LEVITATING SCUM, Ryan Skrabalak

This is to order the second edition of this chapbook, an edition of 50.

"I walk out of the corneal vocals of the rain
a sickened spatial harem, dried and alone
as nocturnal carpet pulls its thinkings
over hivering humans, knowing their thoughts
of shells and oil, where the mushrooms grow,
and the putrid things that follow them."

A translation of Book One of Virgil's Georgics, written nearly exclusively to the 1992 Madonna album "Erotica." To question the rigid notions of literary, poetic, and cultural logics of both “successful,” “accurate,” and “translation.” To consider how these notions have historically served dominant ideological interests and imperial interests in the name of “accuracy” and “success.” Perhaps it is through failure, in the murky archive between successes, that we might begin to map alternate logics, logics shaped contra dominant ideology, logics shaped in a type of failure. To deflate the bloat of the pastoral; translating as a way to best illuminate the fluidity of the affective notions of the text, invoking a certain cultivar of heteroglossia--

The author would like to thank Anne Hedeman and Megan Kaminski for their early readership of this work, and also to Travis Bodell for technical assistance.

This is a TREE JUMPS RAINBOW publication. 8.5" x 5.5", 44 pages, stapled. Covers digitally printed on golden yellow French cardstock, copy printed on heavyweight Mohawk text. Edition of 50.