poetry Darling, this one’s your eulogy By Corbin Wamble. The night they / doused you in flames, / you stared piously across / a concrete river, / an American flag / hoisted over suburbia as if / Christ had / fallen from heaven / and landed on a fencepost… MORE ⟫
Criticism TEXTURALITY By Bill Yarrow. “You want to write poetry? Study Godard. The greatest efforts are falsely measured by length. Two boring metaphors do not a poem make. Simple stories falsify life…” MORE ⟫
guillotines broccoli florets Light Pollution By Corbin Wamble. Inspired by the bleak obsession to be accepted to a tinseled quarry of yoga poems and house wife delights. MORE ⟫
Translating Emilio Villa Yes, but Slowly Paul F. Gehl, Curator Emeritus at The Newberry Library, reviews Selected Poetry of Emilio Villa, a translation by Dominic Siracusa. MORE ⟫
Exercises in New Meaning Exercises in New Meaning: Rek From the Series: Exercises in New Meaning – Rek (2019), by Cordula Daus of Toponymisches Heft. MORE ⟫
Prose from an Exhibition “Blue”, an Artistic Response From conversations with Sybille Krämer and an ongoing experimental involvement with her books through fictional forms and various media, the artist group MEHL has distilled a digestible and rather indiscrete “Geist,” with Sybille Krämer’s DNA as core ingredient. MORE ⟫
a polemic The Decadent Review A polemic on the poet’s role in the society of the statistical age, and on the western canon’s necessity to our current technological world, a transcription of a lecture given at the Constellations Symposium, at the Technische Universität Dresden. MORE ⟫
Poetry to an Exhibition “Dolores Haze Étude” On what inspired Nabokov to write Lolita. By D. Kaufman, from Olaf Nicolai’s “There Is No Place Before Arrival” at Kunsthalle, Vienna. MORE ⟫
Graphic novels The Sword and the Pear Excerpt from Pier Paolo Perilli's upcoming graphic novel, The Sword and the Pear (la spada e la pera), here translated from the Italian for the first time. MORE ⟫
manic deconstruction The Pathology of Impatience What would compel one to bisect a public literary reading with loud videos that look like a YouTube “mashup”? Let’s jump right in with a scalpel to examine. MORE ⟫
Sonnets to Alan Greenspan GEFILTEFISHISM A sonnet in response to Maxwell Flaum’s This Week on Randspan: Origins (2014); a play on the short romance of Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan: "A non-altruistic roll in the hay / Of one (née) Rosenbaum, one future Fed / Rabelais, irrational, laissez-faire / Paraphilic, exuberant: Alan bled..." MORE ⟫
Sonnets to the 95-96 Bulls THE FRUEDIAN LINEUP A sonnet in response to Maxwell Flaum's The Brief Journal of D. Julius K. Rodman: "A definition from chess: ‘Solus Rex’ / Literally means: ‘Lone King’, to infer / That of Un’s case: Napoleon Complex. / A man really obsessed with Steve Kerr..." MORE ⟫
Sonnets to McEnroe IMMOVABLE CONNORS The following sonnet was written as a response to Maxwell Flaum’s essay, The McEnroe Connors Rivalry (a personal tennis Cosmogony): "A racket thrown, expletive deleted / A massacre, graves of ball boys, now slew / The U.S open: Jimmy, defeated /Match isn’t over, they’ll start, anew..." MORE ⟫
sonnets to the berlin philharmonic THE RAPE OF RATTLE A sonnet written as a response to Maxwell Flaum's essay, A Few Remarks on Daniel Barenboim as Iago (2014): "Odysseus kissing Ithaca's ground / Barenboim kissing Rattle’s rear / Their journeys end with a sucking sound / Envy of Iago, the madness of Lear." MORE ⟫
desecrating fine verse Wax Poetic #2: Puncuation I took liberties to molest fine verse, in the spirit of E. E. Cummings. I began by stripping all but a line’s punctuation. MORE ⟫
