'U' Prof. Charles Baxter represents Ann Arbor's top literary talent
In a story in University Prof. Charles Baxter's new collection of short fiction, "Believers," a character relating a tale at a dinner party says, "I keep forgetting about the necessities of violence in the USA. Well, if you were expecting violence, you'll be disappointed. Something else happened."
Uncle Cholly's Pot
At the same time my Uncle Cholly was looping a nylon rope over a beam in the kitchen, kicking aside the books and ornaments that he had strewn throughout his rented cottage, Mr. Feebes noticed something shining among the stems of wheat. Mr. Feebes farmed the Ladybridge Estate and, according to what he told me later, it was while he was perched on his combine harvester, that he spotted the shiny object.
The Fire Eater
The circus is in town for the week. Your sister meets the fire eater. Dinner is mentioned, a date is set. Things happen, the date comes, it's tonight. Your sister. The fire eater.
You are waiting in the living room with the fire eater who has come early.
Nascence: A Sestina
We meet as strangers, each a clean slate -
or so we think. We turn down an alley and a wall
free of fresco lifts skyward: the smooth fever
of novelty.
Late October
Late October biting at our legs,
we walked to the hardening pond,
inched our way out until the ice ahead cracked.
poem to be spoken to the rhythm
butterfinger entrails of sleep
sticky on my skin
after accidental slide
Gloucester in Winter
Winter found me by the shelf with your blue shirts,
three tiny seas within themselves.
For days I wished for boats
Unpeeling Margaret Atwood
She's sharp as shattered bones,
kitchen fragments swept in corners,
wedged in cold
bare
feet.
The Month of Dying
October has become a month of dying in my family. My great-grandmother brought us this new season. She was not supposed to be the first to go, her husband Lowell with the thick hearing aids was to die first. My parents reminded my brother and me with their eyes in the rear-view mirror during each trip down to Midland that it would probably be the last time we saw our great-grandfather alive.
Genes
The mother takes up a picture of her husband playing catch with their son. The small child's jeans have two inch cuffs and a grass stain on the shin. His hands outstretch towards the floating tennis ball; his sleeves are rolled up. The sun casts a large shadow of the boy on the sidewalk in front of him.
The Young Writer's Role
It is tempting to define a fiction writer simply as "one who writes stories." That has a minimalist, almost Zen, ring to it which, in a vacuum, might suffice. But in our contemporary setting, such definition seems ingenuous, if not vapid. There is, however, need for a definition of some kind.
A Song of Love
It used to be that there were only two kinds of men in Chicago: those who were in love with Tillie Allweiss and those who hadn't met her yet. Uncle David decreed it, and he was studying to be a doctor, so he couldn't have been wrong, at least not in those days.
They Die
The kitchen smelled of lilies. The centerpiece filled most of the table and assorted pans and bowls of food surrounded it. The tile which had shone just the night before seemed grim with dirt and death, the lights lowered as if they hung their head.
my friends
you think
because you are young, and you are hep,
that your art is radical, subversive, avant-garde,
The Island of Our Birth
The wind sighed upon
concrete docks
while caressing
Anonymous, Wife
Mix the lentils, garlic and cheese, and then stir.
Outside of wood windowpanes with cracked white paint,
See the snow salt the lawn, the grass that's now straw.
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