Brian Edward Bahr

Two poems in one day

2009-12-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

My poem the close of the door is up at Everyday Poets and the summer is any is at Abjective. Two very different pieces: the first is impressionistic, presenting only sounds; and the second uses words in a more abstract way.

2009-11-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

A slightly humorous piece is up at Dispatch Litareview. Go read Unclosed Aparments.

no recess

2009-09-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

no recess is now up at Barnwood

http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_26/09_scroll_4.html

narrow man

2009-09-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

I have a new poem titled "narrow man" in Halfway Down the Stairs.

http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=155

The Dusk of Tomorrow

2009-08-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

My story "The Dusk of Tomorrow" is now available to be viewed online at:

http://issuu.com/shootsandvines/docs/issue3issuu
(on pages 12-14)

It is also available in a print edition which can be purchased by sending $2 to:

Shoots and Vines
PO Box 489
Poseyville, IN 47633

a daybeforeyesterday crowd

2009-08-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Currently I have one poem called "a daybeforeyesterday crowd" published in mud-luscious, which is an online journal, so the entire poem can be viewed at:

http://www.aboutjatyler.com/index_files/Page653.html (it is about halfway down the page).

I also have a forthcoming poem (in December) and two forthcoming stories (both in October).
The poem is titled "the summer is any" and will be published in Abjective.
The story "The Dusk of Tomorrow" will come out in the print edition of Shoots and Vines.
And the story "A Confidential Light" will be included in Full of Crow.

Faulkner, Kafka, and Joyce

2009-08-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

My favorite writers are William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce and I rank them in that order but do not necessarily think that all of Faulkner’s works are better than Kafka’s or all of Kafka’s better than Joyce’s. (In fact, Joyce would have ranked much higher if he didn’t have instances of silliness like the opening of Portrait and various passages in Finnegan’s Wake.)
Faulkner and Joyce are the very factory the modernist movement stemmed from. Many readers of them complain that they are sometimes difficult to understand (and I somewhat agree, although I find that most of the difficult passages can be understood with a little work on the part of the reader), while admirers of the two claim things like “people just don’t understand their genius” and other such weedy statements; but these “defects” are not due to confusion on Faulkner’s or Joyce’s part, but due to the nature of designing novel effects: new innovations are bound to have mistakes. This can be seen even in the way that Faulkner improved on the stream-of-consciousness style that Joyce introduced to the craft of writing.
Joyce was not as novel in his themes as Faulkner and Kafka, but Kafka most of all spoke the trepidations and anxieties that festered in the twentieth century mentality. Even the stories that seem just outside the grasp of understanding resonate with some hidden meaning and call for another reading.And to me the ability (and desire) to reread a book is the most important criterion affecting fondness for a particular author.