The Benjamin Sonnets

Poetry. THE BENJAMIN SONNETS is a series of poems created through a process of "homophonic" translation from German writings by Walter Benjamin. They are ridiculous, but only in the sense that things unexpected and wonderful can be ridiculous. "I once sat for about 120 minutes in a film by Mizoguchi in Japanese without subtitles; after 15 minutes every word had a meaning, the entire dialog seemed to be in a patois composed from German, Spanish, French, Greek and English components. I understood it, but its light, ironic nonsense contradicted hilariously with the solemn acts on the court of some Shogun which was the content of the images. I have never felt like this again, except under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, until I read Clint Burnham's BENJAMIN SONNETS, except that the backdrop here was not some aristocratic Japanese scenery, but Berlin. Benjamin himself has felt like this when, under the influence of something, he saw Venice in the upper Kurfuestentstrasse. Architecture and language, once you're able to forget or not know how to speak it, always make their own sense"--Diedrich Diedrichsen.