Seven Parts Ad Hoc Ostensibly Trochaic Octameter Stanzas in Seven Parts Partitioned with Seven-Letter Word Palindromes Aristotle, Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint Paul, Descartes, Wittgenstein. All non-poets. MORE ⟫
quietus est There must be a poem here somewhere Pictures: Pier Paolo Perilli. Words: D. Kaufman. MORE ⟫
DEPT. of 240240 Random Sonnets Combinatorial Sonnets for a Symposium The combinatorial sonnet sequence by the poet D. Kaufman, originally written for the Constellations Symposium, at the Technische Universität Dresden, is now published here. MORE ⟫
Department of Le Mépris Totem and Taboo As one sensible theory has it, Le Mépris is a cinematic rendition of Homer’s Odyssey, with that Alfa Romeo as the chariot of Zeus, Paul as Odysseus, Camille as Penelope, and Fritz Lang, perhaps, as Homer himself. MORE ⟫
Antecedents and Minutiae A Soupçon – Part I A soupçon of rather nuanced compositor-cognate antecedents and minutiae on slugs, syllabary, and mensurations as wrested from the June 1915 Poetry printing of Prufrock, consanguine, en route to Harriet, Eliot, Fletcher Seymour, Matrices, Mergenthaler, and Gehl. MORE ⟫
On Poetry “Maybe”, Annotated What springs to my mind / During this impromptu / Homo sapiens cryptographic rendezvous / Is how Eusebius reported / That Origen Adamantius / Followed Matthew 19:12 / And literally / Castrated himself. MORE ⟫
DEPT. of 240240 Random Sonnets “The Angry Combinatorial Pollock” The combinatorial sonnet sequence by the poet D. Kaufman, originally written as a response to Maxwell Flaum's essay "How to Restore a Pollock to Perfection?" Part of "The Pollock Report - A Mutual Investigation of Replicas in Poem and Prose." (2014). MORE ⟫
Dept. of 17297280 Random Sonnets A Combinatorial Sonnet Cycle For the Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellows The combinatorial sonnet sequence by the poet D. Kaufman as farewell to the Akademie Schloss Solitude (2015). MORE ⟫
POETRY to gestation MAN HANDS ON MISERY I am sure that you took the opportunity / And delved into the wonderful clinical nomenclature / Describing all the rogue flesh and conduit vessels. MORE ⟫
POETRY to phrenic bigotry EGO, INTELLECTUAL CHAUVINISM, AND THE LATEST ISSUE OF VOGUE MAGAZINE MORE ⟫
Ekphrasis The Slave Ship, Part I Es ist nicht klar, wo das Meer anfängt und der Himmel aufhört. MORE ⟫
Ekphrasis The Slave Ship, Part II 1781 fährt das britische Segelschiff Zong auf der sogenannten Mittelpassage von Akra (dem heutigen Ghana) nach Jamaika. An Bord sind 442 Sklaven. MORE ⟫
Flash Fiction Barthelme "Those creative writing buffoons, they publish the thing because it’s the same people who are now taking the same bullshit creative writing courses thing, it’s like the whole thing is this pyramid scheme, this giant Ponzi scheme, and they just publish their shit and then the people who got their shit published just go on and become creative writing teachers." MORE ⟫
POETRY to toilet paper THE LORD’S PRAYER An Edmund Waller couplet / In a beautifully bound tome. MORE ⟫
POETRY to Gustave Flaubert TRUE STORY Why / Why / Did Eleanor Marx / Translate / Madame Bovary. MORE ⟫
Poetry and Video in Discourse “Resilience” Presented as part of a lecture performance of Margarete Jahrmann enacted together with Marian Kaiser at the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin. MORE ⟫
Marie Marie Hold on Tight “Cocktail Chatter on the State of Man” Should I put some punctuation / Onto the holes your absence left? / Should I declare it theft? / Or better yet: / A short vignette. MORE ⟫
Department of Le Mépris “A Rendition of The Grand Inquisitor” Cinematic Interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” MORE ⟫
Books on Objects Bauhaus Books Episodes 1-3, an unpublished Bauhaus book has a conversation with an object or an idea from within the book. The slender publication is part artist's project and artist's book and features extensive color images weaving through the featured writings of Olaf Nicolai, Marian Kaiser, and Eva Wilson. MORE ⟫
