FOMITE

Suite for Three Voices is a dance of prose genres, teeming with intense human life in all its humor and sorrow. A son uncovers the horrors of his father’s wartime experience, a hitchhiker in a muumuu guards a mysterious parcel, a young man foresees his brother’s brush with death on September 11. A Victorian poetess encounters space aliens and digital archives, a runner hears the voice of a dead friend in the song of an indigo bunting, a teacher seeks wisdom from his students’ errors and Neil Young. By frozen waterfalls and neglected graveyards, along highways at noon and rivers at dusk, in the sound of bluegrass, Beethoven, and Emily Dickinson, the essays and fiction in this collection offer moments of vision and aspire to the condition of music. 

About the Author

Derek Furr grew up in rural North Carolina, taught middle school in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and two sons. He is Associate Professor of Literature in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College, where he teaches courses in 19th and 20th century literature and works with aspiring public school teachers. He has published widely in journals of creative writing and is the author of a book of literary criticism, Recorded Poetry and Poetic Reception from Edna Millay to the Circle of Robert Lowell (Palgrave 2010). Besides writing and teaching, he runs, plays piano for a Methodist congregation, and drives his boys to their hockey games all over the frozen northeast.

Reviews

July Read Of The Month: “Suite For Three Voices” by Cameron Williams in Southern Literary Review

Praise

“Derek Furr¹s capacious, precise, humane intelligence finds its perfect form in this hybrid of critical essay, personal essay, and fiction. With a winsome, modest demeanor, Furr invites his readers to experience the intersections between literature and daily life more profoundly; at the same time, he works to expand the definitions of all of his genres. This is a rare and astonishing book, patiently alert to the beauty of this fragile world, and full of delight.”

—Emily Barton, author of Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron