‘Hearing Is Snaring Sound’

On ‘Promiscuous Ruin’ by Julian Mithra

Photograph by Tucker Lieberman

Last month, at AWP Seattle, I spotted a prose chapbook at the WTAW Press bookfair table. Winslow Homer’s painted deer called to me, and I read author Julian Mithra’s bio (“hovers between genders and genres, border-mongering and -mongreling”), and I bought this signed copy of Promiscuous Ruin.

It’s auditory, rhythmic, birdsong from the beginning and throughout.

“Pa say hearing is snaring sound in a loop called a ear. Capturing abundance which is all around us. Now, older’n Pa, it’s wave upon wave of attention paid to soughing grass, faint pressure of a wolf’s tail on a branch. Embraced by beetles skittering over leaves like an unrent mantle. Creak of thickening bark. Hoof sponging rock moss or velvet shed dusting from raw antler.”
—“His Daring Woodcraft”

Here’s how you hear it. Listen:

“And he said, ‘Pah, you ever tasted grouse — ‘ and nudged my arm like I would know and and I’m no flighter but it did bring on a little lurch like I’d fallen from a tree stand.”
—“Baker Rifle, Standard Issue”

If you were only looking, you might not have seen it. The “and and” calls to you like a bird. It’s a hiccup.

Then, downstream:

“Is downstream the sound water makes against…