UPDATES!

A quick survey of what's in the works right now, and a more detailed update-package on the first fruits (or germs) of the Bouzingo project. Firstly:

• Prepare yourselves for the Exquisite Crypt #2--More Post-Neo Exquisite corpses. This volume is a single, 20-page long exquisite corpse poem, which traveled all over the world to be written. It was begun by Warren Fry and I when we were in the UK to visit the British PNAs & other Dartingtonians; it was vaastly expanded over the course of the week by David Beris Edwards, Eleanor Francis Waterfowl, and Amy Oliver, as well as Rhiannon Chaloner and possibly a few people I"m forgetting. Then a breather of a couple months, and it was pulled out again in New Jersey by Warren, Tomislav Butkovic and I, upon the occasion of a visit by Brad Chriss and Megan Blafas. Upcoming Exquisite Crypts will include Surrealist games etc. played by various PNA communities as well, and will/may focus on NJ Post-Neo, a long-withheld typewritten Exquisite Opus from Columbus PNA, the Lennard family, Crypts made in the workplace, etc.

• The printed version will be officially printed up next month, but the free pdf is available now as part of the new issue of the online journal word for/word, along with other texts and video footage and a delightfully and densely fractal interview by Michael Peters (who put the feature together) of Chriss, Fry, Edwards, and myself.

• I am slowly getting contributors' copies of Synapse out, bear with me.

Otherwise, probably no new publications for a month or two, everything's in the works. But by late summertime look for (possibly):

• The Adventures of Jackalope Caesar (CD). An exquisite corpse story made by the international Post-Neo community back in the early days of facebook, recorded by Lindsann & Fry, and presented with a full soundtrack composed by Chris Lennard.
• The Adventures of Mr. Squibbles, Vol. I (DVD). An underground Post-Neo classic (does such a thing exist?) for nearly a decade, the Mr. Squibbles films finally made officially available sometime this year along with audio commentary tracks and maybe other things.
• Also sometime this year, Deluxe re-issue of the full-length film of Ubu Roi--brought to you by those responsible for Squibbles. On a SINGLE disc, also with audio commentary, production stills, etc.

THE BOUZINGO UPDATE

• Translation has begun! Below I've posted one complete translation and several in-progress ones (more on that later). Anything else is up for grabs, either for those of you who have not yet given it a go or if you want to try another one. This is what is currently being worked on (or completed):

Aloysius Bertrand, The Dead Horse: John M. Bennett
Petrus Borel, Preface to Rhapsodies: Joseph Carter
Petrus Borel, Fate and Fatality: Tomislav Butkovic & Olchar Lindsann
Théophile Gautier, A Verse From Wordsworth: Olchar Lindsann
Gerard de Nerval, Gothic Song: Tomislav Butkovic & Olchar Lindsann
Philothée O'Neddy, Forward to Fire & Flame: Joseph Carter

And Warren Fry is taking on the research for the Devéria brothers, Achille and Eugéne, both primarily visual artists.

I know there are a few people who will work on some texts etc eventually but are in the midst of other things at the moment.

• I've posted two unfinished poems below which I am currently attempting to work into English verse, according to the plan I've already described. The Nerval I am versifying from Tomislav's translation, the Gautier I am working directly from Google Translate, so It's especially murky. This is an exceedingly interesting and maniacally frustrating endeavour, which I am enjoying immensely. However, I have no idea ultimately whether my texts bear any meaningful relationship with the originals. I'm not reading the French, since I can't, but am rather looking at various transliterations, half-transliterations, potential cognates and latinate roots, and scattered fragments of context and inferring what the text ought probably to be (before fitting it into iambs...). I'm thinking of it as Forensic Translation. These attempts are primarily tests, to figure out whether this will be a feasible way of going about things or if I'm helpless to assist in the translation; and if it DOES seem feasible, I need to know how to go about it better, so if you read French PLEASE do not hesitate to let me know how these look, and what kinds of things I seem to be missing.
  

• Research is going pretty swimmingly, all considered. I'm finding more than I have time to read just yet (given that it's all in French), let alone make sense of and blog about; but I'll try to intermittently post regarding people/subjects/themes that have been turning up or resolving themselves as a sift and uncover, as well as posting sources so that the curious can take a look themselves and/or strike out on their own research if they desire. I'll hopefully post the first of these next weekend.

• I have received pseudonymous communications indicating that the elusive Kohoutenberg Institute for Study and Application is interested in undertaking a parallel Bouzingo project, instigating the re-injection of the Bouzingo into the contemporary avant discourse in a way that reflects the 175 years of development in the community since they were active. This will probably take the form of a potentially vaast number of transductions, homeophonic translations, cut-ups and text-collage, google-translate sequences, etc. Through this activity, the texts, names, and recognition of the Bouzingo as such will inevitably seep into the Eternal Network in myriad forms, as such things do, and when the straight-up translations, histories, and bios begin to appear an interesting dialogue should result, the foundations having been laid in such an unusual fashion... More on this project as it develops...

• One personal effect of this project on me has been a re-approaching of closed-form verse, which I'd not written for many years. On my personal blog, I've posted the lecture notes of a lecture I gave in Roanoke, VA last month on the development from poetic recitation to performance poetry during the 19th Century. While I had too little information to discuss the Bouzingo in this context yet, the notes serve at the same time as an indication of the radicalized use or employment of verse (its relation to the body, to memory, and to cognition) that characterized poets of the 19th century avant-garde. I've also posted a closed-form poem in progress, in indication of how I approach writing such texts when I'm not translating them from google.
  

Finally, here are the primary research sources so far for the Bouzingo that have been translated into English. I'll be posting links etc. to more as the weeks go by:

• Starkey, Enid . Petrus Borel, The Lycanthrope: His Life and Times. (1954). Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions. This was my primary (i.e. only) source for the Bouzingo group during the writing of The Ecstatic Nerve. While frustratingly (for the researcher) under-cited and involving the somewhat sloppy scholarship typical of the mid-20th Century (several quotes attributed to the wrong people, vague sweeping generalizations, failure to translate quotations, etc), overall a good read and a pretty facinating book; Starkey is a staunch partisan of Borel (and O'Neddy) and this book is her successful bid not only to ressurect Borel himself, but to give a good sense of the cultural context in which the group worked. Out of print for nearly 50 years, but you can still get some used copies on Amazon for $10-15 (I've got it linked).

• Gautier, Théophile & Sumichrast, F.C., trans. A History of Romanticism: The Progress of French Poetry Since 1830. (1908). New York: George D. Sproul. First published in 1874, this is a history of French Romanticism by one of the Bouzingo, about 35 years after the group dissolved. It hasn't been translated or annotated in over a century, but fortunately you can get a facsimile edition cheaply on Amazon or read it from a computer screen. I've just started it and it is a ROLICKING good time. Highly recommended--as engaging, generous, down to earth, and as energizing as Hans Richter's history of Dada.

• Houssaye, Arséne & Knepler, Henry. (1970). Man About Paris: The Confessions of Arséne Houssaye. New York: William Morrow & Co. I've just begun this one too; Houssaye was a member of the Bohême du Doyenné group that included many of the Bouzingo after that group folded: Gautier, Nanteuil, Nerval, MacKeat, etc and there's a fair amount of relevant information and description, plus a good deal of contextualizing material. It's edited down from a few thousand pages to 350, so a whole lot's missing, particularly stuff relating to 'forgotten nobodies' like those we are so interested in... Again, it's been out of print for decades, but amazon has used copies for $10-20.