ROBERT PERCHAN: BRIEF BIO NOTE
Robert Perchan was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up there doing pretty much what was expected of him. After grad school he taught introductory composition and literature courses aboard three different mostly seaworthy vessels for the U.S. Navy’s Program for Afloat College Education (PACE) before moving, in his words, “onward and awkward.” For many years he taught at universities in South Korea while contributing numerous essays, stories and poems to literary journals (Exquisite Corpse and The Prose Poem: An International Journal among many others) and anthologies both in the USA and abroad. His avant-la-lettre flash novel Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile (Watermark Press, Wichita, 1991) was translated into French and published by Quidam Editeurs (Meudon) in 2002. His poetry collection Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light won the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize and the final judge, after generously praising the poems therein, was perspicacious enough to offer this prophetic observation about the author on the back cover: “I suspect he will not be invited to the White House for Poetry Month celebrations . . .” That was like about five Presidents ago, and thankfully appears to be holding true. His poetry chapbooks have won the 2005 Poetry West Press Chapbook Prize and the Backwaters Press 2005 Weldon Kees Award. His latest collection, Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems & Prose Poems (UnCollected Press, 2021), is out now – a steal at 130 pages for fifteen bucks. That said, the novel Tropic of Scorpio is undoubtably the scariest and funniest work of the imagination he has yet to concoct. In any case, Bob continues to eat and drink and write in Busan, South Korea, under the bemused gaze of his wife, Mi-kyung Lee, who has done the real work over the past several years translating novels by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell and Sinclair Lewis.
WHAT HE REALLY MEANS IS
I write because it is one of the few things I can do with complete impunity in my present circumstances. I am imprisoned in Busan, South Korea, serving a life sentence for impersonating an English teacher. My cell is roomy enough and I have satellite tv and a computer with an internet connection and Wi-Fi too. I am permitted conjugal visits from my Korean consort and I can even walk across the yard and conjugate with her in her cell. I have imaginary lovers and am allowed to entertain them shamelessly if you-know-who is not around. I drive a silver-pearl Daewoo G2X roadster and have commissary privileges with E-Mart, Costco and both Lotte and Shinsegae Department Stores, to say nothing of the local mini-marts, post office branches and ex-pat bars. I can leave the country under uxorial supervision and have visited Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Bali, and most recently an unnamed island in a likewise unnamed archipelago, etc., and quite a chunk of Europe to boot. When friends or family members die I am at liberty to travel to the United States to mourn them. I am not, however, free to [this part has been censored and makes little sense anyway]. I chafe against this restriction while at the same time I know it is for my own good. It is part of the rehabilitation process and I am thankful for the Honor System in which I am now enrolled. It is from these experiences and these alone that I draw inspiration for my poems, stories and other exuberances. If you are a person generous of heart – or even a reasonable facsimile thereof — at ease in narrow confines and with a weakness for Wild Turkey straight out of the bottle you are welcome to read further. Bless you.
New poems/stories online at:
http://www.theghoststory.com/ghost-stories/compression-a-very-short-story/5357
JANE: Poem at http://everypigeon.com/jane/
ON A NEED: Poem at http://everypigeon.com/on-a-need/
SALT: Prose Poem at https://burningword.com/tag/88/
ON GUNSMOKE: Poem at https://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/robert-perchan-on-gunsmoke/
THREE POEMS at https://underwoodpress.com/ruescribe/2018/08/05/three-poems-by-robert-perchan/
http://www.cecileswriters.com/mag/story/angel-english-pusan-south-korea/
https://ermagazine.com/fiction/give-piss-a-chance/
I just read your poems in the new issue of Rat’s Ass Review. Nice to connect with you after many years (30 about not in touch). We corresponded in the 90s. But then I got divorced from my Korean wife, and I moved abroad to England for fifteen years. Now I’m living in Evanston, Illinois, why, I am not sure. But there it is. I haven’t written about Korea since Lost in Seoul and After Asia, my travel memoir and poetry collection, respectively. I had a new book out earlier this year and another due out shortly. I hope all is well. Would love to know how you are in Pusan, where everything is fishy.