Kirk Nesset’s SAINT X is exquisite, exuberant, exhilarating, exemplary, exceptional, exceedingly excellent.  Nesset’s poems merge the sacred and profane in a seamless vision.  Each poems’ lush language, its specificity and heart, make Saint X a holy (and holy moly!) read.  – DENISE DUHAMEL

In the poems of Kirk Nesset, in full-throated and rollicking iambs, we find love and death dancing to the tune of language, and doing so at the edge of the abyss. Never mind the absurdity of our private tarantellas, wonky polkas, and blundering bunny hops—these poems are here to help.  These poems are just in time.     – ALAN MICHAEL PARKER

At war with the middle, nakedly sane, these poems make you look again, think twice, think again, and feel glad that such an unsettling imagination is at work in poetry.  – LI-YOUNG LEE

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Saint X arrives in the night to fill the void — the liminal space between the sheets, between awake and asleep, dreams and nightmares, lightning and thunder. Nesset unravels lumpier corners of the universe and undresses them slowly, leaving the reader with a series of poems that are as cryptic as they are captivating. “We did and we did, blindly alive/in our dreaming, at war with the middle,” Nesset writes in the titular poem. Reading the words, you feel at war yourself — imbued by ripened, blind pineapples, imbibing each image as the scenes melt in your thoughts. At war with? Put your finger on it, I dare you. Saint X lurks behind each page, and, certain you will catch the genderless, faceless perpetrator, you finger over them as fast as your eyes will let you. But Saint X is always one step ahead; take your time. In strawberry light, in naked sanity, Saint X will appear not at once, but all together. From the song of Nesset’s poetry, you will feel a heavy presence long after the book returns — spine-out — to a shelf. Faint whispers at first, a low rumble growing: then it’s gone. — Eric Ellis, RINGSIDE REVIEWS

Read Original Review

Alphabet of the World serves as a valuable contribution to our awareness and understanding of the literature of Latin America. — New Pages.com. Read More

I had never heard of Eugenio Montejo, but trusted Nesset’s taste and knowledge with words. He didn’t lead me astray. I must have read this book twelve times. Not only are the poems beautifully written, they are also instructional. The person I would most like to be is shown in the de-centered “I” of Montejo’s poems. — The Bees Knees Blog Read More

Nesset is attuned to the fine-edged songs of the mundane, alert to the explosions ready to burst even in the dull routes where our lives lead. All this without forcing the drama or cheating the literal crawl of time. I wish I could manage this. Hurrah! — Barry Hannah

Kirk Nesset has, in his collection of short short stories Mr. Agreeable, given us a beautiful bouquet of crystal shards, each one of which, when held to the light, refracts and amplifies and makes new the entire notion of light. But be careful: like crystal shards and like any good stories these haunting pieces cut to the bone. — Bret Lott

In these stories, we remember our lives are indeed a sequence of moments, with their distinct and defining characteristics; they’re like polaroids from a personal apocalypse. There is a navigational alchemy in this work, a mastery of subject and craft. — Kate Braverman

Throughout this fine collection, Nesset shows that pleasure can be found even in the mulch of the earth and that we are all deserving of joy. — Nicelle Davis, PANK   Read more

One of Mr. Nesset’s strengths is his eye for humor in awkward, uncomfortable situations. — Adolfo Mejia, Connotation Press  Read more.

Nesset’s pieces seem to go down like candy, with their precise and engaging rhythms. But then—surprise—they stick in the throat. — Bill O’Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper.  Read more

Any time spent with either Paradise Road or Mr. Agreeable will be quality time. — Ed Post, Erie Times  Read more

Podcast Review of Mr. Agreeable — Majorie Maddox on WPSU’s BookMark:  Listen.

                                           THE HIGHWAY

They’ve come to decide, this pointy-head man and his wife in the muumuu. My employee Malcolm hands them another, a prettier pup, just to confuse them some more, then goes back to filling the water and kibble bins and scooping up bon-bons. The wife lifts the dog to her cheek, cooing, as Malcolm exits the kennel, failing as always to stoop quite enough and whunk, smacks his head on the doorframe. I cross my arms at my breasts, waiting. Above, another copter chops by. The fire last night at Pac-Bell knocked out the phones, phones in eight or so cities, which is to say 911 is kaput and they’re all on patrol, hoping to outguess disaster.

We don’t need a real show dog, says the man. Meaning he’d rather not pay what I’m asking.

It’s all I sell here, I tell him.

I get to drown the runts, Malcolm says, grinning, coming back with more sawdust.

They laugh, like he’s got to be kidding.

Lucinda, I say to myself, these people have money, they’ve known no hardship, this grown-up little girl with the gray eyes and pink lips and her pinheaded manikin husband. Do not even budge, I say to myself.  Lose firmness here and firmness goes altogether.

The girl hands the pup to her husband. A fire truck slides past the back fence on the highway, cruising for flames and high action.  I stand and stare while the people confer. Out by the fence my pond has dried up, a round of cracked concrete, dead cattails, and dust. My lawn has gone crunchy, stale and yellowy-brown.

Before they can pull out a checkbook I start singing Old Smoky. They need to know that the world’s only barkless dog is no dormouse, they need to hear it cry Owwww, part yawn and part moan, to see the beige face bunched at the forehead, as in grief. I sing. The pups start to howl. Soon the howling is drowning me out. Skinny pimply Malcolm, conducting, wags his hands like batons over the nest of Basenjis, all mouths now and corkscrew tails.

