Orations Delivered While Lying on My Belly

Mark Anthony Cronin
Fiction, Poetry
300 pgs.
2024
Paperback

Spanning 300 pages, ORATIONS compiles a year’s worth of stories and poems, curated from the author’s almost-daily musings on his personal Substack. In this collection, Cronin deepens the thematic concerns that have long permeated his oeuvre, engaging with them through a diverse range of forms—sometimes elemental, at other times playful, and often erupting into pure stream-of-consciousness. His prose resists tidy categorization, leaning into the raw spontaneity of thought and expression. Embracing the imperfections of his own creative process, Cronin declares: "I love my mistakes," offering a meta-commentary on the fluidity of artistic intent and the beauty found in the failure of precision. It's a candid exploration of the unconscious, a self-aware confrontation with the internal chaos that drives both creation and destruction.