Horoscrapes is now available!  Here is the publisher’s blurb: Part Oulipian exercise, these meticulous scrapings reveal the future in all its sublime absurdity. The author approached the horoscope in his morning newspaper as if it were a puzzle, like the crossword or sudoku. By scraping out the middle part, and joining the beginning and end, he received a hidden message. Reading outside the lines […]

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The book blog “Wuthering Expectations” has posted a nice review of the Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais.  You can read it here. The book in question is available from Amazon. Norman Conquest, of Black Scat Books, has sent these photos of happy readers:

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Richard Toronto has written the definitive work on the artwork of Richard Shaver, in two volumes, with over 300 illustrations. I wrote the introduction for the second volume, linking Shaver’s preoccupation with stones and pareidolia to the long tradition of scrying and lithomancy. It’s from Shavertron Press, and you can find it on Amazon. Here’s […]

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I’ve selected, translated, and annotated a choice selection of plays by Alphonse Allais for this book. First performed in the cabarets and theaters of Paris in the rollicking 1890s, these plays include satire, absurdism, he-she sketches, a burlesque operetta, even a play for dogs.  You’ll find ten monologues, three one-act plays, and twelve shorter skits […]

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Oulipo Pornobongo 3 is now available from Black Scat Books!  Edited by Norman Conquest, this anthology collects smut written under formal constraints.  I contributed an alphabet (“Hybrids”), a homophonic translation (“A Homophonous Restoration of the ‘King James’ Text of Psalm 23”), and a univocalism (“Gus Fucks Lulu”).  There is also work by Maria Schurr, Tom […]

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The eighth issue of “Black Scat Review” is now out!  It contains my short but unpleasant story “Hardwood Mulch,”  as well as seductive works by Suzanne Burns, Doug Rice, Steven Teref, Kurt Cline, Charles Holdefer, Paulo Brito, Jhaki M.S. Landgrebe,Tara Stillions Whitehead, Maria Morisot, Fox Harvard, Charlie Griggs, Monika Mori, and Tom Whalen.  You can […]

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Translating verse is difficult enough; it’s harder to try to retain the rhyme and meter.  Some paraphrase is always required, but it often comes closer to the original poem than a more literal rendition.  It is, at any rate, a challenging writing exercise.  Here’s my version of a verse by Jean de la Fontaine, from his […]

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I delivered this brief talk at the “Congress of Curious Peoples,” at the Coney Island Museum, May 1, 2014.  It concerned the attempts by fans of the pulp writer Richard Shaver to build the machines he described in his stories.  Here’s the first page…

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Bill Irwin, Michael O’Connor and I performed The Regard of Flight frequently between 1980 and 2003.  It seemed, at times, that we would spend the rest of our lives doing it.  Its last run at the Signature Theater in NYC, however, laid it peacefully to rest.  I wrote this verse in 1991, as we prepared […]

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The sixth issue of Black Scat Review is now out; and it contains my translation of “The Unicolorist” by Jules Moy, a monologue about monochromatic painting from 1897.  I also contributed an introduction about Moy, and about the history of monochromatic painting in the Belle Époque.  It also contains delightful work by Nin Andrews, Ivan […]

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