Six hundred years ago, a group of pilgrims made their way to Canterbury, and Geoffrey Chaucer created one of the great works of English literature. A hundred years from now, a nuclear-powered steam train is stopped by a massive storm on its journey to Canterbury, the new capital of an England struggling to rise from the ashes of the twenty-first century. As the waters rise with the storm's fury, the weird and wonderful passengers tell the stories of a new age ...

Poetry. "What is 'common ground?' How does it come about in a nation? In a poem? In Schickling's project, limning the portals between expression and repression, common ground is sought and thwarted, and sought again, bringing to bear the grand project of all our poetry--what does it say? How do we mean? What if a flock of our voices, civic and private, were let loose, flurrying and colliding in the echo chamber of the poem? "--Eleni Sikelianos. "Jared Schickling, the Poetry of the imagination expansive, no master, not forms that restrict, not the commercialism of print. Not the Government of Poetry, with this an anarchistic being is where all might of the elemental as a construction without end with wisdom and magic, behold begins a future"--Michael Basinski.

Six hundred years ago, a group of pilgrims made their way to Canterbury, and Geoffrey Chaucer created one of the great works of English literature. A hundred years from now, a nuclear-powered steam train is stopped by a massive storm on its journey to Canterbury, the new capital of an England struggling to rise from the ashes of the twenty-first century. As the waters rise with the storm's fury, the weird and wonderful passengers tell the stories of a new age ...

You are cordially invited & Guest (And I Will Not be Afraid of Women) follows the exploits, trials, and frequent misadventures of Randall Fox, as he makes his way through the minefields of the dating scene. It's a comedy, mystery, drama, and romance all crammed together into one riotous story. The novel explores Randall's often-desperate search from "adulthood" to pre-pubescence and back, to capture that mythic beast called true love. Each chapter tells a separate, yet inter-related, tale that moves Randall sometimes closer, but more often farther from his intended goal of finding his ideal woman. He has to suffer the humiliation of watching his womanizing best friend get married, and he does not yet even have an "& Guest" to take to the wedding. All the while, Randall is forced to witness virtually all of his friends around him couple up, while he wonders if he has indeed become the last single man.

"30 wacky, whimsical student papers plus 4 hilarious parodies of composition theorists."--Title page.

It's uncanny! Within six months of breaking up with her, Peg Silver's ex-lovers always meet and marry the women of their dreams. Even worse than being the eternal bridesmaid, she's the last girlfriend, the one who awakens in a guy theknowledge of what he's always wanted in a relationship ... and it's never with Peg. Obviously, a major lifestyle change is seriously called for, which is why the distraught interior landscape designer says good-bye to Manhattan and late-night lattes with pal Nina, and hello to a farmhouse on ten acres in tiny, backwater Manshire, Vermont, hoping to meet the ultimate, all-organic country man (without too much facial hair) to keep her warm in those frosty New England winters. Instead, Peg finds herself at Inward Bound -- a proactive adult-education retreat for the hapless and hopelessly lovelorn -- to try to lift her dreaded "girlfriend curse." A steamy (and expressly forbidden) dalliance with gorgeous woman-eater Ray probably isn't going to help cure her. But some romantic insight could arise from her attraction to Linus, Inward Bound's sexy, scruffy, smart and still-single founder. Perhaps there is a secret to be unearthed in the crunchy Green Mountains, one that will magically transform Peg Silver from the Perpetual Also Ran to the Big Winner in love.