Ironist, Critic, Poet, Nietzschean, Anarch. Friend of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, Jack London and relative of Baruch Spinoza. Published in periodicals ranging from the radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life, his work is now mostly lost and forgotten save a mention every decade or so by scholars or writers who have stumbled across him. This volume contains the known poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) outside of his ANATHEMA! Litanies of Negation and the few poems written in tribute to his brother Walter, contained in The Sublime Boy. 129 poems in verse and prose, collected from two published volumes (The Shadow-Eater and Black Suns) and culled from dozens of periodicals over the first half of the 20th century.

Imp: The Poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres

Literature & Fiction

DeCasseres, Benjamin

Poetry

Underworld Amusements

Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was an Ironist, Critic, Poet, Epigrammist, Polemicist, God. He announced his candidacy for mayor of New York as a "Cubist Candidate" in 1913, vowing to "legalize human frailties," among other fine ideas. He was a comrade of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, James Huneker, George Sterling, Don Marquis and is a distant relative of Spinoza. His writing was published in a wide range of periodicals from Benjamin Tucker's radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life. He could be found in the pages of the New York Times, among other newspapers, and even on the radio. This is a collection of his writing solely focused on New York, but mostly about booze. Peggy Nadramia was born in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, was the editor of the award-winning horror publication GRUE Magazine, is one of the mixologists behind Cocktail Vultures, and also the current High Priestess of the Church of Satan.

New York is Hell: Thinking and Drinking in the Beautiful Beast

Essays & Correspondence

A long-form poem of negation and egoism, of scorn and cynical delight. Included is a URL for a free full audiobook read by Kevin I. Slaughter.  Benjamin DeCasseres (is) the Pontius Pilate of America.  -H.L. Mencken  A passionate, erratic poet… strives to shake the foundation of the world.  -The Saturday Review of Literature  He occupies a niche that is all his own and asks space to stand for no other man . -The Nation  DeCasseres is the most fiery and independent writer that I know of.  -Remy de Gourmont  There is but one Benjamin DeCasseres. And he is perhaps the one living wonder of the literary world. It is fortunate that such an one must be born, that he cannot be made; especially that he cannot be imitated, for if every one wrote like DeCasseres readers would go mad. That he can keep in any semblance of thought-order such whirls of words is something to marvel at. Yet to read him once, twice, is to experience the greatest mental exhilaration. -New York Times

Anathema!: Litanies of Negation

Slaughter, Kevin I.

Religion & Spirituality

Fantasia Impromptu & FINIS constitute Benjamin DeCasseres' (1873-1945) most private writing, but even then, they were intended for publication and posterity. The first is a diary-like collection of notes and reminiscences began in December 1925. The latter was professed to be "a summation of all my books, of my lifelong beliefs." Fantasia Impromptu was released as a series of booklets, six in total, that constitute his "intellectual, emotional and spiritual autobiography." They are filled with ruminations on daily life, aphorisms, esotericisms, and appeals to future readers. It is appropriately dedicated to: "The Thinkers, Poets, Satirists, Individualists, Dare-Devils, Egoists, Satanists and Godolepts of Posterity." FINIS is his final work, appropriately enough, and consists of three essays and a "hymn," all previously unpublished. The one focus of all of these pieces is Oblivion. Though he states in his introduction is was not necessarily meant to be his last work, he died before it was published, and his wife Bio prepared an introduction and included a poem of dedication. FINIS was released as a booklet the year of his death and has never been reprinted before.

Fantasia Impromptu: & Finis

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Anathema: Litanies of Negation

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Kessinger Publishing

Chameleon is Benjamin De Casseres' first book, and perhaps his finest. In these twenty-five essays which take their cues from Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Spinoza, De Casseres gives the quintessence of his worldview, which one reviewer summed up as "the unreality of all appearances and the merger of negation and affirmation in nihility."

