The Pink Trance Notebooks

by Wayne Koestenbaum

The Pink Trance Notebooks is the product of the year Wayne Koestenbaum stopped keeping the traditional journal he had maintained for three decades and began a series of trance notebooks as a way to reflect an intensified, unmoored consciousness. The resulting sequence of 34 assemblages reflects Koestenbaum s unfettered musings, findings, and obsessions. Freed from the conventions of prose, this concatenation of the author s intimate observations and desires lets loose a poetics of ecstatic praxis voiced with aplomb and always on point.
Wayne Koestenbaum is one of the most original and relentlessly obsessed cultural spies writing today. His alarmingly focused attention to detail goes beyond lunacy into hilarious and brilliant clarity. John Waters"

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, American, Queer

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2015

About the author

Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of critical prose, including The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and three books of poetry, including Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems. He is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

[Guttersnipe Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

There will never be many readers for this book: basically it’s for queers who read Gertrude Stein for fun. There aren’t many of us, but we are fantastic and, dammit, we deserve to be catered to.

I became a Koestenbaum zealot after finding a copy of his novel, ‘Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes’ in a dollar box outside a New Orleans bookshop. It’s the best queer novel you’ve never heard of. With the exception of Genet and the Bowleses, it’s drastically more fun and interesting than most of what we’ve canonized as important.

So I was on board for these “trance” poems. 34 accumulations of tiny fragments, sentences, bop haiku. They are presented in a way that mimics the way they were written, scrawled into a narrow notebook. If you want to give these a try, reading one of his amiable, queeny, chatty interviews might help you feel more welcome.

If you’re new to this type of writing: subtly altering your consciousness may be a help. Anything that gives you access to an open state, be it 20 minutes of vipassana or a bottle of red wine. I mean to say: if you sit down with your usual “what next?” or “to do list” mind, this divine nonsense may not be accessible to you. Do what you can to make ready an open, playful mind.

I agree with what others have said about his antecedents -- though I’d add Robert Lax and David Markson. It seems to me that Joe Brainard and Gertrude Stein hooked up and had a baby -- and how could such a child fail to be gorgeous?

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interview with Wayne, over at Tin House: http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/43053/ha...

Like all of Wayne's work, this book is a treasure-chest of insight, of confession, of wonder, of desire. The fragments move like rushing water.

Some choice fragments:

“afterward
who will forgive me
for dishonorable interior travel?”

“I remain an indirect,
untimely investigator
of the gurgle and the cry”

“give us strength to endure
the nonhorizontal”

“I admire his use
of ‘abeyance,’
a word like ‘elegiac,’
intrinsically beautiful
in its dove-like brooding
over the abyss it describes—”

[Carrie]

Gay epic that you (probably) don't need to read in a linear fashion.

[Dennis Bensie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is risky and the writing is free --free of any bounds or limits. At times it makes no sense, but that is okay.Other times it's funny, smart, angry or cloudy. You could criticize it all day, but if the book was a person, he wouldn't care. I applaud the author for this work.

[Charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this book had not been assigned for class, I would not have read it.

Pink Trance Notebooks consists of 34 individual notebooks Koestenbaum kept to reflect on his "unfettered musings, findings, and obsessions" (http://www.nightboat.org/title/pink-t...). Each notebook contains around 60 poems and each poem ranges from 1-7 lines. In general, the poems do not share a common theme, although a few ideas are recurring: sex, AIDS, penises, hard-ons, his mother, bowels, anuses, vaginas, and other art. There are occasions when multiple poems in a row have a similar topic, but this is not frequent.

I honestly don't understand how this book and the writing is considered art/poetry. So many times throughout the book I wanted to know what prompted Koestenbaum to write this. It feels like a writing exercise he gave himself: write X number of "poems" daily. In doing this, he was strengthening his writing muscles. But how did this become a published work? Why was I expected to read this? If I wrote down my random thoughts and musings throughout the day without fleshing them out at all, would I be able to become a published author?

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

horny gay jewish fragments (relatable) + intellectual name-dropping fragments + giggling inappropriately + tender familial pain ~ how many dead famous people can wayne report? ~ literary or biblical? ~ by reading this, i am a peeping tom of lots of dicks ~ i will never forget::: buying his mother yoga pants even though she can't do yoga ~ i report:::: "preemptive / Kaddish for the not dead." "uneventful ass." "I speak too truthfully / about intimate matters / to strangers - but / Alice Notley says / "who reads poetry anyway!""

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I was reading this I kept asking myself if I was enjoying it, understanding it, if either of those things mattered. Sometimes I would read for a couple of pages and not feel like I understood any of it. Then out of nowhere some very sharp clarity and a line that would stick with me for days. That alternation between being puzzled and confused with a bracingly clear thought was good. It felt good to alternate between the two. And I don't need more from this book than that. It felt good.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like one those people that you meet in your early twenties who seems cool and has neat ideas, but then you get to know them and those two ideas are their whole personality and soon then seem flat and uninteresting but they keep speaking a mile a minute and its exhausting trying to pretend you care so you end up avoiding them. Well I did finish, but what had begun with voracious appetite soon slowed into hesitant digestion and then became a bitter and reluctant chore.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I make nonsense sounds
because I pretend I
live in a toaster-
I pretend I'm a Pop-Tart—“


‘like a psychotic
detective novelist
signing books "much love"
and "life is good"’


“Wet One canister made
a hollow clack
as it fell in garbage”


“old
ladies eating hamburgers
together as big celebration
every Thursday night-
do weekly hamburgers
reinforce ideology?”

[justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"triggering a depressive fit / by saying 'miss you' non- /stop for 20 minutes" if gertrude stein, mark cayanan, chingbee, and david wojnarowicz made a podcast and a disheveled transcript of their first season written in receipts flew around the city

[Mal Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this book would be more enjoyable for someone who is from the same era the author is from. I liked the book but I didn't always understand all the references.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book fulfills a very specific niche, but if you get it, then you’ve got it!

[anon · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved<3 so fun and funny

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting, i'd like to revisit.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

" I seek
a thuggish tone
___________

asemic or dwelling
on the happy border
between asemic and semi-
sensible
___________"