Nobody brings pups back to me saying I thought these things didn’t bark. They understand that Owwww makes up for plenty.

Pointy-head writes me the check. Malcolm slumps to the exit—whunk—and goes indoors to pull the dog’s papers. Another helicopter swoops over. The girl cradles her new pup in her muumuu.

Malcolm’s a must with my son gone and all, I tell them. I put the check in my pocket. First I fold it in half.

Where’s your son? says the girl.

Dead, Malcolm reports from the sliding glass door.  He’s pissed that I started without him.

Did himself in with a rifle.  Like his daddy, I say.

Christ, the man says.

Right here in the garage, says Malcolm, aiming his chin up the walkway where the two tons of dog food are stored, and boxes of wormers and sawdust, and the rusty bicycle, and the bumper and fender from the Duster I don’t have any more, and my yearbooks, and rib- bons from shows, and magazine stacks, thirty years of National Geographic, shingle-stiff, half-eaten with mold.  Unlike Malcolm, I say, my boy was tidy.

He wore a pillowcase, she means, Malcolm says.  Less mess.

Oh my God, the girl says, seeing we’re serious. Oh my God nothing, Malcolm continues.  One big pool’s better than—

You weren’t here, I tell him, cutting it short—feeling bad for the girl.  You weren’t even born, I tell Malcolm.  You weren’t even larval.

So.

So pick up these turds.

The people seem edgy to go.  Well, thank you, the wife says. We move through the dim living room. Got any kids? I ask on the way. They tell me no.  The man steps onto the porch. The girl follows behind, clutching the pup to her neck. Choppers flap overhead. Sirens wail in the distance.

Back at the kennel, the noise deafens. Rescue vans stream by in the twilight, lights flashing like Christmas. The dogs hold their snouts in air, howling and howling, but the sound is blotted out by the sirens.  I crackle across the grass to the fence and look over.

They wander, remember, I should have said to the girl. Keep them inside. Once they find their way to the highway, that’s it.

Reviews

Really good writers seem to have their own terrain, their own timing, their own off-key lullabies, and Kirk Nesset is certainly a good short story writer. These stories are melodious when they need to be, jangle when we need to hear what’s discordant. They’re about lives lived without a self-congratulatory champagne flute in sight, played against a background of shifting, uneasy, endlessly surprising ordinary life. — Ann Beattie

I’m so grateful that Kirk Nesset’s wonderful stories have been collected between covers. We need books like Paradise Road. Now more than ever. Nesset sees the world — our infinately screwed-up world — from such a beautifully peculiar angle. He allows us to see so much that we miss. These stories brim with soul and wounded heart. —Peter Orner

Paradise Road delivers us, in a barbed and wiry prose, into the certainties of a future riding in hard and indifferent, a world brittle and chipped at the edges, no home at all for the soft-hearted or soft-minded. Kirk Nesset works the mean and woeful precincts of the heart, his people gone whichaway with want, every sunrise revealing yet another chance to screw up, every midnight a welcome relief from misrule and mistake. Here’s a book like gunfire down the block — spooky and unexpected and unforgettable — a book that grabs you by the scruff and shakes you silly with its wisdom and its odd and dangerous beauty. — Lee K. Abbott

The figures and voices that appear in Paradise Road are like ghosts from an ancient land that move toward their destinies with hope and defiance. Mr. Nesset conducts their journeys with a sure hand while making fiction of striking originality and beauty. Paradise Road may go through geography unfamiliar to some of us, but the route, once taken, is unforgettable. — Hilary Masters

Paradise Road is a sweet collection. Nesset’s brisk style is sometimes married to quirky events, but it’s consistently true to his characters — ordinary men and women whose ambitions and loves usually fail them. The stories are set mostly in California and they’re rich in the detail of inner and outer landscapes, and of the wisdom that comes — or doesn’t come — from losing. — Robley Wilson

Nesset can bewitch you with one word. But he can also make 100 sing like a chorus. — Pittsburgh City Paper Read More

Nesset’s best stories take tradition elements — abandonment, betrayal, a desperate fool attempting a scam and getting caught — and pump life back into them by introducing the decorously unexpected. — Barn Owl Review Read More

Kirk Nesset displays his mastery of the short story form in twelve rich and well-developed stories. — Rain Taxi Review Read More

Like other natural phenomena we’ll never really understand, the hydra-headed thing we call love lends itself to endless deconstruction. Allegheny College English professor Kirk Nesset takes a whack at this elusive ghost in his new short story collection. — History Wire Read More

Paradise Road recently won the annual Drue Heinz Literature Prize, an honor it very much deserves. This is a stunning collection. — Erie Times

What keeps us reading, what inspires us, really, to polish off this slim book in one sitting, is Nesset’s stylized, polished control of so many contradictory impulses. — The Saint Ann’s Review

Click here to open the Paradise Road excerpt in PDF format.

This short volume intelligently synthesizes and supplements much of the earlier criticism about this significant writer, who died at the peak of his powers in 1988 — B.H. Leeds — Choice

This quirky, sometimes strikingly poetic discussion provides an insightful accounting of Carver’s oeuvre. — Bryan D. Dietrich — American Literature

Susan Jane Gilman on A Writer’s Life, Carver’s biography, by Carol Sklenicka — an NPR audio review. — Read and Listen.