Chameleon: Being the Book of My Selves

Independently published

The Philistine was a spearhead of the Arts & Crafts movement in America. This magazine published the works of its editor Elbert Hubbard as well as Stephen Crane, Benjamin DeCasseres and others. W. W. Denslow, illustrator for The Wizard of Oz, was a regular contributor and designed the sea-horse mascot that graced the front covers. Publisher Hubbard also founded the Roycroft movement, and founded a working community of craftsman in East Aurora, NY that lives to this day. The journal was published from 1895 until Hubbard’s death in 1915 aboard the RMS Lusitania. Bruce A. White’s The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest is a unique chronicle of this American journal and its fascinating publisher. Previously published in limited quantities by an academic press, this new and expanded popular edition brings a fascinating history to a wider audience. Bruce A. White yanked out his New England roots in 1978 and moved to Maryland to start teaching at Gallaudet University. He has retired to coastal Delaware, where he volunteers for service organizations, rides bikes and kayaks, and enjoys simple pleasures with his beloved Barbara.

Elbert Hubbard's The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest (1895 - 1915) (Stand Alone)

Reference

White, Bruce A.

Catalogs & Directories

"Moses came down from Horeb with a light on his face. I came back from the Peaks of Renunciation and the Himalayas of Pure Intelligence with a leer on my face-a leer and a menace, and a sword in my hand-a red sword, a poisoned sword, a sword tempered in lightnings and blessed with my blasphemies."-Benjamin DeCasseres "DeCasseres is the most fiery and independent writer that I know of."-Remy de Gourmont "(DeCasseres has) the verve and the transcendental courage of the old American free-lancers, the Emersons, Thoreaus, Mark Twains and Whitmans."-George Santayana This single volume contains all the bombastic essays and visionary observations that were originally published in four different volumes of this mirthful and wry imp's writing. From his first book of essays Chameleon: Being a Book of My Selves (1922) through his aphoristic and quotable The Muse of Lies (1936) to both parts of the rare Saint Tantalus (1936 & 1938), this collection cover great swathes of time, space, philosophy and art.

Fulminations: Caustic, Capricious & Cosmic

“(Spinoza’s) ratiocination is deft and measurable persuasive; it will be found lyrically displayed in the DeCasseres book.”—New York Times Celebrating the 300th birthday of his relative Benedict Spinoza (1632 – 1677) saw Benjamin DeCasseres release two volumes about the man and his work. The first was Spinoza: Liberator of God and Man in 1933, and the second was Spinoza Against the Rabbis in 1937. This new edition combines them both for the first time, newly typeset and designed.Written in the luminous, piercing style that has made Benjamin DeCasseres famous, you see in this book the mighty struggle of Spinoza with Intolerance, the serene pantheist at work polishing his lenses, and, above all, the interior of a mind, in eleven chapters, that is like an excursion of the Spirit of Man in high mental altitudes. Benjamin DeCasseres brings to the light in this book hitherto unknown aspects of the doctrines of Spinoza: his liberation of God from the shackles of anthropomorphism, his glorification of the Will-to-Power, and his divinization of the Ego of the individual man.In the chapter entitled “Anathema!” DeCasseres has with a dramatic power only equaled in the pages of Victor Hugo or Merejkovsky pictured the excommunication from the Jewish Church of Benedict de Spinoza.Spinoza, at last, lives in this book. For it is the drama of a great soul written by a man who has the blood of Spinoza in his veins. Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was an Ironist, Critic, Poet, Epigrammist, Polemicist, God. He announced his candidacy for mayor of New York as a “Cubist Candidate” in 1913, vowing to “legalize human frailties,” among other fine ideas. He was a comrade of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, James Huneker, George Sterling, Don Marquis and is a distant relative of Spinoza. His writing was published in a wide range of periodicals from Benjamin Tucker’s radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life. He could be found in the pages of the New York Times, among other newspapers.

Spinoza: Liberator of God and Man & Against the Rabbis

DER GEIST (Trevor Blake, editor; Kevin I. Slaughter, designer) is an English-language journal for an international audience, publishing original scholarship on the philosophy of egoism. The journal is descriptive of the first century of egoism in print (from the 1845 publication of "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" by Max Stirner to the end of 1945), not prescriptive in advocacy of egoism. The inaugural issue includes an exclusive biography of Dora Marsden, lost essays by and about Malfew Seklew, and a newly discovered first photograph of Ragnar Redbeard. Scholarly interest in the egoism of Stirner, Marsden, Redbeard, Seklew and their peers (including Benjamin DeCasseres) has a new and unique home in DER GEIST. For more information, see UnionOfEgoists.com.

Der Geist Volume 1 Number 1

Stirner, Max

Blake, Trevor

Slaughter, Kevin

Marsden, Dora

Redbeard, Ragnar

Seklew, Malfew

127 House

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