Returning the Sword to the Stone
Purchase:
Fonograf Editions, 2021
Returning the Sword to the Stone is Mark Leidner’s second full-length book of poetry.
Named Best Poetry of 2021 by The New York Times
Named a Favorite Book of 2021 by LitHub
“Comic genius” – The New York Times
“Deeply apocryphal… wry gnosis… the fool in the play that seems to know everything and is the only one who can make fun of the king” – Brooklyn Rail
“Tiptoes a line between joyful goofiness and stunning lyricism” – Hong Kong Review of Books
“A book so of itself, in which the humor doesn’t deflect truth, it refracts it” – LitHub
“[The poet] flaunts his ignorance so brazenly, so blatantly, so infectiously that we all get caught up in that unknowingness, which itself becomes a new, stranger kind of truth” – Entropy
“Full of zingers, yuks, and shocks. Recommended” – Phil Elverum
“Too good to have been written” – Oscar Schwartz
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The followup to his beloved debut collection Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, Mark Leidner’s Returning the Sword to the Stone is simultaneously profound and irreverent, in the same way that the world is flat as we walk and round as we live. “A child surprised that a neon sign / isn’t hot the first time they touch one / knows how it feels as an adult to achieve one’s goals” states the speaker of “Youth Is A Fugitive” and this sentiment is one of the central precepts of Returning the Sword to the Stone. Congealing directly off the page, these are poems that only Mark Leidner could have written.
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🎙Listen to Mark talk a little bit about Returning the Sword to the Stone on Otherppl with Brad Listi.
📖 Read an interview with Mark Leidner, conducted by Zach Savich about Returning the Sword to the Stone, at the Heavy Feather Review.
🎙 Listen to Mark read poems from Returning the Sword to the Stone on the Talking Book podcast.
📖 Read the first page of “Youth Is a Fugitive”:
Under the Sea
Purchase:
Tyrant Books, 2018
Under the Sea is Mark’s acclaimed debut story collection.
“Equal parts hilarity and horror… virtuosic” – New York Times
“An intriguing literary page-turner” – Curator
“Funny, smart, and bizarre” – Readings
“Poetic and extraordinarily strange” – Buzzfeed
“All that beautiful, deep Chekhovian crap I’ve come to love” – New Statesman
“Full of unique and engaging ideas” – Newfound
“This book is hilarious” – Queen Mobs
Named a 2018 best book of the year by Buzzfeed, Spinoff, and The New Statesman.
In “Bad-Asses,” a naive drug dealer unleashes her inner winner as she tries to get her stolen stash back. In “21 Extremely Bad Breakups,” doomed lovers get side-swiped by speeding buses, play life-or-death paper-rock-scissors, and invoke extinction by asteroid. In “Under the Sea,” a woman with one day to live seduces a stone-cold loser just to feel alive. In the shrunken epic “Avern-Y6,” a despondent insect gets drunk on the brink of a colony-wide civil war… only to realize his role in history is larger than he thought.
Other stories feature a social pariah losing melting down in a bougie café, a middle-aged man’s physical fight with a cosmic void, a middle-school student’s melodramatic memoir, and a miserable adjunct professor sending a career-ending email.
The indelible characters and extravagant situations in Under the Sea weave absurdity with realism, blend pathos with banality, and balance despair with awe.
Read the first page of “Avern-Y6”:
The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover
Purchase:
Sator/Two Dollar Radio, 2011
The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover is a collection of aphorisms and collages. Read it and be welcomed to the family reunion of Mark Leidner's relentlessly beautiful—lucid, funny, and fucked up—wisdoms.
Nominee, 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards.
Selected aphorisms & collages below:
Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me
Factory Hollow Press, 2012
Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me is Mark’s first full-length collection of poetry. It is currently out of print, but used copies can be found at libraries and on websites that sell used books.
Nominee, 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards.
Out of print.