A Catherine Wheel

By Robert Bean

A Catherine Wheel is Robert Bean's third collection of quasi-poems, loose haiku, misplaced footnotes, odd-angled observations of people, nature and quantum physics, strange vignettes and thickly disguised dreamscapes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Bean
• Release date: Feb 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393225195

Book preview

As I gaze agog at the towering flames, waving my little sparkler,

A fire cracker tossed through the bonfire explodes on my forehead,

Blasting into my mind a whirling Catherine Wheel

Scattering words across my pages forever.

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A Catherine Wheel is Robert Bean’s third collection of quasi-poems, loose haiku, misplaced footnotes, odd-angled observations of people, nature and quantum physics, strange vignettes and thickly disguised dreamscapes.

For my darling dafter Abby

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Also by Robert Bean

Match Puzzle (2012)

Trick Question (2015)

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Bean

ISBN:    Softcover: 978-0-9942703-2-0 

E book: 978-0-9942703-3-7  

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order print copies of A Catherine Wheel, Trick Question (2015) and Match Puzzle (2012) contact Robert Bean;  [e-mail]

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Contents

A Catherine Wheel: By way of introduction     

Random Sparks

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This Writing Life

Sparks, Cinders    

Mud Palimpsest        

Unfortunate Rescue    

Recipe for Reincarnating a Dead Novel     

Freedom of Information     

The voice in the wilderness    

My Literary Influences     

Franz Kafka       

Draft Recommendation 87      

This cut up thrice removed    

Random Zeitgeist Triptych     

Authorial Voice

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Travelogues

Devotions       

Air Travel       

Shuttle Bus from Terminal 2    

On the Metro at Provenza, 1967      

In the Barcelona Zoo 1968    

The Supreme Council of Antiquities Gives Up   

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Ordinary People

The monk’s true thoughts       

Spectacular Failure           

Climate Change     

Sympathy, Reassurance       

Finance Report/Self Esteem    

Crisis Management / True Leadership     

Heavy Weather     

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Scientistic Fictions

If Spacetime       

The Chronofage Clock    

Cyborg Evolution      

Primordial Stresses     

The way he talked       

Haggling With an Angel Over Time   

First Contact     

Dark Matter

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Dreams Thickly Disguised

Last Year at Marienbad Déjà Vu     

What is Burning?        

Nightclubbing      

Mystery Train      

Cat my Dog     

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An Idle Mind / My Back Pages

Psycho Metrics       

Idle Quandary     

Low Decibel      

Stationery Standoff       

A True History of the Sixties        

Tricked Questions        

Emoji Class (It’s Come to This)   

Subsonic Subtitles      

A Ragged Wind      

Self Help       

My Coat of Arms     

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Waving Goodbye

Good Evening, World     

Sky Triptych     

Rain of Time     

Palmestuary       

Waving Goodbye     

Some More Footnotes 

A Catherine Wheel: By way of Introduction

Seven years old, on a Guy Fawkes Night in Manchester, seven years after the war, I stand transfixed by a Catherine Wheel as big as a dinner plate, spinning on a grey wooden post, spitting out stars and comets forever into the blazing dark.

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In the middle of the rough common an enormous bonfire of bomb site timbers roars and crackles over the snap and whiz of fireworks.

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Amid the shouts and laughter of adults milling and children running through, my mother and father lead me over to join