Books
Zarathustra Speaks Again
Jimmy Raskin’s The Prologue, The Poltergeist & The Hollow Tree... (Foundation 2021, October 2004, www.2021.org)
Based upon the prologue of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, Jimmy Raskin’s lifework delves into the question of poet and philosopher with insane zeal. While Raskin’s legendary performances—ten years since the first at Cooper Union’s Great Hall—left many under the impression that Raskin’s monumental task could never be distilled into a book, Foundation 2021 has risen to the occasion. The release of The Prologue, The Poltergeist & The Hollow Tree… will be coupled with an exhibition at the foundation’s gallery space, located in the National Arts Club. This edition of Raskin’s project is exclusive to The Brooklyn Rail.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
“Herewith the Prologue:”
By Aditi MachadoNOV 2020 | Poetry
Aditi Machado’s Emporium (Nightboat, 2020) received the James Laughlin Award for a second book of poetry. Her other works include the poetry collection Some Beheadings, a translation of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia, and an essay pamphlet called The End.
Sounding the Idols
By W. J. T. MitchellDEC 21-JAN 22 | Editor's Message
Idolatry and iconoclasm are evil twins. They need each other, feed on each other. The idol is said to demand human sacrifice. The iconoclast responds by sacrificing idolaters, or (more likely) exterminating them without the dignity of sacrifice. See Exodus 32, in which Moses melts down the Golden Calf, forces the idolatrous Israelites to drink it, and massacres half his people. When Poussin paints this scene, he cannot help himself. As a painter, he must glorify the Calf and its maker, and shroud the furious Moses in darkness. Why does Aaron, the artist who made the idol, get away scot-free? Was Milton a true poet, and of the Devil’s Party?
Oh, Say Can you Sing?
By Hannah B HigginsDEC 21-JAN 22 | Critics Page
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about idols as something to sound: We imagine the hollow, golden calf that horrified Moses as full of air, a mere bloviator on behalf of the Canaanite fertility god, Baal. But Nietzsche pushes the reader to go further, to listen to the idol’s “famous hollow sound” as someone with “ears behind his ears,” which invitation theorizes sound about sound. WJT Mitchell theorizes metapictures along similar lines; they consist of “a picture in which the image of another picture appears” and which “may function as a foundational metaphor or analogy for an entire discourse.”
four
By Steve LevineDEC 21-JAN 22 | Poetry
Steve Levine is a poet and a navigator of the space-time continuum, where he has roamed since 1953. His writing is primarily collected in A Blue Tongue, Three Numbers, and Pure Notations (The Toothpaste Press) and The Cycles of Heaven and To and For (Coffee House Press), as well as various magazines. Recently, Levine has been thinking about the innate human desire to impose order on chaos, something he has only ever been able to achieve in a poem.
