Benjamin Decasseres

Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was one of America's most unruly men of letters-a journalist-polemicist-poet who moved with equal audacity through satire, aphorism, and metaphysics. A contemporary of the avant-garde and the mass press alike, he helped usher Nosferatu to its first U.S. release and, with theatrical bravado, was filmed taking the first legal drink after Prohibition. His poetry is where the full voltage lives: hymns of revolt and litanies of negation that fuse Symbolist decadence, American irreverence, and Nietzschean individualism. In these pages DeCasseres casts himself among mythic masks-Satan, Vulcan, the Anarch-only to puncture every pose with irony. This revised and expanded second edition triples the uncollected work from the first edition and restores a neglected American voice to its proper amplitude. It adds a new index of 1,000+ entries, substantially expanded paratexts, and poems translated during the author's lifetime (French, Romanian), alongside his previously published works: The Shadow-Eater, Anathema Litanies of Negation, and Black Suns.

The Philistine was a spearhead of the Arts & Crafts movement in America. This magazine published the works of its editor Elbert Hubbard as well as Stephen Crane, Benjamin DeCasseres and others. W. W. Denslow, illustrator for The Wizard of Oz, was a regular contributor and designed the sea-horse mascot that graced the front covers. Publisher Hubbard also founded the Roycroft movement, and founded a working community of craftsman in East Aurora, NY that lives to this day. The journal was published from 1895 until Hubbard's death in 1915 aboard the RMS Lusitania. Bruce A. White's The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest is a unique chronicle of this American journal and its fascinating publisher. Previously published in limited quantities by an academic press, this new and expanded popular edition brings a fascinating history to a wider audience. Bruce A. White yanked out his New England roots in 1978 and moved to Maryland to start teaching at Gallaudet University. He has retired to coastal Delaware, where he volunteers for service organizations, rides bikes and kayaks, and enjoys simple pleasures with his beloved Barbara.

Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was an Ironist, Critic, Poet, Epigrammist, Polemicist, God. He announced his candidacy for mayor of New York as a "Cubist Candidate" in 1913, vowing to "legalize human frailties," among other fine ideas. He was a comrade of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, James Huneker, George Sterling, Don Marquis and is a distant relative of Spinoza. His writing was published in a wide range of periodicals from Benjamin Tucker's radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life. He could be found in the pages of the New York Times, among other newspapers, and even on the radio. This is a collection of his writing solely focused on New York, but mostly about booze.Peggy Nadramia was born in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, was the editor of the award-winning horror publication GRUE Magazine, is one of the mixologists behind Cocktail Vultures, and also the current High Priestess of the Church of Satan.

Fantasia Impromptu & FINIS constitute Benjamin DeCasseres' (1873-1945) most private writing, but even then, they were intended for publication and posterity. The first is a diary-like collection of notes and reminiscences began in December 1925. The latter was professed to be "a summation of all my books, of my lifelong beliefs." Fantasia Impromptu was released as a series of booklets, six in total, that constitute his "intellectual, emotional and spiritual autobiography." They are filled with ruminations on daily life, aphorisms, esotericisms, and appeals to future readers. It is appropriately dedicated to: "The Thinkers, Poets, Satirists, Individualists, Dare-Devils, Egoists, Satanists and Godolepts of Posterity."FINIS is his final work, appropriately enough, and consists of three essays and a "hymn," all previously unpublished. The one focus of all of these pieces is Oblivion. Though he states in his introduction is was not necessarily meant to be his last work, he died before it was published, and his wife Bio prepared an introduction and included a poem of dedication. FINIS was released as a booklet the year of his death and has never been reprinted before.

A long-form poem of negation and egoism, of scorn and cynical delight. Included is a URL for a free full audiobook read by Kevin I. Slaughter. Benjamin DeCasseres (is) the Pontius Pilate of America. -H.L. Mencken A passionate, erratic poet... strives to shake the foundation of the world. -The Saturday Review of Literature He occupies a niche that is all his own and asks space to stand for no other man . -The Nation DeCasseres is the most fiery and independent writer that I know of. -Remy de Gourmont There is but one Benjamin DeCasseres. And he is perhaps the one living wonder of the literary world. It is fortunate that such an one must be born, that he cannot be made; especially that he cannot be imitated, for if every one wrote like DeCasseres readers would go mad. That he can keep in any semblance of thought-order such whirls of words is something to marvel at. Yet to read him once, twice, is to experience the greatest mental exhilaration. -New York Times