The Orchid Stories

"Kenward Elmslie's perverse, scabrous, gorgeous poetry and prose have astonished his fans for over 50 years ... He's the most extravagant, and extravagantly overlooked, poet in America." --Michael Silverblatt, the Paris Review

Like the orchids that provide their leitmotif, these interwoven stories by Kenward Elmslie are exquisite, exotic and oneiric, as if they had been written in another world. Although each of The Orchid Stories stands alone, their characters and moods recur frequently, in a swirl of visual echoes and the bewildering clarity of a dream. Even the characters themselves--Phil, the little boy gigolo; Mummers and Mummy who "adopt" him; the alluring Diana Vienna; the eccentric Dr. Schmidlapp and his wives who plot to capture the "Native Innards" orchid at the stroke of midnight--have an illusive reality that enhances the pleasure of these tales.
The Song Cave is honored to present this new edition of Elmslie's out-of-print masterpiece, first published by Paris Review Editions in 1973. With an introduction that provides a fresh sense of Elmslie's oeuvre by Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW's Bookworm, this spectacular and spectacularly overlooked book is at last available to a new generation of adventurous readers.
Kenward Elmslie (1929-2022) was a central figure in the New York School and, as the editor of Z magazine and Z Press books, promoted the work of fellow poets John Ashbery, Bill Berkson, Joe Brainard, Edwin Denby, Joanne Kyger, James Schuyler, Anne Waldman and numerous others.