Wayne Koestenbaum Book order

The images in Bill Jacobson’s when is a place suggest risks and uncertainties. They question both the nature of perception and our existential place in the world, themes explored throughout his five decades of making photographs. Jacobson’s use of a defocused lens, bleached out skies, and an otherwise curious tonal range challenge boundaries of traditional photographic practice. Diffuse horizon lines dramatically bisect distant landscapes, the subtle curves of vague human bodies, and unknown spaces suggestive of architecture play prominent intertwining roles. Jacobson’s original large-scale prints are analog silver gelatin, printed by him in a traditional black and white darkroom. Created between 2018 and 2020, the images were made in Virginia, the south of France, upstate New York, and a studio in New York City.

The chromatic, linguistically playful, erotic conclusion to Wayne Koestenbaum’s acclaimed trance poem trilogy.Ultramarine distills gleanings from four years of Koestenbaum’s trance notebooks (2015-2019) into a series of tightly-sewn collage-poems, filled with desiring bodies, cultural touchstones, and salty memories. Beyond Proust’s madeleine we head toward a “deli” version of utopia, crafted from hamantaschen, cupcake, and cucumber. Interludes in Rome, Paris, and Cologne permit spells of fevered play with Italian, French, and German. Painting and its processes bring bright colors to the surface, as if the poet were trying to figure out anew the nature of blue, pink, orange. Ultramarine reaches across memory, back to Europe, beyond the literal world into dream-habitats conjured through language’s occult structures.

This collection features a blend of whimsical and surreal narratives, showcasing Wayne Koestenbaum's unique storytelling style. The fables are characterized by their baroque language and ribald humor, while also exploring themes of heartbreak. Each story invites readers into a vibrant world where the absurd meets the poignant, offering a diverse range of emotional experiences.

Exploring a diverse range of topics such as art, dreams, and translation, this collection features intimate reflections and creative "assignments" that promote pleasure and attentiveness. Wayne Koestenbaum's unique perspective invites readers to engage in playful making, showcasing his extraordinary intellect and mischievous spirit.

A new edition of a “dazzlingly seductive” fever dream written in “brilliant poetic vernacular” (Bookforum) by a beloved poet and cultural critic, now with an introduction by Rachel Kushner. For five years, concert pianist Theo Mangrove has been living at his family’s home in East Kill, New York, recovering from a nervous breakdown that derailed his career, and attempting to relieve his relentless polysexual appetite in the company of male hustlers, random strangers, music students, his aunt, and occasionally his wife. As he prepares for a comeback recital in Aigues-Mortes, a walled medieval town in southern France, he becomes obsessed with the idea that the Italian circus star Moira Orfei must join him there to perform alongside him. Extravagantly (and tragicomically) describing his hallucinatory plans in a series of twenty-five notebooks, he assembles an incantatory meditation on performance, failure, fame, decay, and delusion. "If Debussy and Robert Walser had collaborated on an opera, it would sound like this. --John Ashbery

Part two of an autobiographical trance trilogy: intimate experiments in queer documentary and improvisatory poetics

"A new book of essays by the cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen's Throat and Jackie Under My Skin"--

Exploring themes of memory and culture, this collection of new poems presents a unique "nude" poetics. It features scapegoated Adonises encapsulated in aphoristic snippets, blending personal reflection with broader cultural commentary. The work invites readers to reconsider familiar narratives through a fresh, fragmented lens, offering a thought-provoking experience.

Wayne Koestenbaum considers the meaning of humiliation in this eloquent work of cultural critique and personal reflection. The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with scarlet-letter moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. In these moments we not only witness the reversibility of “success,” of prominence, but also come to visceral terms with our own vulnerable selves. We can’t stop watching the scene of shame, identifying with it and absorbing its nearness, and relishing our imagined immunity from its stain, even as we acknowledge the universal, embarrassing predicament of living in our own bodies. With an unusual, disarming blend of autobiography and cultural commentary, noted poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum takes us through a spectrum of mortifying circumstances—in history, literature, art, current events, music, film, and his own life. His generous disclosures and brilliant observations go beyond prurience to create a poetics of abasement. Inventive, poignant, erudite, and playful, Humiliation plunges into one of the most disquieting of human experiences, with reflections at once emboldening and humane.