Second edition of "Kali breathes this fire"

I have today released a second edition of Kali breathes this fire. Because I constantly write about the Mahavidyas & other forms of Dark Mother I have needed to add a little to the introduction. I do not deny that I caught a couple of typos too. I shall certainly produce further revisions, but this is the current one. The main difference is that I have added much more about the incommensurability of intensity & the shortcomings of language, as well as a few pages with extensive references about spiritual narcissism. There's also some discussion of my use of the term "patriarchy", elucidated by reference to Juliet Flower MacCannell, & I can totally recommend her Regime of the Brother.

My book is available here at Lulu, & soon be available on Amazon, since I have sorted out what the issue was there. 

EDIT: This book is now approved for Amazon 7 will be there shortly. Currently the older version (232 pages) is on sale there, but when it's listed as slightly longer (& £12.99) it will be the new one.  It looks like the book is available now at 239 pages but the price is still £13.75 & the back cover looks like the old one, though "look inside" gives the new TOC. I would assume that the new book is what you will get. The price should update soon.

The book about Lilītu & Lamaštû & the book about Tara are both being written right now & I trust that they will be pleasing to Maa.

"Lalita drinks too much" on Amazon

 Lalita drinks too much hits Amazon (soon) at this link or at this one for US Amazon.

Here it is at Lulu.

Samples posted in this post.

Cover & blurb below.

This book continues McLean's series about Kali Maa & the Mahavidyas & is about Lalita or Shodashi, the third Mahavidya.

The poems are preceded by a lengthy & controversial introduction, where McLean discusses goddess; the selective Nietzschean eternal return as a template for reincarnation; Kali & temporality; the imaginary ego; spirituality & narcissism; the narcissistic nature of the guru phenomenon; intensity & incommensurability; the patriarchy & fratriarchy; & the colonialism to which the tribal peoples in India are subjected.

The cover image is the Sri Yantra.

Four samples from "Lalita drinks too much"

As usual I post here a few poems as samples from the latest. Here it is at Lulu. Amazon link coming later.

"Lalita drinks too much"

The latest in the Mahavidya books is now available, a little more controversial than usual. The Divine Mother wants this one out now, & I am starting a new one about Tara. The order in which these books are appearing is fairly arbitrary. In this book, I discuss Deleuze, Lacan, Nietzsche, colonialism, & spiritual narcissism, & I swear as little as possible while so doing.

The book is on sale here at this link, it is coming on Amazon soon, & the cover & blurb follow.

This book continues McLean's series about Kali Maa & the Mahavidyas & is about Lalita or Shodashi, the third Mahavidya.

The poems are preceded by a lengthy & controversial introduction, where McLean discusses goddess; the selective Nietzschean eternal return as a template for reincarnation; Kali & temporality; the imaginary ego; spirituality & narcissism; the narcissistic nature of the guru phenomenon; intensity & incommensurability; the patriarchy & fratriarchy; & the colonialism to which the tribal peoples in India are subjected.

The cover image is the Sri Yantra.

 

 

"Alien Songs" by Tanya Rakh & Ndotono Waweru

Delighted to announce the arrival of a book of duets by Tanya Rakh & Ndotono Waweru from Posthuman Poetry & Prose. The poems in Alien Songs, on sale here, & on sale here at Amazon, are of the posthuman diaspora that learns to survive beyond identity. Only the divergent returns. Only what is "alien", in the sense of estranged from humanist traditions, only what is Dionysian individuation - not the I, the self, & their identity - will be validated by the posthuman naissance that celebrates the chaos of the eternal return, where the subject is the Other, & alienated, in principle, from its "self" by the Kantian "Cogito for a dissolved Self: the Self of 'I think' includ[ing] in its essence a receptivity of intuition in relation to which I is already an other." (Deleuze). The chaosmos goddess creates is anarchic; identities are weak, they do not return. 

& poetry just is a nostalgia for presence, for simple self-identity, for all the substantial constructs, or so Derrida tells us. But poetry needs to be the inarticulate cry of intensity, the indeterminate, that which is not concealed behind a name or a face  but dances its passion in the flame & naked. Poetry needs to capture this, per impossibile - it might scream to that which throbs an instant in the meat & cannot be measured against anything. Otherwise things play real when you look at them & words grow into unreliable maps & forget what stars there are.

Though I publish others on an occasional basis, Tanya is basically the other half of posthuman poetry, & when I return to goddess it is my hope that she will take it over. It is a privilege to publish all of her previous & forthcoming work, & a delight to see how seamless this collaboration with Ndotono is.

Tanya & Ndotono wrote this intro

Alien Songs is a fully collaborative collection of duets in verse. These duets each stand alone as individual pieces, but also join together to create an amalgamated star atlas for a breathing and multitextured extraterrestrial world.

Each of our songs embodies an aspect of this world—some echo an element, others an organ, yet others a phenomena of nature—and there are many more totems to explore. All of these pieces, separately and combined, are calls to a connection beyond the confines of everyday space and time, the heavy matter of humanity.

While the maladjusted soul may not be able to easily drag its accompanying body off this planet for a spell, it can dissolve for a while between astral wind currents when the right words are sung. These duets are incantations, oracles, scribblings on the walls of the heart. By reading them, we hope all lonely Aliens can catch a few glimmers of their home stars.

Tanya Rakh and Ndotono Waweru

The book is absolutely amazing, & the cover is below, with thanks to the brilliant photographer Shaina Sterrett for letting us use her image. Here is Shaina's Instagram where she shares her art.

