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Prelude to Transgression
The texts collected in Prelude to Transgression were written out of an exploratory desire to cross beyond the realm of “narrative of void-hunt” and into something new. They attempt to both dramatize the impossible and touch upon the sovereignty found in poetic effusion simultaneously; often by alternating between genres. They deliver a realm of work that directly preceded Kitchell’s desire, as a writer, to fully transcend the page and move towards a corporeal impossibility.
That is to say, this volume delivers the interstice in which Kitchell decided he no longer just wanted to write about levitating, but rather wanted to spend time trying to levitate.
That is to say, this volume delivers the interstice in which Kitchell decided he no longer just wanted to write about levitating, but rather wanted to spend time trying to levitate.
- GenresPoetry
243 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2020
58 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 21, 2022
Hello GoodReaders! I’m coming to you live from my in-laws’ house in Omaha, Nebraska, a mere three hours North of Lawrence, Kansas and the Castle inside of which this shadowy work was birthed – bloody and screaming – onto what I’ve always imagined to be an unforgiving, bare stone floor flecked with bits of matted hay and barnyard dander. The Midwest has a way of stretching time – eating away hours in a matter of minutes, and then the second you check the clock, suddenly reversing course and unraveling the next minute until it encompasses the entire rest of the day. The June heat makes a kiln of the plains, and the legendarily big sky that you might imagine as full of possibility and adventure actually begins to feel something closer to empty and inescapable – a pale blue void, wholly disinterested in your silent screams.
Also, the WiFi here is spotty as Hell, and it has robbed me of the copious notes I took on my phone yesterday in preparing to write this book review, so I’m in kind of a mood. But that’s fine. M. Kitchell’s Prelude to Transgression is not really a book, so it doesn’t really require a book review. It is, however, if only by necessity, a thing which must be read – an ecstatic artifact grasping at both sacred transubstantiation and profane clarity, its text clawing away from its pages, hanging still in the air like smoke rings for a moment evanescent, before drawing red-rimmed eyes upward as it ascends into blinding sun.
Divided into an invocation, seven discreet parts, and then two sections of references and guidance to potential further reading, Prelude to Transgression played out, at least to my mind, like the course charted by a literal wandering soul – freed, seemingly voluntarily, from its physical body via subterranean, orgiastic blood rite, to roam simultaneously the landscapes of the terrestrial and psychic planes in search of a higher state of consciousness. Kitchell’s markings (I use this word because they appear wholly disinterested in being understood as either poetry or prose) seethe and writhe with arcane power, punching up with blocky fists, thrusting out with strikethrough spears, and disorienting with a sorcery of spacing, tense, and typeface, until one is not so much reading as being carried along by his doomspell in progress. Furthermore, Kitchell’s beguiling photography, interspersed with, and often superimposed across his writing, lends this grueling vision quest yet another layer of extrasensory realism, like analog pictographs in an increasingly digital world, marking his newly explored territory; illuminating his newly forged path.
The cave leads to a forest, and the abandonment of the physical realm. The forest leads to a desert, and the understanding of language as a fallacy. The desert leads inward, to the rejection of humanity and the full inhabitation of the self. From there is a silent trek to the sea, and a solo voyage to an island – a mysterious outpost floating somehow outside of all these previous stops along the way to theoretical enlightenment, and from which unfathomable forces are somehow still pulling certain uncuttable strings. Brought to a dark, penetrative climax which I dare not recount here, rest assured, Prelude to Transgression aches toward the sublime in its staggering finale, and spits you out breathless and changed on its opposite shore.
This is my fifth review for Inside the Castle, and as always, I’m operating more as a documentarian here than a critic. I can report what I saw, and tell you how it made me feel, but there’s no substitute for observing American buffalo in the wild or staring over the rim of an active volcano. Some things you just have to seek out for yourself. But for as otherworldly bizarre as I’ve perhaps made it sound here, I can say with some confidence that Prelude to Transgression is the most accessible of their publications that I’ve come across to date, and an excellent place to start for anyone interested in exploring the expanded field. Kitchell may work to untether you from your surroundings and unmoor you from any certainties you previously held about them – much like the Midwest itself, his writing can feel like both an infinity cove and a larval cocoon; an upward skydive into the azure abyss – but in flying so high above the known world, he holds you reassuringly close and pretty well tight, all the better to help you let go, and truly see.
Also, the WiFi here is spotty as Hell, and it has robbed me of the copious notes I took on my phone yesterday in preparing to write this book review, so I’m in kind of a mood. But that’s fine. M. Kitchell’s Prelude to Transgression is not really a book, so it doesn’t really require a book review. It is, however, if only by necessity, a thing which must be read – an ecstatic artifact grasping at both sacred transubstantiation and profane clarity, its text clawing away from its pages, hanging still in the air like smoke rings for a moment evanescent, before drawing red-rimmed eyes upward as it ascends into blinding sun.
