Andrei Codrescu - Böcker

"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life."--The Posthuman Dada Guide The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Cafe de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future.Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources."

"I fear each passing night that I will not receive my maintenance dose of suspense, and then I will cease to exist."--Whatever Gets You through the Night Whatever Gets You through the Night is an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights and a wildly inspired exploration of the timeless art of storytelling. Award-winning writer Andrei Codrescu reimagines how Sheherezade saved Baghdad's virgins and her own life through a heroic feat of storytelling--one that kept the Persian king Sharyar hanging in agonizing narrative and erotic suspense for 1001 nights. For Sheherezade, the end of either suspense or curiosity means death, but Codrescu keeps both alive in this entertaining tale of how she learned to hold a king in thrall, setting with her endless invention an unsurpassable example for all storytellers across the ages. Liberated and mischievous, Codrescu's Sheherezade is as charming as she is shrewd--and so is the story Codrescu tells.

A collection of twenty-eight brilliant and strange stories, inspired by Japanese folk tales and written by renowned Western expatriate Lafcadio HearnLafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) was one of the nineteenth century’s best-known writers, his name celebrated alongside those of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. Born in Greece and raised in Ireland, Hearn was a true prodigy and world traveler. He worked as a reporter in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and the West Indies before heading to Japan in 1890 on a commission from Harper’s. There, he married a Japanese woman from a samurai family, changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo, and became a Japanese subject. An avid collector of traditional Japanese tales, legends, and myths, Hearn taught literature and wrote his own tales for both Japanese and Western audiences. Japanese Tales of Lafcadio Hearn brings together twenty-eight of Hearn’s strangest and most entertaining stories in one elegant volume.Hearn’s tales span a variety of genres. Many are fantastical ghost stories, such as “The Corpse-Rider,” in which a man foils the attempts of his former wife’s ghost to haunt him. Some are love stories in which the beloved is not what she appears to be: in “The Story of Aoyagi,” a young samurai narrowly escapes the wrath of his lord for marrying without permission, only to discover that his wife is the spirit of a willow tree. Throughout this collection, Hearn’s reverence for Japan shines through, and his stories provide insights into the country’s artistic and cultural heritage.With an introduction by Andrei Codrescu discussing Hearn’s life and work, as well as a foreword by Jack Zipes, Japanese Tales of Lafcadio Hearn provides a unique window into one writer’s multicultural literary journey.

"Intro to Poetry Writing is always like this: a long labor, a breech birth, or, obversely, mining in the dark. You take healthy young Americans used to sunshine (aided sometimes by Xanax and Adderall), you blindfold them and lead them by the hand into a labyrinth made from bones. Then you tell them their assignment: 'Find the Grail. You have a New York minute to get it.'"--The Poetry Lesson The Poetry Lesson is a hilarious account of the first day of a creative writing course taught by a "typical fin-de-siecle salaried beatnik"--one with an antic imagination, an outsized personality and libido, and an endless store of entertaining literary anecdotes, reliable or otherwise. Neither a novel nor a memoir but mimicking aspects of each, The Poetry Lesson is pure Andrei Codrescu: irreverent, unconventional, brilliant, and always funny. Codrescu takes readers into the strange classroom and even stranger mind of a poet and English professor on the eve of retirement as he begins to teach his final semester of Intro to Poetry Writing.As he introduces his students to THE TOOLS OF POETRY (a list that includes a goatskin dream notebook, hypnosis, and cable TV) and THE TEN MUSES OF POETRY (mishearing, misunderstanding, mistranslating ...), and assigns each of them a tutelary "Ghost-Companion" poet, the teacher recalls wild tales from his coming of age as a poet in the 1960s and 1970s, even as he speculates about the lives and poetic and sexual potential of his twenty-first-century students. From arguing that Allen Ginsberg wasn't actually gay to telling about the time William Burroughs's funeral procession stopped at McDonald's, The Poetry Lesson is a thoroughly entertaining portrait of an inimitable poet, teacher, and storyteller.

In Codrescu’s own words: “I wrote my first book of poems, License to Carry a Gun (Big Table, 1970), when I first lived in New York City, 1967–1970. Those were troubled times and I was 21 years-old. Decades later the city has changed and the times are still troubled. These poems, 2016–2018, try to find out just how changed my dear city and how troubled my days.”

In praise of his poetry, The New York Times calls Andrei Codrescu "one of our most prodigiously talented and magical writers." Part genius, part tongue-in-cheek provocateur, Codrescu is an audacious and passionate poet. The heart of this first new collection in nearly a decade is a beautiful conceit containing the "recently discovered" correspondence between a warrior and a courtesan in fourteenth-century China. These tender, timeless verses contrast nicely with tough, funny -poems about modern life and millennial malaise.Andrei Codrescu is a celebrated poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator on National Public -Radio. A World Heavyweight Champion Poet, his many awards include the Literature Prize of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and the Peabody Award for his film Road Scholar. Born in Romania, Andrei Codrescu lives in New Orleans.

Raconteur, poet, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu delivers in his inimitable, irreverent style a collection that traverses subjects from aging to consumerism, to religion to mass media. Brilliantly funny yet deeply insightful, these poems illuminate Codrescu's acerbic tone and outsized personality and capture the best of his oeuvre. Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1946, and immigrated to the United States in 1966. The author of more than thirty-five books, Codrescu has edited the literary magazine Exquisite Corpse, and his provocative commentary is featured regularly on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Codrescu currently resides in Arkansas.

Raconteur, poet, and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu delivers in his inimitable, irreverent style a collection that traverses subjects from aging to consumerism and religion to mass media. Brilliantly funny yet deeply insightful, these poems illuminate Codrescu's acerbic tone and outsized personality and capture the best of his oeuvre. Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania in 1946, and immigrated to the United States in 1966. The author of more than thirty-five books, Codrescu has edited the literary magazine Exquisite Corpse, and his provocative commentary is featured regularly on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Codrescu currently resides in Arkansas.

In its day, Andrei Codrescu's controversial and notorious anti-literary literary magazine Exquisite Corpse was a primary source rebellion, passion and black humor. Calculated to assault, shock, intrigue and reflect our anxious millennium fill the pages of this Corpse reader. A heady invitation to enjoy one's intellectual freedom while it lasts, the volume inscribes central (and edgy) poetic controversies, eulogizes and condemns, realizes and surrealizes, translates and travels across space and time to place us in all those wild worlds visited by the bizarre legion of Corpse correspondents.

In its day, Andrei Codrescu's controversial and notorious anti-literary literary magazine Exquisite Corpse was a primary source rebellion, passion and black humor. Calculated to assault, shock, intrigue and reflect our anxious millennium fill the pages of this Corpse reader. A heady invitation to enjoy one's intellectual freedom while it lasts, the volume inscribes central (and edgy) poetic controversies, eulogizes and condemns, realizes and surrealizes, translates and travels across space and time to place us in all those wild worlds visited by the bizarre legion of Corpse correspondents.