Gulping Recital

Russell Edson (December 12, 1928 - April 29, 2014), often referred to as "the godfather of the prose poem in America," was a poet, novelist, and illustrator. He was the son of cartoonist-screenwriter Gus Edson, best known for his work on two popular, long running comic strips, The Gumps and Dondi. Edson studied art early in life and attended the Art Students League of New York as a teenager. His first collection of poetry and short fiction, Ceremonies in Bachelor Space, was published in 1951 by Black Mountain College. In the early 1960s, he self-published several chapbooks of prose poems under the imprint Thing Press, the best of which were later collected into The Very Thing That Happens: Fables and Drawings, published by New Directions in 1964. Numerous other collections followed, as well as a book of plays, The Falling Sickness, also published by New Directions (1975). Throughout his career, his work appeared in countless anthologies and literary magazines. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1974), The Whiting Award (1989), and three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1976, 1981, 1992).