AUTHOR NOTE ON MUSEE MECHANIQUE
Poems written while working at the Musee Mechanique, a collection
of antique arcade games on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s
Wharf. Fashioned in part with those rhythms in mind, and partly
with the mechanical aid of Internet search engines. Includes the
serial poem “On the Clamways.”
RODNEY KOENEKE is the author of Rouge State (Pavement
Saw, 2003) and a work of history on I.A. Richards in China. He
lives in San Francisco with his wife and son, where he works in
publishing and serves on the board at Small Press Traffic.
Dig into your linty pockets for a quarter
and drop it in the slot. The waxy fake gypsy whirrs, moves its
eyeballs, drops its jaw, and speaks—not some ambiguous truism
or routine divination, but autonomous megamodules of bizarre &
(bizarrely) joyful social critique! Winsome and piquant, these
poems, like improvised apricots, are capacious enough to embrace
gaudy regalia, sky hooks, Flip Wilson, Jackson Mac Low, wasabi,
pizza, evil dummies, and kitties. Based explicitly on the egg-laying
structures of cicadas with grooved ovipositors, the poems lay
bare their devices in the special way that only a Wetumpkan high
on yumyumcha can pull off. Koeneke, like an oracle asquat his
own fissure, has written a book that is unconscionably nifty-gallifty.
Put simply, it’s CLAM CHOWDER FOR THE SOUL. --
Nada Gordon
Rodney Koeneke's quick-paced, hilarious, often vulgar juxtapositions
are rude to understanding but courteous as a calling card to anyone
who cares about the life of language. Assembled with delight,
affection, and a connoisseur's ear for the latent pleasures of
babble, Musee Mechanique is a joyous record of the words in our
head, c. 2006. I love this book. -- Benjamin Friedlander
Authentic anti-epic switch-hits as comic saga, a new model for
hybrid experiment and spiraling craft. Lyrically buoyant.
-- Jack Kimball
Rodney Koeneke’s second book, Musee Mechanique, throws
us smack dab in the middle of American consumerism—to forget
how the product is made. The work shows us how it is now, with
the nostalgia of the musèe oddified by idiosyncratic clutter
from Toothy the Tooth to Asteroids. Tell yourself the kaleidoscope
is real—we are not being naturalized by pedestrian thoroughfares,
rather by the dreamy transmissions of “ecriture for the
flaneur/in search for sexy subforms on the Proust list.”
Just try to stick your penny into the penetralia of these poems:
“Base Mood, icky. Kitty Mood, BOOM BOOM.” -- Cynthia
Sailers
Product Information: Poetry
