With your generous support of Fence—through a tax-deductible contribution of $100 or more—you can receive this broadside, in a limited edition of 110, signed by the poet-artist (and so much more) Wayne Koestenbaum.
The broadside is printed on letterpress by Empyrean Press for Fence. Wayne's necessary Instagram account is here, and his home website here. The broadside is printed on Moriki Kozo Bright Yellow paper (see paper samples below). Moriki Kozo is handmade in Japan, crafted from the fibers of the Kozo, or Paper Mulberry tree.
The words are excerpted from Wayne’s poem “Kugel Exercises,” published in full in Fence magazine issue #42, the Spring/Summer 2025 edition. The poem is here in its gorgeous entirety for you to preview below. The broadside measures 7 3/4 inches x 10 1/4 inches.
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KUGEL EXERCISES
you could decide whether you wanted a bisexual for dinner
you could decide how many bisexuals to ask for
you could get as many bisexuals as you wanted
do you include cinnamon in your kugel
keep control of the kugel and hone it by diligent practice
rivulets of the kugel
she made kugel and discussed its merits but also made fun of it
and then you start grieving for butter’s sake
as if butter were a member of the family or a devoted neighbor
the butter was meant to be ignored
keep the butter far away from the gentle faculties
I did a great job of shaming the butter
kugel we would classify among the irretrievables
related to the romantic figure of the swan
the reign of the disciplinarian ended at noon
when she distributed the flash cards
each containing a declension
you could clench the kugel
like an oration divided into mother and son
and delivered without shame at the funeral
she threw a party in the Taft Hotel
Lerner and Lowe lounged on the couch
each convinced that the other man had made a mistake
I fell asleep at the party
I was in my thirties and I despised the word human
like hummus it belonged to the realm of wedding registries
with no one alive could I discuss his suicide
even after decades you may still feel bruised by his departure
his ex-husband never came up in conversation
an Elysian Fields of ex-husbands
he shamed you on the steps of the fire station
impersonate the tyrant who forbids
dirge and barcarolle and rondo and bridge
some toys last for decades and some toys perish
don’t hold on forever to one toy
create a toy out of each day’s offering
—Wayne Koestenbaum
Wayne Koestenbaum
Sigil Matinee
2024
oil and acrylic on canvas paper
18x24 inches
Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including Camp Marmalade, Notes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s & Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation, and Jackie Under My Skin. The Queen’s Throat, praised by Susan Sontag as “a brilliant book,” was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and appeared this year in French translation. His novel, Circus, was reissued in July 2019 with an introduction by Rachel Kushner. New projects, forthcoming in 2020, include a book of short fiction, The Cheerful Scapegoat, and an essay collection, Figure It Out. His essays and poems have been widely published in periodicals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. He wrote the libretto for Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O, which premiered at the Houston Grand Opera, and for Mohammed Fairouz’s Pierrot, commissioned by Da Capo Chamber Players. Koestenbaum has exhibited his own paintings in solo shows at White Columns, 356 Mission, and the University of Kentucky Art Museum, as well as in many group shows, most recently in New York at Essex Flowers, Gordon Robichaux, Klaus von Nichtssagend, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017; he has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, and the Renaissance Society. He played the title role in Robert Ashley’s opera The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer at the 2014 Whitney Biennial and in 2016 at L.A.’s 356 Mission. Koestenbaum’s brief essay-films, originally seen on Instagram (@Wayne.Koestenbaum), are the most recent development of his interdisciplinary, multi-media practice. His literary archive is in the Yale Collection of American Literature at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He received a B.A. from Harvard, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins, and a Ph.D. from Princeton; he won a Whiting Writers Award, and was a co-winner of the Discovery/The Nation Poetry Prize. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Yale and a Visiting Professor in the Yale School of Art’s painting department, he is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
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