Aesthetic Measures The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Method for Orthographic Aesthetic Measure I’m not Irish, and I wasn’t born in the 19th century, but let me tell you something about poetry. MORE ⟫
Prose and Video for an Exhibition “Naurutica” Written by Marian Kaiser, and co-directed by Claudia Schötz, Hannes Bröcker, and Jonas Loh of MEHL. Director of photography is Emma Rosa Simon, acting by Errol Shaker. MORE ⟫
Poetry and Video in Discourse “Pre-Enactment” Video installations galore. My cup runneth over. MORE ⟫
in theory Extrapolating from that The artist, publisher, and writer James Hoff talks with media theorist and writer Marian Kaiser. MORE ⟫
Book Excerpt Phineus Phineus is a work by poet D. Kaufman, a Jean-Jacques Rousseau fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. The work amalgamates multiple renditions of the Phineus character from The… MORE ⟫
Ballroom Blitz Prose for a Choreography The following piece, “Prose for a Choreography” (or “Crabs”), was written by Marian Kaiser, and later recored as soundtrack to the film “Pre-Enactment” by Margarete Jahrmann for Transmedial project… MORE ⟫
Exhibition Review The Catechisms and Hymns of Time: “Aufs Maul geschaut” An Exhibition at the Akademie der Künste (16th Poetry Festival Berlin); “The divided space is a constellation of disparate elements derived from Martin Luther’s ideas on work, language, and time…” MORE ⟫
Criticism Short Note on “Love”, A Poem by Aharon Shabtai Opposite the left on the desk accounting for this scribble is cheap champagne housed in equally cheap receptacle of a Bonne Maman marmalade jar lying betwixt tomes cramming in full every corner a carrel could fit them and such amongst them are the finest authorities worthy of citating. MORE ⟫
Chess in Literature Problems from Vladimir Nabokov’s “Poems and Problems” In Speak Memory (p290-291), Nabokov writes of this composition: "I remember one particular problem I had been trying to compose for months. There came a night when I managed at last to express that particular theme. It was meant for the delectation of the expert solver..." MORE ⟫
Chess in Literature Game from Vladimir Nabokov’s “The Luzhin Defense” 1. Kg4 f5+ 2. Kg5 Kg7 If 2. Kh4 Be7# 3. Nd5 Rh3! 4. gxh3 h6+ 5. Kh4 Bf2# MORE ⟫
Book Excerpt “Round the Sun-dial” – Jabberwocky in Prose A studiously cerebral learnéd exordium on transmogrifying the rune of Jabber onto prose. MORE ⟫
Apropos Alice Additional Material for the Jabberwocky Acolyte "'Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe: All mimsy were ye borogoves; And ye mome raths outgrabe. This curious fragment reads thus in modern characters..." MORE ⟫
Disquisitions on Abstraction Proem to Resemblance There is also function, poetic function, aesthetic function. A measure. A linguistic X-ray of sorts. Mucking around with the nuts and bolts of abstraction. MORE ⟫
Flash Fiction “Dostoyevsky” "Things were going kind of okay reading Dostoyevsky, but then this woman approached me, she must have seen that I was reading Dostoyevsky, and then she told me, you know, how much she likes reading Dostoyevsky too, you know, how much she likes reading Dostoyevsky. And I’m like, okay, fine.." MORE ⟫
Apropos Thucydides Thucydides’ “War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians” (Cambridge/Mynott) Greece and the Aegean. MORE ⟫
Poetry for Russian Composers “Gubaidulina” I’m spitting miasma There’s a choir of black seraphim Following me Humming a requiem. MORE ⟫
Chess in Literature Game from “Through the Looking-Glass” "As the chess-problem…has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned..." MORE ⟫
