9. "oh please, your highness, we must do something awful"

The problem with any Russell Edson book, such as the Russell Edson book See Jack just out from University of Pittsburgh Press, is the overwhelming urge to describe it as being very much like a Russell Edson book.  See these Russell Edson poems, how they are exactly like Russell Edson poems?  See the strong influence of Russell Edson upon Russell Edson's poetry?  Isn't Russell Edson always the tenor and never the vehicle?  And what shall we do when he is both?

And because these poems, so much like Russell Edson's poetry, are notably Russel Edson-like, do I point out I find them slightly more brutal than those poems of which have come before?   Everything is "gross," people are "puking," potatoes are farting, and men have gone to whore houses to buy wives.  Even the clouds are copulating.  Both sons and their fathers want to be grandmother's "hand-me-down-turd." Fathers step on and kill their little mouse daughters. It makes sense in this book for men to have sex with the cows they are planning to slaughter.