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 his wage; he cheers his team;
He swigs his beer; he eats his meat;
He quarrels with his chosen mate.

When he complained about the rates,
The agent shot him with a taser.
A crowd of idlers stopped to stare
And ridicule him for his tears.

The kitchen strictly must debar
The men who knead and bake the bread
From working with their faces bared,
Especially those who wear a beard.

Escape from all the city’s bustle,
And stop to sniff the blooming bluets;
For their aroma is so subtle,
Their pigmentation quite the bluest.

The savvy goose and cautious gander
Knew not to wander from the garden.
Beyond the paling, there was danger,
For that was where the foxes ranged.

The poet who had once aspired
To be admired and widely praised
Now wipes his kids and changes diapers
In resignation and despair.

Instrumentarium is now available from Black Scat Books! This delightful volume collects the drawings of imaginary musical instruments I contributed monthly to Le Scat Noir, plus many previously unpublished. Among the 180 selected here are such inventions as the Painpipes, the Sprinkler Trombone, the Sponge Marimba, and the Calfbell.

As our culture grows ever more reductive and conformist, this celestial orchestra brings to you the almost forgotten pleasures of musical variety. Available from Black Scat Books or Amazon.

Here’s another entry in my continuing search for new poetic constraints. Monosyllabic haiku contain three one-syllable words, with 5, 7, and 5 letters. And here are seven examples:

moose
springs
forth

tweak
twelfth
shelf

cheap
schlock
sells

bears
scratch
backs

white
wraiths
whirl

swill
thrills
swine

frail
scrolls
crack

A five-part round, setting a French proverb on the danger of eating eggs.

I’m currently collecting my cartoons of imaginary musical instruments, which appeared in the PDF magazine Le Scat Noir, into a book. I also drew some new ones. Here are a few.

A musical cryptogram is written like a substitution cipher, by assigning another pitch to each pitch. The result has the same rhythm and repetitions as the original, but with different pitches. I chose the minuet from Bach’s third French Suite because I like it, and because it uses all twelve pitches. Here’s the first page.

Jon B. Cooke’s Book of Weirdo, an encyclopedic history of R. Crumb’s sorely-missed humor magazine, is now out from Last Gasp. It includes reminiscences from most of the artists, as well as photos from the time they contributed. A cartoon of mine was published in the 13th issue, so I’m in there with everyone else. Here I am in the endpapers, between Etoain Shrdlu and Art Spiegelman, with a photo taken from a performance in Amsterdam.

It’s a vastly entertaining and provocative book. Buy a copy!

I’ll be part of the lineup for Profane Illuminations, a day of talks at NYU organized by Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press. I’ll present my talk “Music from Elsewhere,” discussing and playing music attributed to fairies, trowies, banshees, aliens, spirits, and angels; as well as music from alchemists, occultists, Cathars, cryptographers, secret societies, and dreams. Other speakers include Erik Davis, Peter Bebergal and Gareth Branwyn, Amy Hale, Kristen Gallerneaux, and Dave Tompkins.

It’s on Saturday, April 27, at Einstein Auditorium (34 Stuyvesant St., at 9th St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), NYC, and it’s free. The talks run from 12 to 8 pm; I’ll be on at about 3:30. More info here.

Upside-Down Stories is now available from Black Scat Books!

Charles Cros and Émile Goudeau were quintessential Bohemian poets of the 1880s. Cros also experimented with the phonograph and color photography; Goudeau founded the Hydropathes, who met to declaim poetry while not drinking water. Cros and Goudeau’s only collaboration was a series of five exuberant stories published in 1880, which satirized such hot topics as divorce and capital punishment with bawdy humor and wild flights of fancy. All five stories are included here, plus four solo stories by Cros that complete the series, translated and annotated by Doug Skinner. These dense and nutty gems will surprise you!

You can find it on Amazon, or from Black Scat Books.