How to Live Under Facism

New Poems and Photographs

Andrei Codrescu

$44.95

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Black Widow Press
01 May 2025

Poetry

My new collection of poetry is a guide to living in the dictatorship of the new American plutocracy.

I was born and raised in Romania, a national-socialist client of the Soviet empire, where poetry was always a nightmare for the state, and a lifeline to the terrified citizen. I emigrated to freedom in the U.S, where the subversive powers of poetry were slowly dissolving into badly-paid entertainment for easily distracted readers. The surveillance of the market wasn't yet as deadly as that of the communist censors, but their merger seems a done deal now. In the face of this civic catastrophe poetry has to be more than eau-de-cologne to dispel the stink of army boots. This book is occasionally clear about that, but there are also poems of love and the plague, childhood scents, the warmth of other bodies, the warnings of history, and the pleasure of making things up. I was taking photographs on my daily walks when writing these poems, without meaning to use them, but then I saw that they were strangely and not so strangely connected. My mother and father were photographers in the bad old days, I think their craft shadowed me. I dedicate these works to my predecessors.

By: Andrei Codrescu
Imprint: Black Widow Press
Country of Publication: United States
Weight: 422g
ISBN: 9798991139151
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 01 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, where in the 16th century they burned witches, in 1989 they shot students. In the teens of the 21st century the citizens didn't flinch when Europe's second biggest theatre festival set off fireworks at midnight. He emigrated to Detroit in 1966 where a revolution was in progress. Tanks of the 82nd airborne and National Guard rolled down Woodward Avenue and shot at anyone out after the 6pm curfew. Andrei moved to New York City in 1966, where he met poets. His first poetry in English, License to Carry a Gun, was published in 1970. He lived in San Francisco and in the Northern California town of Monte Rio. In 1983 Andrei Codrescu founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books & Ideas (1983-2016). He has taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University. In 1983 (anno mirabilis), he wrote weekly for The Baltimore Sun and the City Paper, and started commentating regularly on NPR (National Public Radio.)