Severance

Prose poems containing 240 words, that being the number of words one can formulate in a second (2.6) multiplied by the length of time a severed human head retains conciousness (1.5 mins.). In it are: St. John the Baptist (sword), Henry VIII's wives (axe), Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and Robespierre (guillotine), Agnes Gwenlan (elevator), and Jayne Mansfield (car window). Please don't ask me to explain the chicken.

Now available in an elegant paperback, Robert Olen Butler's acclaimed collection, Severance, depicts the final thoughts of people as they are losing their heads. Celebrated as "glorious" (Los Angeles Times), these fascinating stories reveal "the limitless will of the author's imagination" (New York Times). Here are the imagined ultimate words of famous and invented figures—Medusa, Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn, Jayne Mansfield, and a chicken, beheaded for Sunday dinner.

Robert Olen Butler, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his short-story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, is the author of many lauded works of fiction. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Publisher: Chronicle Books
Distributor: Hachette Book Group USA
Publication Date: 04-30-2008
Pages: 264
Measurements: 7in X 5.5in X .75in X .64lb