IMP, the Poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres
by Benjamin DeCasseres
edited with introduction by Kevin I. Slaughter
Ironist, Critic, Poet, Nietzschean, Anarch. Friend of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, Jack London and relative of Spinoza. Published in periodicals ranging from the radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life, his work is now mostly lost and forgotten save a mention every decade or so by scholars or writers who have stumbled across him.
This volume contains the known poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) outside of his ANATHEMA! Litanies of Negation. 129 poems in verse and prose, collected from two published volumes (The Shadow-Eater and Black Suns) and culled from dozens of periodicals over the first half of the 20th century.
The Shadow-Eater destroyed my critical sense and begun its reconstruction.
—John Macey
Benjamin DeCasseres (is) the Pontius Pilate of America.
—H.L. Mencken
There is something Titanic in the way DeCasseres hurls his words at the universe… This merciless rebel who threatens the throne of God.
—Current Literature
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
No such poetry since Les Fleurs du Mal of Baudelaire.
—Carlo de Fornaro