Background
Poe Ballantine was born in 1955 in Denver, Colorado, the United States. His father, as well as his grandfather, was constantly banging around. That has had a strong impact on Poe's life.
Poe Ballantine
1 Harpst St, Arcata, CA 95521, United States
Poe Ballantine studied at Humboldt State University.
Poe Ballantine during an interview.
Poe Ballantine.
1 Harpst St, Arcata, CA 95521, United States
Poe Ballantine studied at Humboldt State University.
Poe Ballantine during an interview.
Poe Ballantine.
Poe Ballantine while shooting the documentary on the base of his Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere.
Poe Ballantine with Dave Jannetta.
Poe with his wife Cristina at an event of the Yuma Public Library.
Filmmaker Dave Jannetta, director/producer/editor of the documentary Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere.
(Poe Ballantine takes us along on his Greyhound bus journe...)
Poe Ballantine takes us along on his Greyhound bus journey through small town America (including a detour to Mexico) exploring what it means to be human. Written with piercing intimacy and self-effacing humor, Ballantine’stories provide entertainment, social commentary, and completely compelling slices of life.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VJTIQI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2
2002
(Set against the decaying halls of a San Diego rest home i...)
Set against the decaying halls of a San Diego rest home in the 1970s, God Clobbers Us All is the shimmering, hysterical, and melancholy account of eighteen-year-old surfer-boy orderly, Edgar Donahoe, and his struggles with romance, death, friendship, and an ill-advised affair with the wife of a maladjusted war veteran.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004URP9Z0/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i6
2004
(When Edgar is expelled from college for drunkenly bellowi...)
When Edgar is expelled from college for drunkenly bellowing expletives from a dorm window at 3:00 am, he hitchhikes to Colorado and trains as a cook. A postcard arrives from Edgar’s college buddy, Mountain Moses, inviting him to a Caribbean island. Once there Edgar cooks at the local tourist resort and falls in love with Mountain’s girl, Kate. He becomes embroiled in a love triangle and his troubles multiply as he is stalked by murderous island native Chollie Legion. Even Cinnamon Jim, the medicine man, is no help. Ultimately it takes a hurricane to blow Edgar out of this mess.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ROT4FW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i4
2005
(Poe Ballantine's second collection of personal essays fol...)
Poe Ballantine's second collection of personal essays follows in the tradition of Things I Like About America.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ROT3QC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i5
2007
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CGNRVC4/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1
2013
(Eddie Plum, who insists he’s been unjustifiably committed...)
Eddie Plum, who insists he’s been unjustifiably committed to a California psychiatric hospital, manages to finally escape after fourteen years of incarceration to start his life anew.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B5MDYKZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i3
2018
(Torpedoes was written before the arranged plague of 2019 ...)
Torpedoes was written before the arranged plague of 2019 and its intended outcome, tyranny; however, the solutions to tyranny have always been the same: accelerated adaptation, mental and spiritual resiliency, categorical adherence to the Truth, and careful study and recognition of the enemy as non-human, whether you choose to call them demons, aliens, psychopaths, or fallen angels.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PPVKWR2/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
2019
Poe Ballantine was born in 1955 in Denver, Colorado, the United States. His father, as well as his grandfather, was constantly banging around. That has had a strong impact on Poe's life.
Poe Ballantine studied at Humboldt State University.
For over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled all over the country, taking odd jobs. "Cook, warehouse, bartender, pizza delivery, factories, pest control, carpet cleaning, truck driver, groundskeeper, janitor. Moved every year, sometimes more often," is how he sums up his life and education. His nomadic existence has taken him all over the United States, and in Things I Like about America, he chronicles the experiences he has had along the way. Drunks and druggies, countless miles in a Greyhound bus, and grueling hours at low-level jobs all fuel the stories and essays that make up this look at the underbelly of American culture.
At the age of 46, Poe Ballantine finally settled with his wife in Chadron, Nebraska. Before, he had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college, disappeared. Ninety-five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. Since Poe knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened. Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere is not only a six-year examination of this case, but of Poe’s eccentric high plains town, its kooky residents, his rocky marriage to a beautiful Mexican woman, and his purportedly autistic son.
One of Ballantine’s short stories, The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue, was included in Best American Short Stories 1998 and one of his essays, 501 Minutes to Christ, appeared in Best American Essays 2006. The essay Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel (originally published in The Sun) opened Best American Essays 2013.
The novel Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire won Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year.
Poe’s memoir Love & Terror On the Howling Plains of Nowhere was adapted by filmmaker Dave Jannetta for a documentary, which won the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival Hot Doc Award, and the Big Sky Award, given to the film that best captures the spirit of the American W.
(Torpedoes was written before the arranged plague of 2019 ...)
2019(Set against the decaying halls of a San Diego rest home i...)
2004(Eddie Plum, who insists he’s been unjustifiably committed...)
2018(Poe Ballantine takes us along on his Greyhound bus journe...)
2002(When Edgar is expelled from college for drunkenly bellowi...)
2005(Poe Ballantine's second collection of personal essays fol...)
2007
Quotations:
"Realize that your work, unless it is highly experimental (and thus commercially untenable) will likely fall into the category of formula. What separates stories is not the stories themselves, but the voice and views of the teller, the people, places, and details described. Personality and detail are what distinguish one story about an alcoholic father or a heroic alligator from another."
"I write three to six hours a day, more if I’m revising a project with a deadline. I have a room and I close the door and anyone who interrupts me better have a writ of habeas corpus. I am a passive, easy to please person content to do whatever others want, except when it comes to composition time. Then I am an Island."
"Love what you do and your readers might just love it too."
"Many are convinced that essays should be merely organs of information, fleshy, factually spanking opinions about lobsters, climate change, and chimp DNA. My idea is that essays, whatever their point, should read dramatically. I suppose that's why mine take so long to compose."
"I always try to speak about what's interesting to readers: homelessness, insanity, failed love, strange cities, odd jobs, illicit drugs, dreamers, long bus rides, the evasiveness of Beauty and God."
"One of the reasons I don't teach is because I'd tell my students to quit. Go out in the world. If you want to write about the world, about America, go find out about them. Take odd jobs, travel, meet people, drink in strange bars, be sworn in as a Muslim, cross-dress, fart among the Episcopalians, chase a buffalo in your leotards (how that buffalo got into my leotards I'll never know), spend a few weeks digging graves without a dime. There are things to learn in school but there are more things to learn out in the world. Experimenting, risk-taking, self-knowledge, are more important than reading Victorian novels or writing essays on Beowulf."
Poe Ballantine has always been an agreeable, easygoing, and dedicated person. He prefers living outside the mainstream to create works of lasting value and is not particularly interested in money.
Quotes from others about the person
The novelist Tom Robbins: "Poe Ballantine is the most soulful, insightful, funny, and altogether luminous under-known writer in America. He knocks my socks off, even when I’m barefoot."
Marion Winik, Above Us Only Sky and NPR Correspondent: "Like David Sedaris, he is an American outsider with insane comedic and storytelling gifts."
Seth Marko, The Book Catapult: "Let me tell you somethin’ true, people: Poe Ballantine is the best American writer alive that you’ve definitely never heard of."
Poe Ballantine is married to a Mexican immigrant woman Cristina. They have a son named Thomas Francisco.
Poe Ballantine was in the middle of working on his memoir “Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere” when filmmaker Dave Jannetta contacted him. Jannetta was interested in Poe’s memoir along with the Haataja case, and after discussions Jannetta came to Chadron to film a documentary surrounding the mystery.
