they display.
Quotations
* (from "Promenade"): "Wish is the word that sounds like what wind means."
* (from Ohio University Press Book News) "I don't know anyone who thinks forms are really the point. And you have to be severely parochial—parochial in place and time—to think meter is marginal enough to poetry to call its proponents by a special name. A lot of poets classed as New Formalists barely use meter or rhyme! And of course many poets who were never called New Formalists always use meter."
* (from the New York Times) "The city is very definitely a good place for a poet, because there's always some sort of human drama unfolding everywhere. But it's also trying, because you're never going to get rich writing poetry, and the city's so expensive."
Sources and
Hemsby Inshore Lifeboat (H.I.R.S) was established in 1976 and became a "DECLARED FACILITY" with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. This means that Hemsby Inshore Lifeboat is part of the United Kingdom's Maritime Search and Rescue Service for the waters off the Norfolk coast and also the freshwater area known as the Norfolk Broads.
Christopher Wunderlee is an American poet and writer. To date, he has published two novels, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories.
Wunderlee is associated with hysterical realism, post-modernist writers. His poetry first attracted attention. His poem "Tomorrow" garnered attention for its word juxtaposition, confessional style and allusions. In recent years, a number of 'prose-poems' published in journals in the UK and U.S. furthered his reputation and brought him critical acclaim and a number of awards.
His prose rose to prominence with the short story "A Chat with Howl" in the literary journal Zyzzyva, in which he interviewed the "voice" of the poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg. The story's originality and experimentation attracted readers and garned Wunderlee an "Emerging Voice" nomination. He followed with a number of critically well-received stories, and travel articles in the magazine Places.
In 2003, Wunderlee published a collection of poems, Kalopsia. The title is indicative of Wunderlee’s poetic theory and means, “a state (or delusion) in which things are more beautiful than they truly are”. The poems in the collection share the theme of juxtaposing graceful lines with an often dubious subject matter, and highlight his talent for new lyricism. “Tomorrow/ I’ll wake/ after some suppressant evening/ with nothing but the tele-waves/ and groans of bored kitty cats/ and shave my head for god/ leave the house with alms hands/ and circumambulation cries/ and live Brahmin-like in alleyway insights” (from “Tomorrow”). It won critical acclaim from a number of critics and publications for its merging of modernistic themes and postmodernistic voice, essentially a collection that seemed to unite T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Ginsberg.
In 2005, the Loony appeared, the story of an estranged scientist’s supposed role in faking the Project Apollo moon missions in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Again, the title of the book mirrors the subject matter, as the protagonist appears to be either suffering from ‘lunacy’ or he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to keep it secret that the Apollo missions were faked. The main characters are Albert Locner, an astrophysicist who becomes embroiled in the plot. An apparitional love interest named Harris who is allegedly a military spy who uses sex to blackmail prominent enemies of the state and/or another victim of the plot. And, “the Colonel”, who is either the military officer in charge of Lochner’s case or a psychiatrist. It has been suggested that they are postmodern counterparts to Dante, Beatrice and the Devil, or Don Quixote, Dulcinea, and the narrator. The story, using experimental narration, follows Albert Lochner’s life from conception to his downfall, when he joins the team to fake the lunar landings. After they accomplish their goal and fool the world, Lochner is blackmailed when Harris is supposedly abducted. In order to save her, he must agree to a number of unspecified demands, one of which is that he spends several years being driven randomly around the U.S. by two agents, why is never explained. He later escapes to find Harris, in attempt to discover whether she was truly a victim or an accomplice in the conspiracy. The plot is infused with unique devices, including the repetitive use of lines from David Bowie’s Space Oddity song, “out-of-room-voices” who chime in to offer commentary or break into song (it has been suggested that these ‘voices’ are actually patients at a psychiatric ward and that the entire or at least some part of the book takes place there) and “file footage”, or scenes from movies, television shows, propaganda films, and other media (again, potentially simply what is playing on the television at the hospital). These plot devices combine with the unique, loquacious prose style to mirror a state of lunacy, whether this is because the protagonist is indeed mentally ill or because of the situation he finds himself in is the big unanswered question of the novella. Because of its symbolic parallels, stylistic innovations, and distinctive narrative style, The Loony is considered a groundbreaking work of fiction. Comparisons of the novella were made to Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Joseph Heller, and Vladimir Nabokov.
In 2007, Wunderlee published "Visiting Hours", a collection of his short stories.
Poetry
[http://www.snarkpub.com/snarkpub/Chapbook.aspx?CurrentID50e27387-872a-4620-aa94-ee8fd021484b&MySubmitVerbSelect+Chapbook Kalopsia (2003)]
Fiction
Visiting Hours (2007)ISBN 978-0615157436
The Loony: a novella of epic proportions (2005) ISBN 1411624505
A Wanton Gyre (2001)
Wunderlee is associated with hysterical realism, post-modernist writers. His poetry first attracted attention. His poem "Tomorrow" garnered attention for its word juxtaposition, confessional style and allusions. In recent years, a number of 'prose-poems' published in journals in the UK and U.S. furthered his reputation and brought him critical acclaim and a number of awards.
His prose rose to prominence with the short story "A Chat with Howl" in the literary journal Zyzzyva, in which he interviewed the "voice" of the poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg. The story's originality and experimentation attracted readers and garned Wunderlee an "Emerging Voice" nomination. He followed with a number of critically well-received stories, and travel articles in the magazine Places.
In 2003, Wunderlee published a collection of poems, Kalopsia. The title is indicative of Wunderlee’s poetic theory and means, “a state (or delusion) in which things are more beautiful than they truly are”. The poems in the collection share the theme of juxtaposing graceful lines with an often dubious subject matter, and highlight his talent for new lyricism. “Tomorrow/ I’ll wake/ after some suppressant evening/ with nothing but the tele-waves/ and groans of bored kitty cats/ and shave my head for god/ leave the house with alms hands/ and circumambulation cries/ and live Brahmin-like in alleyway insights” (from “Tomorrow”). It won critical acclaim from a number of critics and publications for its merging of modernistic themes and postmodernistic voice, essentially a collection that seemed to unite T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Ginsberg.
In 2005, the Loony appeared, the story of an estranged scientist’s supposed role in faking the Project Apollo moon missions in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Again, the title of the book mirrors the subject matter, as the protagonist appears to be either suffering from ‘lunacy’ or he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy to keep it secret that the Apollo missions were faked. The main characters are Albert Locner, an astrophysicist who becomes embroiled in the plot. An apparitional love interest named Harris who is allegedly a military spy who uses sex to blackmail prominent enemies of the state and/or another victim of the plot. And, “the Colonel”, who is either the military officer in charge of Lochner’s case or a psychiatrist. It has been suggested that they are postmodern counterparts to Dante, Beatrice and the Devil, or Don Quixote, Dulcinea, and the narrator. The story, using experimental narration, follows Albert Lochner’s life from conception to his downfall, when he joins the team to fake the lunar landings. After they accomplish their goal and fool the world, Lochner is blackmailed when Harris is supposedly abducted. In order to save her, he must agree to a number of unspecified demands, one of which is that he spends several years being driven randomly around the U.S. by two agents, why is never explained. He later escapes to find Harris, in attempt to discover whether she was truly a victim or an accomplice in the conspiracy. The plot is infused with unique devices, including the repetitive use of lines from David Bowie’s Space Oddity song, “out-of-room-voices” who chime in to offer commentary or break into song (it has been suggested that these ‘voices’ are actually patients at a psychiatric ward and that the entire or at least some part of the book takes place there) and “file footage”, or scenes from movies, television shows, propaganda films, and other media (again, potentially simply what is playing on the television at the hospital). These plot devices combine with the unique, loquacious prose style to mirror a state of lunacy, whether this is because the protagonist is indeed mentally ill or because of the situation he finds himself in is the big unanswered question of the novella. Because of its symbolic parallels, stylistic innovations, and distinctive narrative style, The Loony is considered a groundbreaking work of fiction. Comparisons of the novella were made to Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Joseph Heller, and Vladimir Nabokov.
In 2007, Wunderlee published "Visiting Hours", a collection of his short stories.
Poetry
[http://www.snarkpub.com/snarkpub/Chapbook.aspx?CurrentID50e27387-872a-4620-aa94-ee8fd021484b&MySubmitVerbSelect+Chapbook Kalopsia (2003)]
Fiction
Visiting Hours (2007)ISBN 978-0615157436
The Loony: a novella of epic proportions (2005) ISBN 1411624505
A Wanton Gyre (2001)
The Loony is a novella by Christopher Wunderlee, published in 2005, that achieved a 'cult' status due to its experimentation, eroticism, and subject matter. It describes the experiences of a blackmailed astrophysicist named Albert Lochner, who allegedly played an integral part in NASA faking the Apollo moon landings in the late '60s and '70s.
Described as post-modern and/or hysterical realism, the novella is a series of vignettes that intertwine, loop, and leap in an intentional mimickery of "lunacy" that center around the protagonists belief that he assisted in the "greatest myth-making in history" and follow his random, inflated accounts of how he was initiated into the "lie". Once embroiled in the conspiracy, Lochner soon finds himself blackmailed to keep the secret. Through a series of erotically charged seductions by a super-spy named only Harris, Lochner agrees to certain "conditions" to protect the woman he believes he loves and whom he believes is being threatened. However, he soon discovers that she may have been part of the conspiracy. Spiralling out of control, the novella follows Lochner's descent into paranoia and his quest to discover what truly happened.
Themes
Implosion is a central theme of The Loony. The book is broken up into 10 chapters, which are counted down until the zero-moment, David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is quoted extensively (in which Major Tom's space capsule 'implodes'), and much of the narrative is occupied with the protagonist's movement towards psychological implosion. Additionally, the concepts of historical revisionism, myth-making, and chaos feature heavily.
An experimental work, The Loony is a non-linear narrative that employs unique plot devices that are difficult to categorize. Episodes include a transcript of an "interrogation" that is obviously a group-session in an institution, a secret meeting of a black government group that barters for the right to claim historical facts (and thus, fictional events become part of our history); a game of craps with God; and most interestingly, "out-of-room" voices that range from former president Richard Nixon to astronauts to spies interrupt the prose seemingly randomly and "file footage" of various historical events and movies are played simultaneously with dialogue, creating an odd apprehension, confusion and beauty.
Described as post-modern and/or hysterical realism, the novella is a series of vignettes that intertwine, loop, and leap in an intentional mimickery of "lunacy" that center around the protagonists belief that he assisted in the "greatest myth-making in history" and follow his random, inflated accounts of how he was initiated into the "lie". Once embroiled in the conspiracy, Lochner soon finds himself blackmailed to keep the secret. Through a series of erotically charged seductions by a super-spy named only Harris, Lochner agrees to certain "conditions" to protect the woman he believes he loves and whom he believes is being threatened. However, he soon discovers that she may have been part of the conspiracy. Spiralling out of control, the novella follows Lochner's descent into paranoia and his quest to discover what truly happened.
Themes
Implosion is a central theme of The Loony. The book is broken up into 10 chapters, which are counted down until the zero-moment, David Bowie's "Space Oddity" is quoted extensively (in which Major Tom's space capsule 'implodes'), and much of the narrative is occupied with the protagonist's movement towards psychological implosion. Additionally, the concepts of historical revisionism, myth-making, and chaos feature heavily.
An experimental work, The Loony is a non-linear narrative that employs unique plot devices that are difficult to categorize. Episodes include a transcript of an "interrogation" that is obviously a group-session in an institution, a secret meeting of a black government group that barters for the right to claim historical facts (and thus, fictional events become part of our history); a game of craps with God; and most interestingly, "out-of-room" voices that range from former president Richard Nixon to astronauts to spies interrupt the prose seemingly randomly and "file footage" of various historical events and movies are played simultaneously with dialogue, creating an odd apprehension, confusion and beauty.