Review of "we dance the ghost, Emma" by Aad de Gids

Huge thanks to Aad de Gids for this awesome review. The book is on sale here, at this link & for some reason is selling pretty well.Very pleased by this review. 

This thing obviously did not work out as a relationship, but the books turned out fine which is the main thing.

REVIEW OF DAVID C. MCLEAN'S 'WE DANCE THE GHOST EMMA'

David C McLean has made a big U-turn in his poetry and text. the above mentined book is an aubade to love, unmistakably, gloriously, unapologetic. yet as I suspected the old McLean hasn't disappeared, this all then not to denunciate the truly love that is exposed and splattered, troubadoured and medievalized, made spikey and modern in this also, relentless book. to not double the extravagant joyous and overt sex scenes (it felt as if I was fucking Emma) I searched not for the more scenic, pastoral, but the eversomuch vile and knifing [(n)ontology] (philosophical theory, accreditation on 'being', 'existing' and its grounds or groundlessness). and I found it. this doesn't mean David didn't made a huge U-haul. for him being now is absolved in loving Emma and I can clearly remember writing such texts to my beloved Linwood. but I never also left my bleak and sharp, toothed in the night, exposés, also, like David, in the love texts. 'here this eternal burns 'here this eternal our fire, Emma, my wild love savage & answers, it kindles here, this flame you gave me; i need you beauty & hands to hold me innocent your fingers, they are love enough, they are perfect your drug, their addictive existing'(1)

if this is 'ontology', the philosophical theory of that we are there, it is in fire and love. there is tight connectedness, addictive and quasitoxic. but such is love. I used to say: 'shoot me, love me'. the ground is trembling. 'terra motata'. the fire of the earth is the visceral fire of fever. we see with druggy eyes all glowing. there is the other person whom to love so intensely redefines us. could David first be called a nihilist, an agnost (there is nothing to get worked up on; one can not feel any deity or god). a solipsist (the world radiates from this person, me, and I witness her in my writings). then now there is definitely the David who cares, loves, seeks his loved woman. that this is the primal element that informs his philosophic and poetic work is splendid. and then I discovered the 'old David' in the words. 'your eyes are an intensity, a madness, they put fever in me, they glow a meaning deep into gut & throbbing cock, where dreams grow heaven erect here, we touch, memory & flesh, sex a bright light night[,]'(2) this is still the celebrative tone which demands quite the acclimatization for those who still vividly remember the David of 'another five', 'still three', all vitriolic poems as ultraprecise as denouncing and tearing down the statues. 'here is nothing lacking, the intent content alive at night, resurrection of the sexed flesh - it is defiance its rebellion sex, it defies entropy, time, & death, straddling me you your magnificent freedom, the burning spark at the lustful heart of [being]'(2)

we read here loads of words Davidian: 'entropy, time, death, rebellion, defiance'. we shall see Davids new style drives on two tracks. there is no such thing as to "extrahate" the old David from this new book, this happy life-event, this real time great experience. if you're a writer you're subject to scrutinization (David could perfectly handle that), micro-editing, other wrongdoings. with such glorious radiant book the criticasters are somewhat shun away. you're stupid with critique at what really happens and really is magnificent to be happening on a writer, nurse, hooker, vice-president, transitoperator. love has the power to break in in real life: 'here it seems forever, today is thaw boring & you are in our heart always, Emma, whatever the weather is, you crawl into my breast & your eyes burning through me their radiance is love,['](3) David sometimes seems to reminisce on the 'older times' and clearly sees a division.

this book really makes the 180° and there ain't not many able to do that. but when writing your book is driven. love is a powerful 'motor'. and yet staying is a 'deadpan narrator' who takes care of this continuity of events far away from 'Barbieland' and argumentative incongruencies (there also far away from): 'it was nightmare then, i lived a dead world where monsters moved, it was gray rubble & smoke over a battlefield, there would be no love for centuries, the deadpan narrator said, the land itself was the very devil,(4) the world perhaps is lesser armored, but we have learned that that isn't the case. when in love you have your pink glasses on. then may be the land is unchanged, there is an interventionism afflicting all. we're Liberace eeeeh liberated, we're invited to share. sometimes we see tighter correlations between the grim and crass and the lovehaze spurring us to be invisible and invincible. there are two people feeling safe and one within and without each other. there is a mutual reciprocity. mental distortions and fears, problems with the poise and presence, these will melt as 'love' is also a mental fluidization. 'your name my sad song, my mantra, my madness, we shall fuck the death out of us, lover, because i was yours & you were mine before words came their arrogance'(6) just this connection is more than two.

