{"title":"Charles Rafferty","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"somebody-who-knows-somebody-book-charles-rafferty-9781636495576","title":"Somebody Who Knows Somebody","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo call To call the prose in this book invigorating would be an understatement. Charles Rafferty's stories invite you to damn the collar and charge the invisible fence: there's a shock to the system, and then you have the freedom to move in the world that was right in front of you but somehow unexplored. The air is better on his side of the barrier, bracing and clear. I'm not sure whether one should call them stories or incendiary devices.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e--Sarah Harris Wallman, author of Senseless Women, Juniper Prize for Fiction\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCharles Rafferty's stories present almost recognizable scenarios: we meet a man stealing cemetery flowers to bring to his date, another presenting his neighbors with their dead cat, another pondering the arrival of peacocks to the neighborhood. Rafferty's world is just a little stranger, just a little sharper, just a little funnier than our own. After spending some time in this marvelous world, we return to our own, surprised and enlightened, ready to appreciate it anew.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e--Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating \u0026amp; Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs,  W. W. Norton\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCharles Rafferty is a master of the short form, and the micro-stories that make up. Somebody Who Knows Somebody are like the lights of a city that blink by your train window as you ride quickly into the night. And what lights  These stories are precise, each glimpse beautifully rendered; they are alternately funny, menacing, and are both tender toward and unforgiving of what feels like a very particular American disquiet. I loved it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e--Ethan Rutherford, author of The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories,  Ecco\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhether huffing breath into the lungs of the forsaken figures of classical myth or bearing witness to the quiet desperation of threadbare neighbors of otherwise quiet exurban lanes, these brief, fierce tales strike a smack to the forehead, like a branch stretched taut and then released on a winding, wooded trail.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e--Ian Morris, author of When Bad Things Happen to Rich People and Simple Machines\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49804480905489,"sku":"GOR013787530","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51041491058961,"sku":"NIN9781636495576","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1636495575.jpg?v=1751024540"},{"product_id":"moscodelphia-book-charles-rafferty-9781949116854","title":"Moscodelphia","description":"Magda Puzanov knows three things about her world: the taste of angel meat, the perils of loving an albino, and the smudge of pollution on her horizon, which is all she can see of Moscodelphia -- the city that can end her poverty. Magda is a farm girl who falls in love with Anton Petrovich, an albino reputed to have magical powers. When the crops begin failing across the countryside, Anton's neighbors grow hungry and fall back on their old superstitions. It is Magda's own brother who cuts off one of Anton's fingers for a charm, and Magda realizes that Anton must flee to Moscodelphia, alone. Magda bides her time on the family farm until she is captured by a team of collectors. These men are in charge of extracting the countryside's wealth and shipping it back to Moscodelphia. This includes marriageable girls. Ever the optimist, Magda sees her kidnapping as a chance to reunite with Anton. But Magda is bid upon and purchased by Josef Rabinovich, a bureaucrat rising through the ranks of the Ministry of Opulence. At first, Magda is astonished at the luxury Josef provides, but she leads an increasingly brutalized life until she finds Anton again, years later, in an open-air market. They conduct a love affair and plot their escape from a city full of poison and an ongoing plague of falling toads.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50095190704401,"sku":"CIN1949116859G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51258710589713,"sku":"NIN9781949116854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53250628256017,"sku":"NLS9781949116854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1949116859.jpg?v=1750805122"},{"product_id":"smoke-of-horses-book-charles-rafferty-9781942683476","title":"The Smoke of Horses","description":"A poem from the new collection, \"Attraction,\" was published in an October 2016 issue of The New Yorker. Rafferty's poems have appeared widely in such places as The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, TriQuarterly, Quarterly West, Massachusetts Review, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily.  This collection is new and fascinating territory for Rafferty—unlike any of his previous books—as he once had an aversion to prose poetry. According to Rafferty, \"I used to think of prose poems as mules—sterile hybrids. Now, I see the prose poem as a euglena—that cutthroat survivor with a foot in two kingdoms. These are prose poems. They're the result of my own misgivings about what a line can and should do—and how easily I've failed.\"  Since he was a teenager, Rafferty has drawn significant influence from the poet Arthur Rimbaud. His work is similar to that of Charles Simic, Mark Strand, Christopher Kennedy, and Russell Edson.  Rafferty is a different kind of poet, who balances multiple jobs, a family, and his craft by writing on lunch breaks or in the \"quiet time between the kids falling asleep and the wine taking its toll.