Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1946. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1966 and became a U.S. citizen in 1981. He is a poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, and lecturer. Codrescu is MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he edits Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Letters & Life. He is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio and winner of the Peabody Award for the film “Road Scholar.” He received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for poetry, and editing, the Romanian Literature Prize, the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, and the Ovidius Prize.

"One of our most prodigiously talented and magical writers." Bruce Shlain, New York Times Book Review

"With humor and grace, wisdom and tenderness, Codrescu transforms the commonplace into the miraculous. His work is cause for celebration." Kay Boyle

POETRY BOOKS:

Jealous Witness: New Poems (Coffee House Press, 2008) with CD, Into the Maelstrom by The New Orleans Klezmer AllStars, featuring poems from the book, music by Glenn Hartman, with singers Ivan Neville, Coco Robicheaux, Harry Shearer, and others.

The Forgiven Submarine, by Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu (Black Widow Press, 2009)

Submarinul Iertat: by Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu
(Bucharest: Editura Brumar, 2007)
This is a long poem written in Romanian, an e-mail collaboration with Ruxandra Cesereanu; a limited numbered and signed collector's edition, to be followed in 2008 by a "mass" paperback and an eventual translation into English.

Instrumentul Negru: Poezii 1965-1968, (Editura Scrisul Romånesc, 2004)

It Was Today - New Poems by Andrei Codrescu, (Coffee House Press, 2003)

Alien Candor: Selected Poems, 1970-1995, (Santa Rosa:Black Sparrow Press, 1996)

Poezii Alese/Selected Poetry, bi-lingual edition, English and Romanian (Bucharest: Editura Paralela 45, 2000)

Belligerence, (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press,1993)

Comrade Past and Mister Present, (Minneapolis:Coffee House Press,1991)

The History of the Growth of Heaven, (George Braziller, 1971)

License to Carry a Gun, (Chicago, Big Table, 1970)

NOVELS & STORIES:

"Codrescu’s voice is assured, funny as a jazz funeral and sharp as ammonia, nailing more virtuoso turns than a Formula One driver. His prose is so deadpan it goes through irony and comes out in some undiscovered place on the other side." Diane Roberts in St. Petersburg Times

"An extraordinary work of fiction...The Blood Countess is hypnotic and lyrical, with both the concentrated poetic power of the great fairy tales and the playful expansiveness of postmodern fiction."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

Wakefield, (Algonquin Press, May 2004)

Casanova in Bohemia, a novel, (New York: The Free Press, 2002)

A Bar in Brooklyn: Novellas & Stories, 1970-1978, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1999)

Messiah, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) a novel.

The Blood Countess, (New York:Simon & Schuster, 1995) a novel); Dell paperback, 1996. National best-seller.

The Repentance of Lorraine, (New York: Rhinoceros Books,1994) a novel.

MEMOIRS; TRAVELOGUES:

This transplanted Transylvanian with the bateau-mouche moustache always manages (in his consideration of All Things) to create a craving for the subversive-- something that is much needed in these days of 'friendly fascism.' Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Poetry Lesson (Princeton University Press, 2010)

An Involuntary Genius in America’s Shoes (and What Happened Afterwards)
(Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 2001; re-issue of “The Life & Times of an Involuntary Genius,” 1976, and “In America’s Shoes,” 1983, with new forward and coda-essay).

Ay, Cuba! A Socio-Erotic Journey. With photographs by David Graham.
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999; New York: Picador, 2001)

Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century
(New York: Hyperion, 1993) with photographs by David Graham. A journal of the making of the movie "Road Scholar," written by and starring Andrei Codrescu. General release: Goldwyn Company. TV: PBS. Video: Hallmark Entertainment. Winner of the Peabody Award.

The Hole in the Flag: a Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution
(New York:Morrow,1991; Avon pp.1992) A book about the 1989 revolution in Romania. New York Times "Notable Book," 1991, 1992.

ESSAYS:

"Mr. Codrescu is the sort of writer who feels obliged to satirize and interplay with reality and not just catalogue impressions...it's a measure of talent..."
Francis X. Clines, The New York Times Book Review

"Codrescu, an urbanite Walter Benjamin with a sense of humor, remains a poet, a person who works ‘only at recognizing the awesomeness of the universe, which is a job, too’."
The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess (Princeton University Press, 2009)

New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writing from the City, (Algonquin, 2006)

The Devil Never Sleeps & Other Essays, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000)

Hail Babylon! Looking for the American City at the End of the Millenium,(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998)

The Dog With the Chip in His Neck: Essays from NPR & Elsewhere, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996

Zombification: Essays from NPR, (New York: St. Martin's Press,1995; New York: Picador pp., 1996)

The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans, (New York:St. Martin's Press,1995; New York: Picador,1996)

The Disappearance of the Outside: a Manifesto for Escape, (Boston:Addison-Wesley Co.1990; a study of exile)

A Craving for Swan, (Columbus, Ohio:Ohio State University Press,1988)

Raised by Puppets Only to Be Killed by Research, (Boston: Addison-Wesley Co.1987)

TRANSLATION:

At the Court of Yearning: Poems by Lucian Blaga
(Columbus, Ohio:Ohio State University Press,1989; translation of Romania's great modern poet).