there is a cozy theory of metalinguistics. 'before words came their arrogance'. I like it. there is a world without words. words disfigure the world. if you're feeling in Love then especially words seem obsolete and at once, accurate to describe these haute haute feelings. both solidify their evidence, existence and immaterial essence. 'we shall touch like ghosts thrown back in the flesh their heaven then, reflecting us evident. // brutal is your beauty, dreams to believe freedom happens. it is madness that answers us, love'(7) this is simply beautiful: ''we shall touch like ghosts thrown back // in the flesh their heaven then, // reflecting us evident. " 'in the flesh', incorporation, embodiment, the old knowing of the body. veda. we're ourselves swarms and nanoparticles connected with the other. the Higgs Boson rests, lays dormant in her bust. these are feminine prerogatives. the immaterial connects with the material: ''we shall touch like ghosts thrown back // in the flesh their heaven then,", as we're now in a spiritual world as spiritual in the rate as it is material. material like birch bark and lichens. Lyotard, Virilio, John Cage and Merce Cunningham always knew dance embodied movement, energy, love, theatricalics, disappearing or [swilling] music. even Cage's vanished music '3:22' where the pianist/e sits for so long just behind the piano or Nam June Paik walks through Tokyo with the violin behind him on a rope. 'To understand, to be intelligent, is not our overriding passion. We hope rather to be set in motion. Consequently our passion would sooner be the dance, as Nietzsche wanted and as Cage and Cunningham want. (Lyotard)'(5) it is also remarkable the logicist David has luckily discovered the poststructuralists. there is a Hauch also of postneoDadaism. they speak towards such mental states. the avant garde music of Eno Ono Fripp Robert Wyatt Soft Machine Nina Simone perhaps the dance of Ohno: Butoh, expresses these domains of erraticism, disdirectional dissipation, short: Love's paths. 'Climate, climate is not southern, a little glass, a bright winter, a strange supper an elastic tumbler, all this shows that the back is furnished and red which is red is a dark color. An example of this is fifteen years and a separation of regret.' (Gertrude Stein)(9)

Gertrude has always spoken in more registries than one. if we now seek, not trying to ambush, Davids two tracks, we see love suffusing the text while we have the deadpan narrator to produce continuity (which is always artificial) for great reading. now there are still bone yards but they're not so much the final bus stops of an Endworld but just part of a world not devoid of love. 'our bones shall dance together their longing, their tolerant intolerance, mad their passion they are waiting, waiting, Emma, the red we paint them with, our hopeful bones await their friends, their playmates'(11) what I loved here was 'their playmates' in the Hugh Hefner sense of the word (what a prick). it is the vaudeville of dance, it are the freak shows down the road, and the bones are real, structuralist human architectonics. so we see the two tracks intermingle, the one derivative of the other, this staunch twosome making a stylistic and clear point. 'so dance the ghost for me, Emma, & make this flesh live in me again, my sacrifice to you, this spoiled meat that even devils rejected, dance the ghost with me, Emma, love us & set us free'(107) here we have the testimony one is able to change towards the love of another and once' own love, reciprocal a 'building' that changes both. David culls these mechanistics, fluidizations, even more: 'there is only one of us this is the intense, Emma, animal instinctual, but love enough, there is only one of us, only this one you'(27) so substantial is this change that there is growth inwards, there is love, there is communal approach, here each solipsism is removed. we're not alone anymore and even microembodied in the other. far from his old poetry and yet the tone has remained the same: ruthless, following this thread ad infinitum. perhaps we can say there is a lot of intensity in David and hey, we share the same profiling with the 'borderline personality' (disorder).

that is actually an overflow on emotions. then this also has to be the similarity in this book of love and his preceding publications. think a cooking cauldron with lava and the expression of it. sometimes you see those people who are poor in senses, feelings, emotions. they are hyperrational. as how David outreaches to his beloved, we're far from this reason- and causality-intoxicated universe. 'there is eternity, Emma, my goddess, & when we touch i shall enact for you exactly what you recite to me, ordered through your eyes, whatever you ask of me, of my body that lives for you, & we can enact a submission that never happens, as if that really mattered,'(108) this domain of logicist-argumentative-causalistic beings does indeed demand 'submission'. it is science porn. the French poststructuralists and earlier, the Frankfurter Schule or Critical Theory, knew how to deal with that. and 'Love' also spills over the boundaries of 'reasonable thinking'. if it is a kind of madness then that is an exhaustive definition. '& you have always understood this love, my madness burning in the snow, i have needed you eternity, Emma, & have you always known this, never told?'(12) in a timeless domain it is if we fly. we're really inside a new parameter. a new fluidum instead of linear listing of 'White Man's Achievements'. we're so over that. look, what I am doing here is talk David's citations towards each other. but it isn't so an artificial addendum. David has gone through a life altering event. illustrated also with restless traveling between persons and continents. we can be happy to have experienced that and, especially, love. in such a Möbius spiral of events and tiredness and fulfilledness, the time disappears. 'The question is this, is it possible to suggest more to replace that thing. This question and this perfect denial does make the time change all the time. (Gertrude Stein)'(14) love = being. an ontology, if one wants. we're human and human is beast. it is an honor to be animal. animalistic reflexes has proven to be resistant and submissive to aeons of fire, violence, complacent mountain valleys, etc. 'our animal freedom. here we bear blood enough to love us, Emma, here we become the beast that becomes its burden, its love, touch us eternal where love is enough for being, demons & beast & love a meaning, you, Emma my beast i believe in'(106)

