Philip Raisor has published eight books, most recently That Naked Country (2019). Outside Shooter: A Memoir (2003) and Headhunting and Other Sports Poems (2014) were influenced by the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements of the 1960s (as well as the fact that he played with Wilt Chamberlain at Kansas). His collection, Swimming in the Shallow End (2013), was nominated for the Poet’s Prize, and Hoosiers the Poems (2013) won the Palooka Press Chapbook Prize. His edited volume of essays on W. D. Snodgrass was published in 1999. Raisor’s literary work has appeared in Southern Review, Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Aethlon, Chautauqua, Poet Lore, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. His essays on Shelley, Browning, Joyce, and Faulkner have been published in numerous scholarly journals. He has taught at Louisiana State, Valparaiso, Kent State, and Old Dominion University, and now lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
A speed mechanic. More sudden than a cinder off a runner’s spike. A trailer slightly behind a 50-grain bullet at 3,900 fps. Oh, my, he was fast. He could run side-by-side with the Harley FXDR for the first 60 yards until Enos slipped the clutch and ripped a wheely down the straightaway at the Delaware County fairground. Motorcycle fans came… Read more →