The world is none too rosy at the moment. I might as well write some piano music.  

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A piano piece, in 9/8. The rest of it is rather syncopated.

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The alphabet always seemed to have a sort of plot to me. Here’s one possibility. THE ALPHABET It started with abundance beauty and clarity Apples and apricots for all Birds and butterflies in the blue Cats and dogs everywhere But it grew feebler and grayer As it hobbled and inched along It grew jaded and […]

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Acrostics are usually used in longer verses. Here, they’re put to probably unsuitable use. ACROSTIC COUPLETS I mention that it might be fun To eat a picnic in the sun. It would at that, you answer back, So we select some food to pack: A jug of wine, some garlic knots, Some nectarines and apricots. […]

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I set this short poem by Ezra Pound when I was 19. The poem is one of Pound’s Provençal translations, from an anonymous troubadour; my setting favors fourths and fifths.

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I’m currently translating Alfred Jarry’s operetta Le Moutardier du pape for Black Scat Books; it should be out later this year. I’m translating Jarry’s rhymed verse as rhymed verse; it always requires some compromise, but I hope the result is more faithful than a literal, unrhymed rendition would be (and more faithful than Jarry’s own […]

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Here’s another new poetic constraint: the anagram rhyme. As the name says, anagrams are treated as rhymes. Here are seven examples: Whenever we go out, the post Beside the park is still the spot Where our retriever always opts To tug upon his leash and stop. The life of urban man is tame: He earns […]

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Some sketches of Aunt Dodo, for an upcoming comic strip.

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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 […]

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A piece for piano, taken from the third movement of my 9th String Quartet, for two violas and two ‘cellos. It’s sort of a cross between a minuet and a gavotte, going back and forth between 3/4 and 4/4. Here’s the first page…

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