Divided into an invocation, seven discreet parts, and then two sections of references and guidance to potential further reading, Prelude to Transgression played out, at least to my mind, like the course charted by a literal wandering soul – freed, seemingly voluntarily, from its physical body via subterranean, orgiastic blood rite, to roam simultaneously the landscapes of the terrestrial and psychic planes in search of a higher state of consciousness. Kitchell’s markings (I use this word because they appear wholly disinterested in being understood as either poetry or prose) seethe and writhe with arcane power, punching up with blocky fists, thrusting out with strikethrough spears, and disorienting with a sorcery of spacing, tense, and typeface, until one is not so much reading as being carried along by his doomspell in progress. Furthermore, Kitchell’s beguiling photography, interspersed with, and often superimposed across his writing, lends this grueling vision quest yet another layer of extrasensory realism, like analog pictographs in an increasingly digital world, marking his newly explored territory; illuminating his newly forged path.
The cave leads to a forest, and the abandonment of the physical realm. The forest leads to a desert, and the understanding of language as a fallacy. The desert leads inward, to the rejection of humanity and the full inhabitation of the self. From there is a silent trek to the sea, and a solo voyage to an island – a mysterious outpost floating somehow outside of all these previous stops along the way to theoretical enlightenment, and from which unfathomable forces are somehow still pulling certain uncuttable strings. Brought to a dark, penetrative climax which I dare not recount here, rest assured, Prelude to Transgression aches toward the sublime in its staggering finale, and spits you out breathless and changed on its opposite shore.
This is my fifth review for Inside the Castle, and as always, I’m operating more as a documentarian here than a critic. I can report what I saw, and tell you how it made me feel, but there’s no substitute for observing American buffalo in the wild or staring over the rim of an active volcano. Some things you just have to seek out for yourself. But for as otherworldly bizarre as I’ve perhaps made it sound here, I can say with some confidence that Prelude to Transgression is the most accessible of their publications that I’ve come across to date, and an excellent place to start for anyone interested in exploring the expanded field. Kitchell may work to untether you from your surroundings and unmoor you from any certainties you previously held about them – much like the Midwest itself, his writing can feel like both an infinity cove and a larval cocoon; an upward skydive into the azure abyss – but in flying so high above the known world, he holds you reassuringly close and pretty well tight, all the better to help you let go, and truly see.
May 5, 2023
These texts truly are the preludes to the actual pursuit of this writer's long-standing desire for what Bataille called the Impossible or, if I am to hazard a loose definition, experience beyond or without conceptual categorization. As such, the notebook that comes after the texts--Kitchell's personal assemblage of key quotes from like minds as well as his own accumulated motifs--is as significant as the texts themselves because it shows how the trajectory of his oeuvre has always been toward a postverbal horizon (or absence of horizons, a void-like space over which his critically dispossessed body would levitate). But if this book seems as if it were a valediction to the written word, it would be a misunderstanding; for Kitchell has demonstrated a constant awareness of the futility of literature to be a gateway to any experience other than the merely aesthetic sort, and his creative impulse has remained vital alongside this inevitable futility.
As much as Prelude appears to be an ultimate demonstration of the "writing against writing" that was so abundant among the 20th century French avant-garde community, some of these pieces are undoubtedly more than the verbal residue of Kitchell's attempt to actualize the ineffable on an intimate basis. ISLAND is one such piece and could very well serve as the gestalt of his literary corpus: fragmented nonlinear narratives, the spirituality of eroticism, the necessity of physical transgressions, the inclusion of photographs to both create hauntological effects and convey the inadequacy of language, etc. The closest reference could be Hans Henny Jahnn's The Ship, but Kitchell goes so far beyond the shelter of metaphor here that he forces the reader into as close an approximation of the pure experience of the Real as the written word allows; if any of these preludes signifies the eventuality of Kitchell's ideal transgression of human consensus reality, ISLAND would have to be it and, taken alone, certainly justifies purchasing this collection.
As much as Prelude appears to be an ultimate demonstration of the "writing against writing" that was so abundant among the 20th century French avant-garde community, some of these pieces are undoubtedly more than the verbal residue of Kitchell's attempt to actualize the ineffable on an intimate basis. ISLAND is one such piece and could very well serve as the gestalt of his literary corpus: fragmented nonlinear narratives, the spirituality of eroticism, the necessity of physical transgressions, the inclusion of photographs to both create hauntological effects and convey the inadequacy of language, etc. The closest reference could be Hans Henny Jahnn's The Ship, but Kitchell goes so far beyond the shelter of metaphor here that he forces the reader into as close an approximation of the pure experience of the Real as the written word allows; if any of these preludes signifies the eventuality of Kitchell's ideal transgression of human consensus reality, ISLAND would have to be it and, taken alone, certainly justifies purchasing this collection.
January 6, 2024
unbelievable, mostly in that I believe this work so thoroughly, fully, completely, entirely.
a (un)hol(e)y trinity established:
ascension/transcension/descension
of the body and text.
a (un)hol(e)y trinity established:
ascension/transcension/descension
of the body and text.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews