Blue Stranger With Mosaic Background

Koestenbaum’s book of poems minces memory and culture into titbits to propose a new ‘nude’ poetics. The collection draws upon his signature themes - stardom, scapegoating, aestheticism, nudism, exaltation - and cuts them into serial strips. Using techniques such as pointillism, mosaic, aphorism, litany and philosophical investigation, the poet trips through a memory theatre whose luminaries range from Yvonne De Carlo to Hannah Arendt and assembles melancholy tesserae into tidily stanzaic sacrificial offerings.