Stephen Dobyns

A Novel

The Church of Dead Girls

When a Rhode Island nurse discovers that an infant left in her charge has been abducted, detective Woody Potter embarks on a baffling case with ties to a dead insurance investigator, a local Wiccan sect, a yoga center and a growling funeral director. By the Pushcart Prize-winning author of The Church of Dead Girls.

The Burn Palace

From the fabulous storytelling of our dreams to the mute passions of domestic life, Stephen Dobyns explores a full range of human experience in these narrative poems. Often frightening and sometimes downright funny, the world of Cemetery Nights is haunted by regret, driven by desire and need, illuminated by daring make-believe -- the remarkable bridge between pure entertainment and deep psychological insight.

Poems

Cemetery Nights

A masterful psychological thriller, from the author of The Church of Dead Girls. Another bucolic fall in northern New Hampshire, and the semester is under way at Bishop's Hill Academy. But this year the start of school has been less than tranquil. The new headmaster, Jim Hawthorne, has liberal ideas that the staff find far from welcome. He's also determined to do something about the long "tradition" of permanent loans to faculty of shovels, saws, even cars, from the school's supplies. Eloquent as he is on the subject of honor, rumor has it he's only taken this job to escape his past. And Hawthorne isn't the only uneasy newcomer. There's Jessica, a former stripper at fifteen, and Frank LeBrun, a replacement cook who's a bit too quick with a dirty joke. All three have secrets to conceal, memories to suppress. Serene on the surface, the ivy-clad, tree-lined campus gives few clues to the school's history of special privileges, petty corruptions, and hidden allegiances. But as autumn advances, the affable smiles and pretenses of virtue wear thin. And as winter closes in, students, teachers, and staff get an education in savagery and murder. With his customary uncanny awareness of the intricacies of human nature, the acclaimed author of The Church of Dead Girls once again probes the daily life of an ordinary community to reveal the depths of good and evil.

Boy in the Water

Wrestling, kidnapping, subplots from the Brothers Grimm, and a young man's search for his missing fiancee are only some of the elements of Stephen Dobyns's dazzling new novel. Fun and puns mingle with daring make-believe. Larger-than-life characters play out the crucial human questions: How do we live? How do we handle our demons?

The Wrestler's Cruel Study

The American poet Stephen Dobyns is a spinner of dark, extravagant fables of a world we live or may live in. His poems are peopled with devils and angels, ghostly chickens, distorted mythical ﬁgures, God, and the risen dead 'pretending they're still alive'. They present a view of what it means to be human which is at once both funny and bleak, compassionate and remorseless. His is a world haunted by regret, driven by desire and need, illuminated by daring make-believe. In his often frightening and sometimes strangely funny poems, Dobyns creates a remarkable bridge between pure entertainment and deep psychological insight.

New & Selected Poems

Velocities

Stephen Dobyns’s fourteenth collection of poems embodies a hardheaded art that practices an unremitting faith in the power of words. By turns humorous, sadly ironic, furious, and wise, the poems in Winter’s Journey are delivered in a precise, straightforward voice unafraid of pointing out that the emperor isn’t wearing clothes.
 
Dobyns uses a sharp wit to introduce profound narrative meditations on love, politics, and art. His thrillingly absurdist cast includes Chekhov, Kant, Bashō, a werewolf, a possum, and an unforgettable rhinoceros (in a poem that is not at all about a rhinoceros). While Dobyns walks his dog on the beach, or otherwise goes about his life, he ponders “the imponderables” and with fierce dedication tells hard-won truths concerning what the world and our experiences in it can teach us about how to live.

Winter's Journey

Brooks Haxton

Hayden Carruth

A final collection brings together works written near the end of the poet's life along with the concluding poems from each of his previous volumes.

Last Poems

Aftershocks/Near Escape

Witnessing a gruesome motorcycle accident in the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo sees a strangely familiar man with an Elvis haircut at the scene and is embroiled in a small-time con operation.

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?

Culpas Y Castigos

C'est un roman sur un homme du nom de Latchmer qui passe toute une nuit dans New York à essayer de se débarrasser d'un chien mort avec l'aide d'un chauffeur de taxi haïtien. Latchmer a hérité du cadavre lors d'un dîner avec une séduisante blonde, réparatrice d'ordinateurs. Sarah, c'est le nom de la blonde, possède une main artificielle depuis qu'un ordinateur, fou de désir, a cherché à l'aspirer jusqu'au tréfonds de ses transistors. Vous me suivez ? C'est aussi un roman sur le grand-père de Latchmer, respectable toubib dans un bled de campagne qui, pendant vingt ans et dans un milieu très puritain, a eu une liaison adultère avec une institutrice également respectable. Êtes-vous toujours avec moi ... ?

