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.

Author: Wayne Koestenbaum
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Nightboat Books
Published: 02/22/2022
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 7.70h x 4.90w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781643621159


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/15/2021

About the Author

Wayne Koestenbaum--poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer--has published 21 books, including Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen's Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). In 2020 he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His literary archive is at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.