The Muses give me some poetic advice. THE MUSES SPEAK If you write about your feelings, We will throw potato peelings. If you start to air confessions, We’ll urge psychiatric sessions. If your work becomes too earnest, We’ll suggest that it be furnaced. If your work becomes too solemn, We will turn our spinal column. […]

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The idiosyncratic poet and cabaret performer Maurice Mac-Nab had a short but appreciated career in Paris in the 1880s. He was known for his deadpan delivery and limited vocal range; it was said of him that he could sing only three notes, but each was flawless. My translation of his poem “The Fetuses” is a […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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