in the following cited passus we find 'the old McLean' back, as seamlessly as we would like. but this is the bias of analysis: one could with the same validity say the opposite: now there is a new McLean, shards of his tongue appear but the topic has shifted radically. but let me have the joy of, still present, this poemlet as if out of a series of 'another five' and 'the next two'. 'dead children wait their eternity outside the ruins of intolerant hospitals & the priest sleeps shameless his arrogant, an incoherent answer'(15) we can conclude this luxe review of David McLean's book 'We dance the ghost Emma' with these at once deftly and discryptic expressed haul of love towards Emma with 'the dance' as regulative mode: 'dance me sanity drowning in this happy madness with everything living in us, love & touching us like memory heaven was & all the dead men dancing,'(17) 'poems are miserable cunts & they can fuck off. soon baby girl lies close to me & dull discourse stops 'words is black happy water, & all we wanted was one future you'(30).


 

Five latest books. Boycott Amazon by the way.

As everybody knows, Amazon are scumbags who do not allow unionization & treat their workers really shabbily. I don't want scabs reading my work, but I shall leave the Amazon links as they are, while I post here the five links to Lulu for the last ones. Later I shall post the Barnes & Nobles links when these are back in distribution. I feel that it is way better to get them from Lulu direct, or B&N.

Here the three about Emma.

pig correspondence at Lulu.

pig correspondence is a collection of poems that deal with McLean's relationship with time & temporality, his nihilistic axiology, moral issues, & a general critique of western values; all of these things seen through the lens of his feelings for Emma, the love of his life. The book was written before McLean took leave of his senses, left her & Sweden in 2017 for a brief interruption in the USA, which is the devil, at page 116. The last few poems were written very recently & represent both resurrection & a return to where one belongs, to Sweden his home, & the home of his biological family & of his Emma, & also a realization that, with her in his life, he & his life were better, & the insane faceless goddess was with them.

 ghosts go home at Lulu.

ghosts go home is David C. McLean's second book about his distaste for temporality, the insane goddess who refuses prayers, & his great love for Emma. There is more of a BDSM theme to this book, along with age play, pop culture references, less philosophy than usual, more sex. Inspiration, apart from Emma, is drawn from Roky Erickson, de Chirico, the Sisters of Mercy, Joakim Thåström, Gertrude Stein, phenomenology, & spanking. 

McLean himself manages to just avoid pornography, although the lady for whom it was written states "The poems are becoming pure deviant pornography. Let it happen."

we dance the ghost, Emma at Lulu.

This is the third book in David C. McLean's first trilogy of poems for Emma. McLean worships Emma, & regards her as his goddess & muse. He has never written better, & he is pretty sure that she is the best muse ever. One can see how, during the writing of this book, McLean suffered a form of nervous breakdown, but that the strength of his feelings for Emma pulled him back together, reassembled his membra disjecta. Love did that. Love heals. Additional themes, as so often, are posthumanism, antinatalism, animals, Lyotard & libidinal economy, & love always, sex & love. The title is, obviously enough, inspired by a song by the Sisters of Mercy. This book is published by POSTHUMAN POETRY & PROSE.

Here is my anti-novel, divinity extractor fan at Lulu.

This is a novel that became an anti-novel. It quotes extensively from Lyotard, Artaud, Nietzsche, & Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy". It explores the posthuman, antinatalism, overpopulation, & ecology. It is primarily an attempt by the author to identify his love for his muse, Emma, in the form of a bizarre prose poem that grew into a bizarre novel. Sacher-Masoch & St. Augustine of Hippo are sampled in & cited, with footnotes & everything. Deleuze & Guattari with their becoming-animal are featured as well, at some length.

& here an extended reissue of an older chapbook, this is called too little beast - too much human ii.

too little beast: too much human ii is David C. McLean's expansion & revision of his chapbook from Black Editions Press, too much human. The manifesto in the introduction has been rewritten to extend it from antinatalism to also include posthumanism. This extension was provoked by his growing dislike for humans & their goddam ideology, & his worship of another non-human, the love of his life, the wonderful Emma, McLean's brilliant muse & inspiration. This revision constitutes what is probably the last poetry book by McLean that will not be part of the poems for Emma series.

