Welcome. Out of Its Wooden Brain is written by me, RM Haines, a poet and essayist who runs a small chapbook press, Dead Mall Press. By subscribing, you’ll receive my poems, occasional translations (I’m working on Tristan Tzara’s L’Homme approximatif), and essays (on literature, publishing, and capitalism—w/some music & film writing thrown in too). Plus it’s all free. To read a more detailed description of my basic game plan for the blog, please check out this post.
What’s up with the name?
“Out of Its Wooden Brain” is a phrase appearing in volume one of Marx’s CAPITAL. There, in writing about the bizarre, transformative effect that commodification has on material objects, he states:
[As a wooden table] emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing on its own free will.
This convergence of psyche and matter, especially when effected via commodity form, has become an essential idea for me. And as plenty of what is written here will discuss imagination, psychic distortions, capitalism, and the materiality and commodification of art, it seems to be as good a way as any of orienting this project.
