That remarkable Welsh writer, Rhys Hughes, edited this delightful anthology, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: light verse about life and other heavy things. I’m one of 39 contributors, with seven fables in verse. It’s published by Gibbon Moon Books, and can be found on Amazon.
Entries Tagged as 'A'
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
June 21st, 2023 · Comments Off on Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Allais by Taunay
April 26th, 2023 · Comments Off on Allais by Taunay
Corinne Taunay holds up her striking portrait of Alphonse Allais, from my translation of Let’s Not Hit Each Other.
An Afternoon in the Arboretum
March 20th, 2023 · Comments Off on An Afternoon in the Arboretum
An Afternoon in the Arboretum is now available on Bandcamp! This album contains solely instrumental music, mostly for keyboard, from as early as 1976 to as late as 2022. All selections were composed and performed by Doug Skinner, and recorded and mixed by Brian Dewan: An Afternoon in the Arboretum (2020) Radio Valentine (1976) Ulterior […]
The Accursed Cherub
September 13th, 2022 · Comments Off on The Accursed Cherub
For the upcoming new edition of Merde à la Belle Époque, here’s some early Rimbaud. This poem has been translated before, but this may be the first attempt in rhyming verse. And I was careful to preserve Rimbaud’s alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes as well. THE ACCURSED CHERUB (Arthur Rimbaud, 1871) The roofs are […]
The Art of Noises
June 23rd, 2022 · 2 Comments
My translation of The Art of Noises is now available from Black Scat Books! Luigi Russolo’s treatise on enriching music with noises was published in Milan in 1916. It contains his 1913 Futurist manifesto on noises, as well as his accounts of building noise instruments, his riotous concerts, his notation, and analyses of the noises […]
The Alphonse Allais Museum
March 20th, 2022 · Comments Off on The Alphonse Allais Museum
I’m happy to report that the Musée Alphonse Allais, in Honfleur, has acknowledged my latest translation with this charming image on their Instagram page. And thanks to Caroline Crépiat for passing along the news!
Ada and Gabe
July 25th, 2021 · Comments Off on Ada and Gabe
This story recounts the romance between Princess Ada and her suitor, Prince Gabe. She’s rather GAGA, and he, frankly, is A BEEF-FACED FEEB. But music is the food of love!
Alphonse Allais’s Masks: Deluxe Special Edition
May 19th, 2021 · 2 Comments
July 4th marks the 9th year of Black Scat Books! To celebrate the occasion, they have released a special deluxe hardcover edition of their very first title, Alphonse Allais’s Masks — based on Allais’s story Un drame bien parisien, adapted and illustrated by Norman Conquest, with an introduction and notes by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner. […]
Amerigo and Isabella
February 15th, 2021 · 4 Comments
These verses about Amerigo Vespucci and Queen Isabella were originally published in Bedside Nonsense, from Black Scat Books. Here they are set to music, which I recently recorded with a Venezuelan cuatro. Note that for the sake of the meter “Amerigo” is pronounced in Americanese, as I was taught it in school, with the accent […]
Aleatoric Temperament and Boxing Kangaroo Rats
October 1st, 2020 · Comments Off on Aleatoric Temperament and Boxing Kangaroo Rats
In 2017, Black Scat Books published Le Scat Noir Encyclopaedia, which presented “all human knowledge in a single volume.” A sequel is now in preparation, offering even more of all human knowledge. I wrote a few entries, including these on music and popular entertainment. ALEATORIC TEMPERAMENT. Rather than choosing pitches by the ratios of frequencies, or […]