Doug Skinner: An Archive on Your Gizmo

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A Filthy Letter

March 4th, 2024 · No Comments

A Filthy Letter is now available from Black Scat Books!

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a novelist and poet, one of the champions of Romanticism. In 1850, he and his friend Louis de Cormenin visited Italy, so he wrote his friends back home a letter about their adventures. The result was a rollicking “filthy letter,” packed with jokes, slang, obsolete words, literary allusions, puns, alliterations, neologisms, Spoonerisms, verses, outrageous metaphors, and Rabelaisian lists. It was published privately in 1890, and became a clandestine classic.

But you can read it now, translated, introduced, and annotated by Doug Skinner, and available on Amazon!

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“The Donner Party” at the University of North Texas

February 23rd, 2024 · No Comments

Back in 1974, at Oberlin College, Herbert Blau led a group of students in developing a production about the ill-fated Donner Party. The cast was a promising one, including Bill Irwin and Michael O’Connor, with whom I toured for years in The Regard of Flight. I was a composition student at the time, and contributed three songs. Now, all these years later, Jim Eigo and Marjorie Hayes are resurrecting it at the University of North Texas. You can find more info here.

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Bilingual Acrostic Rebus

January 23rd, 2024 · No Comments

A puzzle for the readers of Typo, slated for the fifth issue. To get you started, the first four letters are LONG.

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The Rat Wins!

January 16th, 2024 · No Comments

The Rat Wins! is now available from Black Scat Books!

Writer Lucien Descaves and illustrator Lucien Laforge were anarchist activists dismayed by World War I. They cooked up this mordant little satire, pointing out that the real winner of any war is the rat, who feasts on all the corpses–with the suggestion that war profiteers are rats too. It was scheduled for publication in 1917, but banned by the authorities, and didn’t make it to print until 1920.

Written by Lucien Descaves, illustrated by Lucien Laforge, and translated by Doug Skinner. Designed by Derek Pell to resemble the original edition.

And you can find it on Amazon!

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Iffiness in the Offing

January 9th, 2024 · No Comments

Some free-flowing piano music…

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TYPO 4

January 2nd, 2024 · No Comments

TYPO 4 is now available from Black Scat Books! I contributed an article on typos of the word “typo” (“Typo’s Typos”) and a translation of “Cubist Tale” by Gabriel de Lautrec. My fellow contributors are Tim Newton Anderson, Michael Betancourt, David Brizer, Steve Carll, Norman Conquest, Farewell Debut, R J Dent, Jesse Glass, Reinhard Goering, Rhys Hughes, Tim Hutchings, Mark Kanak, M. Kasper, Amy Kurman, Emilia Loseva, Jim McMenamin, O Homem do Saco, Jasia Reichardt, Doug Rice, Paul Rosheim, Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Thernerson, John Vieira, Gregory Wallace, and Danny Winkler. You will also find translations of eight Russian Futurists: Velimir Khlebnikov, Igor Terentjev, Aleksey Kruchenykh, Vasily Kamensky, Pavel Kokorin, Tykhon Churylin, Bodjidar (Bogdan Gordejev), and David Burliuk.

Edited by Norman Conquest and available from Amazon!

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The Terrier’s Christmas

December 20th, 2023 · No Comments

Once again, Meg Reichardt assembled a group of musicians in Brooklyn to record a holiday album. I sent in my song from upstate, and called in Brian Dewan to record it. It’s called “The Terrier’s Christmas,” and gives a canine perspective on the holidays. My fellow contributors are Kurt Hoffman, Meg Reichardt, Tisha Pryor, Brian Dewan, Mia Theodoratus, Nina Kennedy, and Ezekiel Healy. And you can hear the whole album here on Bandcamp.

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We Are Not Sheep

December 4th, 2023 · No Comments

We Are Not Sheep is now available from Black Scat Books!

This delightful collection, first published in 1896, shows the peerless French humorist Alphonse Allais in full pursuit of the ridiculous. You’ll find  a painter who trains bats to act as a parasol, the love life of a one-man band, a plan to make sandals from the skin of the poor, the military use of legless soldiers, the man who couldn’t decide where to put his beard when he slept, and much more: 44 stories, plus four extra stories selected for this edition. Translated, annotated, and introduced by Doug Skinner. Designed by Norman Conquest, and with a frontispiece by Corinne Taunay.

And it’s available on Amazon.

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Lord Bedbug

November 28th, 2023 · No Comments

A melancholy poem from Bed Bug.

LORD BEDBUG

Lord Bedbug crawls upon his throne
Of spattered sheets and spotted ticking,
Where he commands the nightly pricking
That makes our vital force his own.

Ah, have you now seen Bedbug plain?
And has he used you for his feeding,
And stuffed his gut with all the bleeding
That trickled from your punctured vein?

Such is our fate. We’re only food,
The special on the midnight menu.
He picks the time; he picks the venue;
Our lot is simply servitude.

We hold no franchise in the deal,
For we’re the sheep, and he’s the shepherd.
Our counterpane is always peppered
With leavings from our master’s meal.

We pay allegiance to our lord,
For he’s the liege, and we’re the vassals.
He takes our couches for his castles;
Our beds are his, and we’re his board.

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BEDBAG

November 6th, 2023 · No Comments

For the magazine Bed Bug, this variation: a canon on the letters BEDBAG.

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