\" Even with this routine, he is a well-respected and widely-published poet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50403270721809,"sku":"CIN1942683472G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51056536518929,"sku":"NIN9781942683476","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52667334394129,"sku":"NLS9781942683476","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1942683472.jpg?v=1751125327"},{"product_id":"man-on-the-tower-book-charles-rafferty-9781557283405","title":"Man on the Tower","description":"Charles Rafferty works in masks, voices, and personae. Winner of the fifth annual Arkansas Poetry Award, The Man on the Tower consists of dramatic monologues and fables about the man - the many incarnations of our lives that are not allowed, cannot be lived, or are kept darkly hidden. Made believable in the lines of Rafferty's poems, his characters show us their desires, complaints, and obsessions, often revealing what they would want to keep concealed, the shameful and the wild.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50764325159185,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50764327092497,"sku":"CIN1557283400G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1557283400.jpg?v=1763483407"},{"product_id":"problem-with-abundance-book-charles-rafferty-9781733556750","title":"The Problem with Abundance","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51048937586961,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51048940830993,"sku":"NIN9781733556750","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1733556753.jpg?v=1750993189"},{"product_id":"cluster-of-noisy-planets-book-charles-rafferty-9781950774470","title":"A Cluster of Noisy Planets","description":"Charles Rafferty’s latest collection of prose poems turns philosophical. In A Cluster of Noisy Planets, Rafferty captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside. With a knowing nod to the passage of time—day to day, year to year, epoch to epoch—these lyrical poems form a record of the profound, ephemeral joys, losses, and echoes of commonplace moments.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51207347667217,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51207349272849,"sku":"NIN9781950774470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52683377508625,"sku":"NLS9781950774470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52981607235857,"sku":"CIN1950774473G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1950774473.jpg?v=1751125239"},{"product_id":"appetites-book-charles-rafferty-9780983533931","title":"Appetites","description":"\"Appetites is a delightful sequence of poems--sensual, lively, and charmingly perverse.\" --Gaylord Brewer","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52121079185681,"sku":"NLS9780983533931","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53351828291857,"sku":"NIN9780983533931","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780983533931.jpg?v=1757428883"},{"product_id":"appendectomy-grin-book-charles-rafferty-9781960145802","title":"The Appendectomy Grin","description":"As a second-wave veteran of the form, Charles Rafferty has emerged as one of America’s greatest living prose poets. Rafferty’s new collection, The Appendectomy Grin, is a model of the sort of bemused, domestic poeticism (or is it pessimism?) that only a master prose poet can deliver.  Compact in size, but massive in scope, these poems explore the death of self, country, and planet, while remaining grounded in humor and the miracles of everyday life. In a world that is changing faster than ever, The Appendectomy Grin is a deep breath, a meditation, a rhythmic tickle fight, a slightly off-kilter manual on how to remain present and lucid in a world that seems intent on destroying itself.  The result is an argument you cannot disbelieve by a poet leaving his unique scuffmarks on the linoleum kitchen floor of the world. Does the executioner have a rationale for the order of our beheadings? Ask Charles Rafferty. The answer is in the book.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52515982475537,"sku":"NIN9781960145802","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52970521526545,"sku":"NLS9781960145802","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"saturday-night-at-magellan-s-book-charles-rafferty-9781937677534","title":"Saturday Night at Magellan's","description":"Charles Rafferty works in miniatures. These short short stories explore the small disasters of desire. They investigate the problems that ensue when, inevitably, his characters get what they wish for and what they deserve.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52756998816017,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52756999504145,"sku":"NIN9781937677534","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781937677534.jpg?v=1763577567"},{"product_id":"appendectomy-grin-book-charles-rafferty-9781960145826","title":"The Appendectomy Grin","description":"As a second-wave veteran of the form, Charles Rafferty has emerged as one of America's greatest living prose poets. Rafferty's new collection, The Appendectomy Grin, is a model of the sort of bemused, domestic poeticism (or is it pessimism?) that only a master prose poet can deliver.  Compact in size, but massive in scope, these poems explore the death of self, country, and planet, while remaining grounded in humor and the miracles of everyday life. In a world that is changing faster than ever, The Appendectomy Grin is a deep breath, a meditation, a rhythmic tickle fight, a slightly off-kilter manual on how to remain present and lucid in a world that seems intent on destroying itself.  The result is an argument you cannot disbelieve by a poet leaving his unique scuffmarks on the linoleum kitchen floor of the world. Does the executioner have a rationale for the order of our beheadings? Ask Charles Rafferty. The answer is in the book.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52940517277969,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52940517376273,"sku":"NIN9781960145826","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781960145826.jpg?v=1765923789"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-ch\/collections\/autor-buecher-von-charles-rafferty.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}