thank you so much for sharing this!! I'm going to use this in my own teaching! Sticks and Girls are two of my favorites!! My other absolute favorite to teach is "Shit Cassandra Saw But Didn't Tell the Trojans because at this point fuck them anyways" by Gwen Kirby!!
"Yours" by Mary Robison is my all-time favorite. Whenever I read that ending in class, I would almost cry. The most amazing short love story ever written.
Love these! "Sticks" and "Girl" are two of my faves. "Sticks" is especially a fun one to teach and have students (or yourself!) play around with the various meanings an image can hold and how to use white space to create a sense of pacing/time. A few flash fiction (at least I consider them flash) that I like are: "A Country Cottage" by Chekhov, "A Very Short Story" by Hemingway, and "A Haunted House" by Woolf.
Dixon's story reminds me of Hannah Voskuil's story about a boy drowning. Here's link to a reproduction of it--don't remember where I saw it originally:
The length of flash seems to keep shrinking--but way back when, my favorite piece was "No One's a Mystery." [Elizabeth Tallent] For really short I love Joyce Carol Oates, "A Touch of the Flu":
A TOUCH OF THE FLU
Joyce Carol Oates
For years she tried to conceive a child, and failed; and failed at the marriage too—though “failed” is probably the wrong word, since, wanting a child so badly, and, as some observers (including her husband) said, so irrationally, she simply decided to give up on that man, and move on to another. And so she did; and con-ceived within months; and had her baby, a little girl; and lived with her alone, since, by that time, she’d come to understand that there was no room in her life for both the baby and the baby’s father. Even had he want-ed to marry her, which was not so clearly the case.
And she was happy with her little girl, if not, as she’d anticipated, ecstatic; except of course in bursts of feel-ing; wayward, unexpected, dazzling, and brief. These are the moments for which we life, she thought. She wondered if anyone had had that thought before her.
That summer she brought her daughter to Maine, to her parents’ summer home, and there, each morning, pushed her in a stroller along the beach. She sang to her little girl, talked to her almost continuously, for there was no one in the world except the two of them, and by way of the two of them, their delicious union, the world became new, newly created. She held her little girl in her arms, aloft, in triumph, her heart swell-ing with love, exaltation, greed. Sand, ocean, butterfly, cloud, sky, do you see? Wind, sun—do you feel?
But one day she was overcome by a sensation of lightheadedness, and exhaustion, and returned to the house after only a few minutes on the beach, and handed the baby over to her mother, and went to bed; and did not get up for ten days; during which time she did not sleep, nor was she fully awake; simply lying in bed, in her old girlhood bed, her eyes closed, or, if open, staring at the ceiling, sightless and unjudging. Her mother brought her little girl to nurse, and she pushed her away, in revulsion, and could not explain; for it was her-self she saw, in her mother’s arms, as it had been, so suddenly herself she’d seen, in her little girl, that morn-ing on the beach; and she thought, I cannot bear it. Not again.
Still, the spell lifted, as such spells do. And she got up, and was herself again, or nearly; and nursed her baby again, with as much pleasure as before, or nearly. Her mother looked at her hard and said, “You’ve had a touch of the flu,” and she smiled, and regarded her mother with calm wide intelligent eyes, and said, “Yes, I think that was it. A touch of the flu.” And they never spoke of it again.
I think I’ve read both of these stories before actually. I know I’ve read A Touch of the Flu. You’re right about flash shrinking. The early anthologies went higher, but the limit has been 1K for the last 20 years or so. Thanks for reading and sharing, David!
Gilpin is something of a one-hit wonder. Only published one book during her lifetime. Only this one poem of hers remains an active part of the literary consciousness. But, O, it's alive in a way that very few poems are. I think I first read it in a workshop in 1988.
The book is decades out of print but somebody has put up a full copy on the Internet Archive. The first poem already proves that her one-hit poem is no anomaly.
thank you so much for sharing this!! I'm going to use this in my own teaching! Sticks and Girls are two of my favorites!! My other absolute favorite to teach is "Shit Cassandra Saw But Didn't Tell the Trojans because at this point fuck them anyways" by Gwen Kirby!!
Oh that Gwen Kirby story’s a marvel! Imagine it’s fun to teach. Thanks for sharing, Caroline!
"Yours" by Mary Robison is my all-time favorite. Whenever I read that ending in class, I would almost cry. The most amazing short love story ever written.
