Ultramarine

Koestenbaum, unflinching as he observes and notates his interior, brings a heroic quality to this poetic feat.

Not only does Koestenbaum surprise us with content, but also with form. The text incorporates all manner of writing from dreams to factual news. It resists privileging one mode over another.

This project, which began with The Pink Trance Notebooks (2015) and continued with Camp Marmalade (2018), is remarkable for many reasons, not least of all for the distinct tonal differences (or: colors) between the respective volumes. Each collection of trance notebooks reflects the degree to which Koestenbaum is attuned to real-time realities while he composes. Initially drafted in cafés and on trains, these notebooks capture one man’s reflections and impressions as he is experiencing or remembering them.

The final volume of his “trance trilogy”—preceded by The Pink Trance Notebooks (2015) and Camp Marmalade (2018)—the collection is both a joyful language game and a bracing reminder that queer play is serious business.

Koestenbaum delves into paintings and the artistic process, using color as a metaphor through which to consider desire and memory.

In Ultramarine (Nightboat, Feb.), Wayne Koestenbaum sifts through four years of trance notebooks to stitch together a revealing collage.

There is a linguistic playfulness here that will appeal to some readers, as well as an insistence on modernity and the high-low duality of daily experience.