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“In Magus Magnus’s multimodal imagination, we find the confluence of Monty Python’s antic madness, post-punk nihilistic electric irony, and the big-screen comic book supervillain’s reordering of our allegiances of right and wrong, all meeting in the current dystopian political moment—where the joke not only kills, but the killing has become the joke itself. The Killing Joke is an encyclopedic tracing of the origins our malaise; this poem stands as an indictment of the outcome of the misaligned rage we have inherited from the tortured 20th century. Open to any page—you never know who you may encounter in this masterful circus of high art and low culture; whoever it might be, it will be a lesson in how and why we are facing the collapse of empathy and hope in what was once called the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
—John Rigney
"This book is just more proof that comedy can kill. And has.”
—Tig Notaro
“Magnus has written a sweeping long poem about humor and art in a time of pandemic, tyranny, and constant anxiety. His book sews together evocative poetry, personal journals, and political-aesthetic essays hovering around the concept of the “killing joke.” From Monty Python’s skit of listeners keeling over after hearing a joke to the Greek poet Hipponax, whose poetic attacks made his enemies commit suicide, to the post-punk band Killing Joke: his work asks the question, what is the power of humor and its cousin, transgressive art, as a healing and political force? When is derangement a distraction from the machinations of power? The Killing Joke, by constantly asking questions and juxtaposing the strange and frightening images of the 21st century, is a powerful work.”
—Chris Mason
“Magus Magnus’s strange incantatory assemblage piles jokes on horrors, Greek philosophy on sketch comedy and post punk boy bands on contemporary fascist regimes. The result is a manic, digressive and recursive handling of trickster energy, a theoretical essay in poem drag and a serious meditation on our hysterical mortality. The Killing Joke is too much really (the ridiculous horror of all this death rushing towards us, grinning) and in this case, being too much is the exact right amount.”
—Stephanie Barber
Magus Magnus treats chaos as a trick of the light: all for poetry, and “the poetic.” If only! Tomorrow brings, objectively, the Internal Horizon Dawn.
Along with The Killing Joke, his books include The Re-echoes, Idylls for a Bare Stage, Heraclitean Pride, Verb Sap, and Little Puddles. His theater work – focused on Poets Theater and sui generis approaches to the“theatrical poetic” – has been presented in venues across the country. Most recently, in continuation and variation of the archetypal themes of The Killing Joke, Magnus directed Smile: A Clown’s Ascension starring Dennis Leroy Kangalee: co-written with Kangalee, the play is an adaptation of Henry Miller’s story, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder and had its premiere run in the fall of 2025 at three different venues in Carmel, Pacific Grove, and Big Sur, California, the latter at the Henry Miller Memorial Library.
Magus Magnus lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife, Manya. Their grown children (Hero Magnus, daughter, and Gryphon Magnus, son) each actively pursue the arts in free-spirited defiance of the crushingly uncertain era into which they’ve come of age.
Magnus is on Substack at Poetry, Thought, Word Magick
www.magusmagnus.com
“I am syrinx, panpipes, the vocal organs of birds!”
Book Information:
· Paperback: 162 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-535-9
$18
Pre-Orders Welcome
