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 ⟫
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 ⟫
renditions adrift ℙ The Same Old Thing There is a special place in hell reserved for those who dare translate literature. The lowest point in the inferno of eternal damnation, though, is kept for those who attempt translate poetry. I cannot fathom what should extend to the preceding Dantesque metaphor for those who ever try translate Kohelet. MORE ⟫
desecrating fine verse ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ℙ A Soupçon 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 ℙ “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 ⟫
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 ⟫
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 ℙ “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 ℙ “A Rendition of The Grand Inquisitor” Cinematic Interpretation of Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” MORE ⟫
Books on Objects ℙ 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 ℙ 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” The following piece was part of the Technospehere Magazine and online exhibition for the House of the World Cultures, Berlin, along with five films based on the text, with the… MORE ⟫
Book Excerpt “” “#2: James Hoff in Conversation with Marian Kaiser” Disruption and distribution are at the heart of James Hoff’s work. New York–based artist Hoff talks with writer of media and technology Marian Kaiser about his use of… MORE ⟫
Poetry and Video in Discourse ℙ “Pre-Enactment” Video installations galore. My cup runneth over. 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 ℙ Notes 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 ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ℙ “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 ℙ 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 ℙ 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 ⟫