Musee Mechanique by Rodney Koeneke

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 muse 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

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.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 92 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 1-934289-91-4

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