BOA Editions Blog

The Rooster's Wife, poems (and cover art) by Russell Edson

In 2005, we were thrilled to publish The Rooster’s Wife by prose poet master Russell Edson. Russell was at the forefront of the emergence of prose poetry in America in the early 60s and he continues to produce his trademark hilarious, surreal, and poignant poems. What many people don’t know is that Russell’s father was a cartoonist and that cartooning had a strong influence on his style. Russell is also a visual artist himself – in fact, his artwork graces the cover of The Rooster’s Wife.

Given his influences and style, it was a stroke of brilliance on the part of the Poetry Foundation to create an animated adaptation of a poem by Russell Edson. The poem they used is “Let Us Consider” from The Rooster’s Wife. The piece was animated and designed by Chris Lightbody.

You can watch the animation here ["Let Us Consider" animated poem]

Here is the text of the poem:

“Let Us Consider”

Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his

sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;

or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping

her shadow off a wall….

Let us consider the old woman who wore smoked cows’

tongues for shoes and walked a meadow gathering cow chips

in her apron; or a mirror grown dark with age that was given

to a blind man who spent his nights looking into it, which

saddened his mother, that her son should be so lost in vanity.

Let us consider the man who fried roses for his dinner,

whose kitchen smelled like a burning rose garden; or the man

who disguised himself as a moth and ate his overcoat, and for

dessert served himself a chilled fedora.