Un chien dans la soupe

Taking a different tack than John Keats in 'Ode to a Nightingale, ' Stephen Dobyns joins sixty-nine poems in Common Carnage, his ninth book of poetry, in order to address the conundrum 'How hard to love the world; we must love the world.' The spiritual intermixed with the bawdy, the courageous with the cowardly, the kindly with the cruel - Common Carnage rejects the decorous and decorative to map the complexity, the common carnage of our lives as it seeks to understand our nature.

Common Carnage

Another bucolic fall in northern New Hampshire, and the semester is under way at Bishop’s Hill Academy. But this year the start of school has been less than tranquil. The new headmaster, Jim Hawthorne, has liberal ideas that the staff find far from welcome; eloquent as he is on the subject of honor, rumor has it he’s taken this job to escape his past. And Hawthorne isn’t the only uneasy newcomer. There’s Jessica Weaver, a stripper at fifteen, and Frank LeBrun, a replacement cook who’s a bit too quick with a dirty joke. All three have secrets to conceal, memories to suppress. Serene on the surface, the ivy-clad, tree-lined campus gives few clues to the school’s history of special privileges, petty corruptions, and hidden allegiances. And as winter closes in, students, teachers, and staff get an education in savagery and murder. With his uncanny awareness of the intricacies of human nature, the acclaimed author of The Church of Dead Girls once again probes the daily life of an ordinary community to reveal the depths of good and evil.

Roman

Die zwei Tode der Señora Puccini

Stephen Dobyns—whom Stephen King has described as "the best of the best"—is back with a comic suspense novel about a small-time con operation, a pair of combative detectives, and the pride, revenge, and deception that guide us all. Richard Russo meets Elmore Leonard. In the seaport town of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. A man sliced in half by a reversing dump truck could only be an accident, right? But these days, Connor can’t be sure of anything—his entire line of work is based on games of artful deception. His days at Bounty, Inc., are spent soliciting funds for improbable, bogus charities; its last venture was Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction, Inc. The new scam is Prom Queens Anonymous, Inc., dedicated to helping former high school celebs transition to humdrum daily grown-up lives; Connor’s target is Angelina Rossi—Pumpkin Queen of 1985, proud beagle owner, and ex-wife of a man named Fat Bob. Meanwhile, Manny Streeter and Benny Vikström are the local detectives assigned to the Bank Street motorcycle wreck, and despite their shared interest of proving each other wrong, the two eventually reach the same conclusion: This death by Harley was Murder One, pure and simple. As the detectives begin asking their questions around town, Connor is looking for similar answers that will determine whether he lives or dies. Among them: Who is Fat Bob, and is he actually dead? Sharply written and entertainingly absurd, Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? is packed with Stephen Dobyns’s trademark characters—whimsical, neurotic, puzzling yet familiar, and impossible to pin down. Dobyns again proves why he is an American master of the suspenseful, all-too-human land of the absurd.

It is a night racked with violence in an unnamed Latin American country. Three men brave the war-ravaged streets to meet at the opulent home of a friend, the famed surgeon Daniel Pacheco, for their semiannual gathering. As a lavish meal is served by the sullen housekeeper, interest centers on the photograph of an intriguingly beautiful young woman. Spellbinding revelations of erotic obsession and betrayal unfold, interrupted by the increasing bloodshed that presses closer to Pacheco’s door. Stephen Dobyns has written a provocative novel of desire, lust, depravity, and danger—a classic thriller that holds you tightly in its grasp until its shattering conclusion.

The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini

Stephen Dobyns is one of America's most respected poets; his manner is tart and often sardonic, his language tough, funny, yet at heart profoundly humane. In his eleventh book of poetry he pushes the boundaries of conventional collections, presenting an intriguing two-part volume. The first section contains ruminative prose poems, dealing with a man who is looking back over the successes and failures of his life, that are intercut with short "considerations" in the manner of the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The second section presents an alphabetical selection of words defined by Dobyns in evocative one-line phrases. Punctuating the text throughout are woodcuts and line drawings by the artist Howie Michels. A compelling exploration of attitudes, words, and concepts, this is an important addition to Doybns's body of work.

The Porcupine's Kisses

Set against the violently fragmented matrix of Detroit in 1973, Dobyns' novel is an unlikely fusion of love and violence. The plot centers around the lives of fifteen people—and three dogs—who live in a Cass Corridor rooming house. When an innocent Ontario farm boy comes to Detroit in search of his runaway sister, he provides a temporary focus for the other residents. They include a bartender/writer, an avant-garde composer and his wife, a former policeman, a female artist whose rent is being paid by two men, and a pair of elderly ex-convicts—one a panhandler, the other a locksmith. Robbery, murder, a stabbing, a poisoning, and a fire serve to bring about a profound emotional transformation among the characters. Against this hostile urban landscape, Dobyns weaves his extrordinary human tapestry. By the novel's close, the housemates "unite" to form a rich though volatile world.

Stephen Dobyns

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