ASKEW, by Robert Vaughan

 

 

With his latest book, ASKEW, Robert Vaughan takes his unique talent for writing quirky, inventive and highly evocative prose to a level unparalleled even in today’s elite, prose poetry circles. 

There is simply no one like him.

ASKEW both astounds and skewers the reader, sometimes leaving her/him/they spellbound, breathless and mired in after-thought. Sometimes gasping. Sometimes wounded. Sometimes chuckling nervously. 

There is, perhaps, no author writing today who is able to “land the plane,” or write a last sentence, with such panache as Vaughan.

Here are but two examples, though there are literally dozens upon dozens of others throughout Askew:

 

A story, after all, is a kind of smothering.

 

The longer he swallows her arm, the more possibilities open up.

 

And it’s not only last sentences that Vaughan excels at, but also the ever-important first sentences:

 

Mother was fond of saying I was born during a tornado of light.

 

There are so many people going to the Grand Canyon to die.

 

You’re as loose as a vacant freeway.

 

The night my mother dies we’d watched Solaris at the Quad Cinemas…

 

 One could teach classes, entire semesters, on how to write such utterly compelling first and last sentences from this book. One could, and likely should, teach this book for decades to come. One could, and should, read it over and over again. 

ASKEW is the perfect title for Vaughan’s latest collection because each piece is superbly off-kilter, just as the most fascinating parts of life are. Vaughan takes the mundane and flips it on its head, to wonderful effect.  

He writes about bravery when it’s stuck under the covers, not readily apparent, breathless and wondering what’s next. He writes about fear and failure in ways that humanize not only his characters, but also, we as readers and flawed human beings.

What he never, never does, though, is bore us, let us off the hook, or allow us to know the direction each particular story is headed, which is the very signature of artistic expertise.

To speak specifically of any piece in ASKEW would be to ruin the reader’s chance at achieving a revelatory feeling of wonder and self-discovery—senses that the very best art strives to illuminate in us. 

The plot in these pieces may be pertinent, but the language is so exquisite that it also sidelines our thoughts about narrative arc, which is also a sign of author authority, if not genius.

Simply put, ASKEW is a marvel, and then some—for the reader, for the writer, for those of us who aren’t yet sure who we are, what we’ve done, or where we’re headed.