Here is a sample poem online at Spillwords at this link. Alien Songs is on sale at this link. it can also be found on Amazon at this link. Note that it is better for the writers if you buy direct from Lulu.

I am looking forward to the publication of Tanya Rakh's ghost fractals soon, goddess willing. There will also be a book of visual poetry, vispo, coming from Tanya too, this will be printed with quality paper & ink, everything you do to the moon. It will be awesome.

Six samples from forthcoming "everything essential"

Here are six samples from my forthcoming everything essential, due whenever we see & approve the proof copy. The cover comes first. The manifesto that introduces the book was previously posted below in this blog at this link. Here it is on Amazon UK. Here on Amazon USA. Now it is lengthened & made more complete, & has grown into a book of its own, A posthuman poetry manifesto which I will post a couple of weeks after this one is out. The book is reviewed above by Carolyn Srygley-Moore in this post.

EDIT: Out now.

I update this post to note that I have approved the proof & allowed the 205 page book via Posthuman Poetry & Prose's storefront, where it is on sale at this link, & made it available on Amazon, Ingram, B&N, etc, where it will appear in due course.

The book is the third book of poems since my return to the UK, & themes & inspirations include nature in North Somerset; goddess Tiamat; posthumanism & postmodernism; Deleuze & Guattari's becoming animal & rhizomes; Foucault's antihumanism & antifascism; Derrida's ethics, poetics, & ethopoetics; Nietzsche in general, especially the return as the return of the dissolved self; Lyotard's intensity; new materialism; indeterminacy; goddess chaos versus patriarchal order; the Enuma Elish; & love, sexuality, & BDSM.

The book is 205 numbered pages, with a 45 page introductory manifesto that took a lot of work. I have edited this & given more attention to it than usual. It's a sort of statement. The manifesto is about posthumanism, goddess Tiamat, chaos, & posthuman poetics, & I try to enact it in the poems - the dissolution of the ego in Deleuze's reading of the Nietzschean eternal return, the intensity, the beast, the ahuman that I am become. It is very clearly a book of poems for Emma, but it is not part of the series; she is muse & motivator, but there is more to these poems, for the sexual intenisty that was always there has now pervaded everything - from goddess to brutality, from butterflies to philosophy.

I have also, as noted, finished a prose book with a more extensive version of the manifesto that I shall publish separately. The manifesto in the new prose version is close to 100 numbered pages & is due to become available once I approve the proof in a while.A new book to be called (probably) we are flesh of Tiamat is being written.

The three current novels by David C. McLean

Though I generally write poetry, I have also written three novels. The first of these is Henrietta Remembers, and it is here at Lulu. & here follows the Amazon link.  This book was substantially revised in 2021 & has a nice cover. It's a sort of Nausea for nihilists. The Lulu link is better to use as far as I am concerned, though Amazon now have the updated version with a somewhat smaller font.

A novel without plot about a murder rising from the emptiness that is words. David McLean's first novel demonstrates that the form is neither dead nor the exclusive province of literary establishment windbags. "A very nasty book. The repetition, rather than diminishing the effect, served rather to hammer home the innate nastiness and bleakness until it rang like a heavenly bell."
David Mitchell - author

The second is flesh & resurrection, and it is here at Lulu. It is also here at Amazon. This is also substantially revised in 2021. It is about a man who seems to be dead & to have no memory of his life, & Henrietta is involved too. Otherwise they drink, argue, & wander off somewhere at the end.

The blurb says: 

Even more fucked up than McLean's first novel (Henrietta Remembers), which makes it well better, it abandons all pretense of plot & degenerates nicely into an inchoate prose poem.

 

 

The third was written more recently, divinity extractor fan my anti-novel on Lulu. Here it is on sale at Amazon. This is for Emma more explicitly, but they all are.

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.

 

divinity extractor fan

I have started a third novel, more explicitly an anti-novel, since I do not like plot & I do not like dialog, thus rendering most novels a great torment to me, either to write or read. It will be called divinity extractor fan.

This book is predominantly inspired by antinatalism, posthumanism, overpopulation, ecology, & so forth. There is currently a heavy preponderance of Artaud, apart from the muse, getting into this book. Sacher-Masoch & St. Augustine of Hippo are being sampled in & cited. Footnotes & everything, fuck the world. Deleuze & Guattari with their becomings-animal are featured as well, at some length.

I am incorporating a story about how Henrietta, who is by now pretty obviously part of me (more like a goddam walk-in, to be honest, fuck all those drugs & being almost dead & shit, other souls just wandering in & out. Still, she gets me home when I'm drunk), provokes the release of Cthulhu with his army of evil, but very cute, mudkips to destroy everything, by using archaic HTML, code imbued with unspeakable ancient evil. It is my hope that some brave visual artist can produce an illustration of Cthulhu leading his army of mudkips to victory.

There is some discussion of Heidegger & Derrida on poetry, with references too, the sort of thing that novels need, I feel. Artaud is now making an appearance, because he makes everything better aesthetically, even if everything hurts. Also much discussion of Lyotard, temporality, the goddess, &, somewhat less seriously, samples from The Anatomy of Melancholy & Nietzsche, the last two being just for laughs.  But, as noted, Artaud is sort of taking me over, so we are gonna be nailing asses to the heavens at some point, gentle reader.

Couple of sample pages from divinity extractor fan follow, along with the cover. By the way, this book is complete & here at Lulu. Oh, I love that mise of mine so much. She is the best muse there ever was.