The Best of Le Scat Noir is now available! It collects memorable gems from the online journal edited by the ebullient Norman Conquest, in a large, full-color trade paperback. I have a number of pieces in it, as do many others, to wit: Paulo Brito, Paul Kavanagh, Erik Satie, Samuele Bastianello, Alice Pulaski, Pink Buddha, Yuriy […]

[Read more →]

From a projected book of my verse, here’s a translation of a song by the surprisingly prolific Jules Jouy (1855-1897). The problem was to translate the lyrics as closely as possible, within the original meter and rhyme scheme. It’s a paraphrase, but (I think) comes closer to the original than a literal rendering could. THE […]

[Read more →]

My version of the Faust legend is 152 lines, in tetrameter couplets alternating masculine and feminine rhymes. It has a cheerier ending than most; Faust and the Devil get drunk, become friends, and open a bar together. Here’s how it begins. I’ll cut it off before we get to the sex magick. Perhaps you’ve heard […]

[Read more →]

Drawn from Black Scat’s eight editions of the master French absurdist, this compendium is a sublime introduction to the wordplay and black humor that shocked and dazzled Bohemian Paris in the raucous “Banquet Years.” The READER includes the celebrated pataphysical text “A Thoroughly Parisian Drama”–a favorite of both André Breton and the Oulipians–as well as […]

[Read more →]

Shakespeare’s 28th sonnet is, like Bottom, translated, by changing one letter in each word. The clinamen is in the 3rd line, where “oppression” is changed to “expression.” SHAKESPEARE MISSPELLED Now man, O when deturn on hoppy flight, What ax debarked thy bone-fit or rust? Then dad’s expression, as now, bas’d my might, Cut hay be […]

[Read more →]

Charles Cros: Collected Monologues is now available from Black Scat Books! Charles Cros (1842-1888) was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation, equally adept at poetry, fiction, and scientific inquiry. He wrote smutty verses with Verlaine, synthesized gems with Alphonse Allais, contributed wild prose fantasies to Le Chat Noir, and experimented with color photography […]

[Read more →]

I recently translated the collected monologues of Charles Cros; the book should be out in the fall. Cros was a poet of the late 19th century, a colleague of Rimbaud and Verlaine, but with a distinctive voice of his own. He also pioneered the comic monologue, writing a series of lively little pieces for the […]

[Read more →]

No Bile! is now available from Black Scat Books! This is my 8th translation of the peerless French proto-dadaist Alphonse Allais (1854-1905). This collection of what he called his “anthumous works” includes love stories, revenge stories, short-shorts, and unclassifiable prose, all affronting the reader with startlingly modern black humor, imagination, and wordplay. Among the highlights […]

[Read more →]

My horror story, “The Werechurch,” will appear in the next issue of Dagger Magazine. It tells the terrifying tale of a man who turns into a church, and then meets a gruesome end. To make it more gothic, it’s told in sonnets. Here’s the first one: The night was dark, although the sky was starry, […]

[Read more →]

Here’s another excerpt from my collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. In this story, the eagles discover that Prometheus is open for business. (For the rest, please buy a copy of the book.) LUNCH ON MOUNT KAZBEK Zeus looked on with satisfaction as Kratos, Bia, and Hephaestus chained Prometheus to the face of Mount Kazbek. […]

[Read more →]