Wild Nights!

Contents

• Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House
• EDickinsonRepliLuxe
• Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish 1906
• The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital 1914-1916
• Papa at Ketchum 1961

Epigraph

Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile—the Winds—
To a Heart in port—
Done with the Compass—
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden—
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor—Tonight—
In Thee!

Emily Dickinson (1861)

Awards

• Shirley Jackson Award Finalist: 2008, Collection

Reviews

• Donna Seaman, Booklist, November 1, 2007, p. 6
  
  
  
• Sam Coale, Providence Journal-Bulletin, May 11, 2008, Features, p. 6
  
  "Here are five splendid stories, imagining five major American authors on the verge of death each rooted in biographical facts and presented in the authors own particular style that are harrowing, heartfelt, incredibly moving, that cut to the depths of the psyche, probing with such laser-lean, honed prose that it'll take your breath away.
  
  
• Carol Herman, Washington Times, April 6, 2008, p. B5
  
  "The title of the book, "Wild Nights!," is taken from an Emily Dickenson poem, but the measure of this book is kin to the poet's oeuvre as well. There is loneliness here. Also depth and character in ample measure. And there is a reminder here about what literature and its best practitioners teach us about mortality.
  
  
• Brenda Wineapple, New York Times Book Review, April 20, 2008, p. 9
  
• Publishers Weekly, October 15, 2007, p. 34
  
• Joshua Cohen, Library Journal, December 1, 2007, p. 107
  
• Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2008
  
• Daniel Dyer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 6, 2008, p. G5
  
• Tom Beer, Newsday, April 6, 2008
  
• Dale Singer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 6, 2008, p. D11
  
• Tom Henry, Toledo Blade, April 27, 2008
  
• Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star, May 4, 2008, p. ID8
  
• Nancy Klingener, Solares Hill, May 30, 2008, pp. 14-15
  
• Jose Teodoro, Ottawa Citizen, October 3, 2008
  
• Brigitte, Frase, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St.Paul), April 19, 2008, p. 14F
  
• Janice Kulyk Keefer, Globe and Mail (Canada), May 10, 2008, p. D5
  

Other Editions

Excerpt

From "Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House"

1 March 1850. Cyclophagus, I have named it. A most original & striking creature, that would have astonished Homer, as my gothic forebears to a man. Initially, I did not comprehend that Cyclophagus was an amphibian, & have now discovered that this species dwells, by day at least, in watery burrows at the edge of the pebbled beach: to emerge, in the way of the Trojan invaders, at nightfall, & clamber about devouring what flesh its claws, snout, & tearing teeth can locate. & in this way, Mercury died.

Primarily, Cyclophagus is yet another scavenger; tho' the larger specimens, clearly males, & magnificent tyrants of the beach they are, reaching the size of a wild boar, will attack & devour—living, & shrieking!—such creatures as very large spider-crabs (themselves a terror to contemplate) & a greatheaded fish, or reptile, with astonishing phosphorescent scales, I have named Hydrocephalagus, & the usual roosting sea-birds, gulls & hawks, lapsed into unwary sleep amongst the boulders; &, as it happened the other night, poor Mercury, who in a terrier blood-lust had unwisely blundered into the domain of one of these nightmare beasts. I can scarcely record it in this Diary, I had once hoped to express only the loftiest sentiments of humankind, how, wakened from sleep, I heard my companion's piteous cries, for it seemed to me that he cried "Master! Master!" & that my beloved V. cried with him, that I might save him. & so, casting aside my disgust for the Charnel House, I stumbled to Mercury's side, as the doomed fox terrier struggled frantically for his life, trapped in the masticating jaws of a Cyclophagus male intent upon devouring him alive. Desperate, I struck at the monstrous predator with rocks, & tugged at Mercury, shouting & crying, until at last I managed to "free" Mercury of those terrible serrated teeth—ah, too late! For by now the poor creature was part-dismembered, copiously bleeding & whimpering as with a final convulsion he died in my arms ...

I cannot write more of this. I am sickened, I am overcome with disgust. The shadowy regions of Usher are no more, Cyclophagus has invaded. Not the gothic spider-fancies of Jeremias Gotthelf himself could withstand such hellish creatures! In a nightmare vision my beloved V. came to chastise me, that I have abandoned our "first-born" to such a fate. My astonished eyes saw V. as I had not seen her since our wedding day, when she was but thirteen years old, ethereal & virginal as the driven snow; & I heard her weeping voice as I had never heard it in life, in this curse:

"I shall not see you again, husband. Neither in this world nor in Hades."

Interview

• Columbus Dispatch, April 6, 2008

Notes

"Poe Posthumous; or, The Light-House" has been suggested by the single-page manuscript titled "The Light-House," which was found among the papers of Edgar Allan Poe after his death on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore.

"EDickinsonRepliLuxe" draws generally upon the poetry and letters of Emily Dickinson and visually upon photographs by Jerome Leibling in The Dickinsons of Amherst (2001).

"Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish, 1906" is a work of fiction drawing, in part, on passages from The Singular Mark Twain by Fred Kaplan; Mark Twain's Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angeljish Correspondence 1905-1910, edited by John Cooley; and Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain by His Thirteen-Year-Old Daughter Suzy. (At his death in April 1910, at the age of seventy-five, Samuel Clemens was survived by his daughter Clara, who eventually married and had a daughter, Clemens' sole descendant, who committed suicide in 1964.)

"The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1914-1916" is a work of fiction drawing, in part, upon passages from The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers; and Henry James: A Life, by Leon Edel.

'Papa at Ketchum, 1961" is a work of fiction suggested by passages in Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn and Hemingway's "A Natural History of the Dead," which is briefly quoted.