Anyway, solidarity with the unions, you little shits, no Amazon please. Not just for that one week, but do not use large multinationals if you can avoid it; use your local mom & pop store, or buy things direct from Lulu or the publishers wherever possible.

If you have to use Amazon, check my author page. None of these five is there now, but they will be there in a few weeks at most.

Here is a link to all the books at Lulu, at the spotlight for Posthuman Poetry & Prose.

"too little beast" out now

Here is a third book. This is at Lulu at this link now.

Blurb here, cover follows.

too little beast: too much human ii is David C. McLean's expansion & revision of his chapbook from Black Editions Press , too much human. The manifesto in the introduction has been rewritten to extend it from antinatalism to also include posthumanism.

This extension was provoked by his growing dislike for humans & their goddam ideology, & his worship of another non-human, the love of his life, the wonderful Emma, McLean's brilliant muse & inspiration.

This revision constitutes what is probably the last poetry book by McLean that will not be part of the "poems for Emma" series.

 

 

 

New novel out now

At a loose end. but very motivated to produce work for the greater honor of the muse, actually for me myself too, obviously, here is my anti-novel on Lulu.

Blurb follows

This is a novel that became an anti-novel. It quotes extensively from Lyotard, Artaud, Nietzsche, & Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy". It explores the posthuman, antinatalism, overpopulation, & ecology. It is primarily an attempt by the author to identify the theoretical underpinnings, as it were, of his love for his muse, Emma, in the form of a bizarre prose poem that grew into a bizarre novel. Sacher-Masoch & St. Augustine of Hippo are sampled in & cited, with footnotes & everything. Deleuze & Guattari with their becoming-animal are featured as well, at some length.

& here the cover. Bear in mind that the graphic arts are not my area of expertise. It's the best I could come up with.

I am not good at art

The graphic & plastic arts are a fucking mystery to me. But I wanted this book about my muse to have some sort of cover, so I did this. Here the book is anyway.

OK, I will never make a living as a cover designer.

Blurb then cover:

This is the third book in David C. McLean's first trilogy of poems for Emma. McLean worships Emma, & regards her as his goddess & muse. He has never written better, & he is pretty sure that she is the best muse ever. One can see how, during the writing of this book, McLean suffered a form of nervous breakdown, but that the strength of his feelings for Emma pulled him back together, reassembled his membra disjecta. Love did that. Love heals. Additional themes, as so often, are posthumanism, antinatalism, animals, Lyotard & libidinal economy, & love always, sex & love. The title is, obviously enough, inspired by a song by the Sisters of Mercy. This book is published by POSTHUMAN POETRY & PROSE.

 

"we dance the ghost, Emma" hits Lulu

So, we dance the ghost, Emma, the last book in the first of three planned trilogies is out.

Very plain cover, very plain blurb. Here she be at Lulu. In a while it will no doubt pop up on Amazon too.

EDIT: I am not good at art but I threw this thing together

Here is the announcement at Posthuman Poetry & Prose.  Facebook won't let me share that.

Blurb here

This is the third book in David C. McLean's first trilogy of poems for Emma. McLean worships Emma, & regards her as his goddess & muse. He has never written better, & he is pretty sure that she is the best muse ever. One can see how, during the writing of this book, McLean suffered a form of nervous breakdown, but that the strength of his feelings for Emma pulled him back together, reassembled his membra disjecta. Love did that. Love heals. Additional themes, as so often, are posthumanism, antinatalism, animals, Lyotard & libidinal economy, & love always, sex & love. The title is, obviously enough, inspired by a song by the Sisters of Mercy. This book is published by POSTHUMAN POETRY & PROSE

 

New Micropress - what the world needs

So, I shall in future do these things myself from Posthuman Poetry & Prose.

Covers will be very fucking plain in the future, I'm afraid. I am lazy in that respect.  

another sample from "we dance the ghost"

Here's a second & last sample from the third part of the poems for Emma trilogy, we dance the ghost, Emma. This is the last poem in the book, &, as with the other sample, it may not be the best thing I have written but seemed like a good idea at thw time.

Anyway, I slept a couple of hours tonight then woke at midnight to finish the final edit of this one, & it is done, finished, & published now by me at Posthuman Poetry & Prose.

Here it is at Lulu. It will be never be on Amazon.

sample from "we dance the ghost"

I often post samples from forthcoming collections. This is from we dance the ghost, Emma, from Posthuman Poetry & Prose. This is probably not even close to being my best work or the best in the book, but it was the first I noticed.

& now here it is at Lulu. Trilogy complete.