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All
lives, it seems, are composed of multiple strands, multiple perspectives,
multiple stories & yarns. This particular weaving of a life started
as a simple autobiography, following my wife’s suggestion. I balked at
first, since I’m neither a retired Civil War general or a former President
of the United States. Nor am I a Hollywood celebrity, a Self-Help guru
or a noted French chef. I’m just a writer. I enjoy writing, & I’m
always on the watch for things to write about. That adage “write what
you know” is true. So I decided to take the plunge & try to stitch
a narrative together, using words as my needles, my life as material.
That material, however, segued loop by loop out of strict autobiography
into the variable disperse dyes of fiction. Fact & fiction are intermingled.
How much is lived experience & how much is invention are stitched
so closely they often overlap & become a surprising new color. Life
is a continual purling of insights & observations into crazily stitched
patterns. All you can do is put it on & wear it.
Olson writes as if language was his own invention — which of course
it is. How else to explain the force-field of dark and joyous energy
that he conjures out of words?
~ Andrew Joron, author of The Cry at Zero
Olson’s brilliant prose poetry lurks around the corner of every idle
speculation and seething anecdote.
~ Andrew Bleeker, from his review of The Nothing That Is
John Olson is the author of numerous books of prose poetry, including
Weave of the Dream King (forthcoming from Black Widow Press),
Dada Budapest, Larynx Galaxy and Backscatter: New and Selected
Poetry. Mingled Yarn is his fifth novel. His other novels include
In Advance of the Broken Justy, The Seeing Machine, The Nothing That
Is, and Souls of Wind, which was shortlisted for a Believer
Book Award in 2008.
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