Could not agree more. I dedicated a whole newsletter to that story awhile back: https://open.substack.com/pub/artofflashfiction/p/paid-post-unlocked-yours-by-mary?r=4e5y2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
So valuable for teaching! Thank you, Kathy!
My pleasure, Andrea!
So excited about the Flash Fiction Immersion Extravaganza :)
If, like me, you couldn't get a free read on The Newyorker, here's a link to the Jamaica Kincaid story https://bpi.edu/ourpages/auto/2017/10/14/55813476/Girl%20Jamaica%20Kincaid.pdf
Thanks, Julie! I’ll change the link above.
She looks out of Water^^
Love these! "Sticks" and "Girl" are two of my faves. "Sticks" is especially a fun one to teach and have students (or yourself!) play around with the various meanings an image can hold and how to use white space to create a sense of pacing/time. A few flash fiction (at least I consider them flash) that I like are: "A Country Cottage" by Chekhov, "A Very Short Story" by Hemingway, and "A Haunted House" by Woolf.
Love the stories you mentioned here, Frank! Such brilliant authors. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Yes, I read that one, but it was nice to revisit.
Dixon's story reminds me of Hannah Voskuil's story about a boy drowning. Here's link to a reproduction of it--don't remember where I saw it originally:
https://nowcomment.com/documents/78241
The length of flash seems to keep shrinking--but way back when, my favorite piece was "No One's a Mystery." [Elizabeth Tallent] For really short I love Joyce Carol Oates, "A Touch of the Flu":
A TOUCH OF THE FLU
Joyce Carol Oates
For years she tried to conceive a child, and failed; and failed at the marriage too—though “failed” is probably the wrong word, since, wanting a child so badly, and, as some observers (including her husband) said, so irrationally, she simply decided to give up on that man, and move on to another. And so she did; and con-ceived within months; and had her baby, a little girl; and lived with her alone, since, by that time, she’d come to understand that there was no room in her life for both the baby and the baby’s father. Even had he want-ed to marry her, which was not so clearly the case.
And she was happy with her little girl, if not, as she’d anticipated, ecstatic; except of course in bursts of feel-ing; wayward, unexpected, dazzling, and brief. These are the moments for which we life, she thought. She wondered if anyone had had that thought before her.
That summer she brought her daughter to Maine, to her parents’ summer home, and there, each morning, pushed her in a stroller along the beach. She sang to her little girl, talked to her almost continuously, for there was no one in the world except the two of them, and by way of the two of them, their delicious union, the world became new, newly created. She held her little girl in her arms, aloft, in triumph, her heart swell-ing with love, exaltation, greed. Sand, ocean, butterfly, cloud, sky, do you see? Wind, sun—do you feel?
But one day she was overcome by a sensation of lightheadedness, and exhaustion, and returned to the house after only a few minutes on the beach, and handed the baby over to her mother, and went to bed; and did not get up for ten days; during which time she did not sleep, nor was she fully awake; simply lying in bed, in her old girlhood bed, her eyes closed, or, if open, staring at the ceiling, sightless and unjudging. Her mother brought her little girl to nurse, and she pushed her away, in revulsion, and could not explain; for it was her-self she saw, in her mother’s arms, as it had been, so suddenly herself she’d seen, in her little girl, that morn-ing on the beach; and she thought, I cannot bear it. Not again.
Still, the spell lifted, as such spells do. And she got up, and was herself again, or nearly; and nursed her baby again, with as much pleasure as before, or nearly. Her mother looked at her hard and said, “You’ve had a touch of the flu,” and she smiled, and regarded her mother with calm wide intelligent eyes, and said, “Yes, I think that was it. A touch of the flu.” And they never spoke of it again.
I think I’ve read both of these stories before actually. I know I’ve read A Touch of the Flu. You’re right about flash shrinking. The early anthologies went higher, but the limit has been 1K for the last 20 years or so. Thanks for reading and sharing, David!
Gilpin is something of a one-hit wonder. Only published one book during her lifetime. Only this one poem of hers remains an active part of the literary consciousness. But, O, it's alive in a way that very few poems are. I think I first read it in a workshop in 1988.
I confess I only know this one poem of hers, but I agree, regarding its aliveness and resonance.
The book is decades out of print but somebody has put up a full copy on the Internet Archive. The first poem already proves that her one-hit poem is no anomaly.
https://archive.org/details/the-hocus-pocus-of-the-universe/The%20Hocus%20Pocus%20Of%20The%20Universe%20/page/n22/mode/1up
Ah, thanks for this!
You're welcome.