Russell Edson emerged during the late twentieth century as one of the most significant practitioners of the prose poem in America. Because his writings, which have been called prose poems, fables, and parables, often resist easy categorization, it has been difficult for critics to locate Edson's work comfortably within the mainstream of American literature. Edson told Peter Johnson in an interview for The Writer's Chronicle (May/ Summer 1999):

What name one gives or doesn't give to his or her writing is far less important than the work itself. I called my first published books fables, looking, with the help of this label, for a way to describe the pieces I had been writing since sexual awareness. But fables are message stories, and I don't like messages. Fairy tales say in their openings, we're not real, but we're fun. My purpose has always been reality, and it still is.

Edson's...