Sandy Florian

BIO

2010-03-24T11:49:00.022-06:00

A Latina writer of experimental Magical Realism, I am the author of four books and one chapbook: Telescope, 32 Pedals & 47 Stops, The Tree of No, Prelude to Air From Water, and On Wonderland & Waste. I've been awarded residencies at Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Headlands Center for the Arts as well as literary prizes from Elixir Press, New Voices, and Brown University. I live in Morgantown, West Virginia, where I teach Magical Realism, Nonwestern Literature, and Creative Writing at West Virginia University.

ON WONDERLAND & WASTE

2010-03-01T07:01:00.009-07:00

On Wonderland & Waste is out and available from Sidebrow Press, Small Press Distribution, Amazon, and elsewhere.

“A bellow that is not a bucket. A bucket that is not a bone. There is wisdom in slipping into oceans. Into those wider organs horning. The way churches slip into twilight. Stone after stone. See the plaything on the mantel. I lean toward the paintings. See the baby fastened on the mast. I lean toward the window. See the sea, see the ship, see the ship’s low hull. See the winding of vowels by the function of the fist.”

color with collages by Alexis Anne Mackenzie - www.alexisanne.com

PRELUDE TO AIR FROM WATER

2010-01-19T12:42:00.009-07:00

PRELUDE TO AIR FROM WATER is out and available from Elixir Press, Small Press Distribution, and Amazon.

In a careful choreography of repeatedly missed 'moments,' the familiar characters of Florian's latest collection weave in and out of each other's lives sheathed in a postmodern isolation that keeps actual contact at bay. In them, we see ourselves, misreading, misinterpreting, or just plain missing all the signs--but not without humor, and a tenderness that makes them fully human. A primer for 21st-century relations. COLE SWENSON

An enthralling sequence of poems, Sandy Florian’s playfully uncanny Prelude to Air from Water anatomizes moments in time through which a menagerie of characters wander, pursuing and fleeing their desires, often lost to themselves, but always set in sharp, revealing profile for the reader, whom Florian moves to compassion yet also to an irreversible meditation on the intensities of feeling, wonder, and self-confrontation each moment hosts and elides. As readers of Florian’s Telescope and The Tree of No should expect, poetic invention and searching thought fuse in Prelude with astonishing results. ROBERT SAVINO OVENTILE

In Prelude to Air From Water, Sandy Florian deftly manipulates the countries between the prose poem and the experimental lyric. Better to call this a novel in verse where the trajectory of the prose poem is punctuated with experiments in language. The literary descendant of Gertrude Stein and Baudelaire, Florian plays a bluntly meaningful and still elusive music. Prelude to Air From Water is a symphony in declaratives where the abstraction of a 'Moment' appears as a character and sets up poetic associations that are playful and sublime. JAY SNODGRASS

Read an amazing essay/review of the book on Sobriquet Magazine.

THE TREE OF NO

2009-02-11T11:00:00.012-07:00

THE TREE OF NO

is now available through Action Books - http://www.actionbooks.org

Art and design by Gent Sturgeon and Tia Resleure.

"As slyly humorous as it is sublimely poetical, Florian’s experimental novel riffs on Biblical stories from Genesis to Revelations to trace the career of a narrator who, unhesitant 'to taste the waste,' ventures forth from Eden to pursue meditations on imagination, quirky civic projects, and an odd love affair with the enigmatic Montgomery, all the while struggling toward a resolute affirmation of the earthbound self." Robert Savino Oventile

"'Beastly I fall at Adam under the shade.' Sandy Florian's second book dilates under Milton's Forbidden Tree, plumbing God's unjustifiable ways, and Man's. In a world made from scratch, eros and artifice, thanatos and theology give off mixed and exquisite signals, here buckled in Florian's bejeweled and rigorous sentences: 'words like chords like emerald snakes, words like lords like humble smoke.' Florian's intellect blazes in this bold, ambitious work: 'I have a war with history.'" from the publishers

Excerpts from the The Tree of No appear in bird dog, /nor, Tarpaulin Sky, Gulf Coast, Upstairs at Duroc, Octopus, A_Handsome Journal, and Fairy Tale Review.

A new review by Kelly Lydick in Gently Read Literature.

A review by Jay Thompson in Kenyon Review blog -

One by Ross Brighton on his blog -

One by Robert Savino Oventile in Jacket Magazine -

And viewable reviews at The Home Video Review of Books and delrious hem -

TELESCOPE

2007-02-28T02:20:00.020-07:00

Telescope is available here.

A new review of it at The Latino Poetry Review.

Other reviews of at diagram, reviews reviews reviews, no no yes no yes, and coldfront.

An interview by Francisco Aragón for the Institute of Latino Studies.

32 PEDALS & 47 STOPS

2007-02-22T10:06:00.008-07:00

Sold out from Tarpaulin Sky Press.

Read reviews of it at Octopus Magazine and h_ngm_n.

INTERVIEWS

2007-02-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

Read an interview conducted by Robert Savino Oventile, author of Impossible Reading, on COIN.

Read another conducted by Vincent Standley, author of A Mortal Affect, here.

Read another conducted by Duncan Barlow, editor of Astrophil Press and author of Super Cell Anemia here.

NAMELESS FILMS

2007-02-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Films in collaboration with Talan Memmott can be experienced here.