A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play

By Kirby Gann

A collection of poetry, fiction, and essay where language isn't strictly functional but comes at the world in its most intense states--in reverie, in revelry, in fine excess; writers who must have, as Paul West once termed it, the world written up . These are minds unavoidably alive on the page. And there they move freely, in particular musical fashion, often making unlikely connections, sometimes jutting their sentences into odd and disproportionate rhythms, creating a vivid, sensory whole. Marketing plans: o Advertisements in writer's magazines o Large brochure and postcard mailings A Fine Excess is the second title to be included in Sarabande's new series, The Writer's Studio, which features books that challenge, stimulate, and support the writer of poetry and short fiction. Kirby Gann is the Managing Editor at Sarabande Books. His fiction has appeared in Witness, American Writing, The Crescent Review, and many other journals. He also has a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize . Kristin Herbert is the former Marketing Director of Sarabande Books. She now lives in San Francisco. She has won an Academy of American Poets Prize, grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and Kentucky Foundation for Women. Contributors include: Maggie Anderson E.E. Cummings Barbara Edelman Alice Fulton William Gass Amy Gerstler Michael Graber Sunetra Gupta Jack Heflin William Kistler Yusef Komunyakaa Jeffrey McDaniel Sharon McDermott Kristina McGrath Susan Mitchell Rick Moody E. Stallings Belle Waring Edmund White and many more

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1889330515
• ISBN13: 9781889330518
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An excessively wonderful anthology

When I saw the list of contributors in A Fine Excess, I knew immediately that this was something I needed to look into. I found it even better than I had expected. I wasn't confronted with the standard list of politically-correct writers, with their oatmeal-flavored politically-correct poetry, that's been the fare of most contemporary anthologies I've seen. On the contrary, this book shows tremendous editorial integrity and risk to put known-but-not-necessarily-liked authors like e. e. cummings alongside relative unknowns like Jeff McDaniel, without many sure-fire sellers. The few expected names that do pop up are in here on their own aesthetic merit, not because they were/are powerful, or because their work plugs into any particular ideology; the only agenda is to pull together a picture of really inventive, linguistically and intellectually daring work. As a whole, this text really works, too, building an aesthetic that's not only lucid and definite, but actually delightful.Not only is A Fine Excess a treasure to page through on a chilly afternoon, but I would also wholeheartedly recommend it as a text for a creative writing class--with the one caveat that it should be used in conjunction with discussion of authors like Shakespeare, Donne, Eliot, and so forth. The writers selected for A Fine Excess have a firm grounding in this kind of literary bedrock; the glorious thing is that they show us just how far, and how gracefully, a talented writer can leap into the artistic aether.