ANTHOLOGIES EDITED:

Exquisite Corpse Annual 2009. An yearly anthology.

Thus Spake the Corpse: an Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998. Volume Two, Fictions, Travels, and Translations, (Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 2000)

"The best aspects of the spirit of the Beats lives on in this frequently sassy, salty, silly and ultimately satisfying experience." Publishers’ Weekly, January 29, 2001

Thus Spake the Corpse: an Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998. Volume One, Poetry and Essays
(Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1999)

American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century, (New York:4 Walls/8 Windows, 1996)

American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late, (New York:4 Walls/8 Windows, 1988) Five printings.

The Stiffest of the Corpse: an Exquisite Corpse Reader, 1983-1990, (San Francisco:City Lights Books, 1990)

AUDIO TAPES/CDs:

Into the Maelstrom: The New Orleans Klezmer AllStars performing Codrescu poems.

The Valley of Christmas , (GertTown Records, 1998)

Plato Sucks, (Los Angeles:Dove Audio, 1996)

Fax Your Prayers, (Los Angeles: Dove Audio, 1995)

No Tacos for Saddam, (Los Angeles: Gang of Seven, BMG Distributors)

American Life with Andrei Codrescu, (Washington, DC: NPR) Two one-hour tapes.

FILM:

Road Scholar.
Public Policy Productions. Feature documentary written by and starring Andrei Codrescu, produced by Roger Weisberg, directed by Roger Weisberg and Jean de Segonzac.
Winner: George Foster Peabody Award,Golden Eagle Award, Cine Festival; Chris Award, Columbus Film Festival. Best Documentary: Seattle International Film Festival; Best Documentary: San Francisco Film Festival. Distributed nationally by Samuel Goldwyn Co. Premiered on PBS, Fall 1994.Hallmark Video.

"Codrescu is a wordsmith par excellence...a modern day DeTocqueville... a wry and whimsical, pungently idiosyncratic documentary."
Joe Leydon, The Los Angeles Times

"Codrescu's distinctive perspective makes the trip worth taking." Variety

"Funny, exceptionally moving search for Whitman's America." The Village Voice

"Codrescu is among the most astute contemporary observers of what William Carlos Williams called 'the American grain,' while simultaneously joining playwright Eugene Ionesco as one of Romania's great rememberers of dictatorial things past." Houston Chronicle

"Mr. Codrescu, with the deadpan burlesque of a jaded outsider, rightfully assumes his place among the keener chroniclers of the American spirit, 1990s style. On film as on the radio, his work is defined by the tensions at play between humor and sentiment, between one-liners and aphorism, and between immigrant optimism and dissident cynicism." The New York Times

NATIONAL APPEARANCES:

NPR: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, weekly commentary.
NIGHTLINE, commentary.
ARCHITECTURE, Stereopticon: a monthly column (2000-2003) FUNNY TIMES, occasional contributor.
GAMBIT WEEKLY, columnist (1997-2007)
Appearances on THE TODAY SHOW,THE TONIGHT SHOW,THE DAVID LETTERMAN SHOW, THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW,CNN-INTERNATIONAL HOUR,C-SPAN,ABC NEWS, NBC NEWS, CBS NEWS. Writes commentary and book reviews for THE NEW YORK TIMES,THE BOSTON GLOBE,THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER,THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, NEWSDAY, THE KANSAS CITY STAR,PLAYBOY,SIERRA MAGAZINE, DIGITAL MEDIA, INDEX ON CENSORSHIP.

Lectures extensively, participates in national and international symposia. (see Engagements)

AWARDS:

MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English, LSU
Peabody Award for Road Scholar.
Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Excellence in Travel Journalism
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for poetry; editing; radio
Big Table Poetry Award
Towson State University Literature Prize
General Electric Foundation Poetry Prize
ACLU Freedom of Speech Award
Mayor's Arts Award, New Orleans.
Literature Prize of the Romanian Cultural Foundation, Bucharest
Ovidius Prize

REFERENCE:

Andrei Codrescu and the Myth of America by Kirby Olson
(MacFarland, 2006)

Miracol si catastrofå: a book-length interview in Romanian conducted by Robert Lazu
(Arad, Romania, Editura Hartmann 2005)

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS AUTOBIOGRAPHY SERIES, Volume 19, 1994.
Gale Research. ANDREI CODRESCU.

ANDREI CODRESCU: A BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1966-1990 by Daniel Lee Butcher.
M.A. thesis based on the Codrescu holdings at LSU's Hill Memorial Library.

XAVIER REVIEW, Vol. 20, No.1, New Orleans 2000. "Tanslating Codrescu into Romanian" by Ioana Avadani; "Andreiology" by Julian Semilian; "Codrescu Verses America: A Postmodern Turned Loose" by Tim Lehnert.

ROMANI IN STIINTA SI CULTURA OCCIDENTALA, American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Davis 1992. Encyclopedia: Romanians in Arts & Sciences in the Western world.

SONG OF MY EMERGING SELF: THE POETRY OF ANDREI CODRESCU by Ileana Alexandra Orlich. MELUS, Volume 18, No.3, Fall 1993.

SCRIITORI DIN DIASPORA: ANDREI CODRESCU by Florea Firan
Analele Universitatii din Craiova, Seria Stiinte Filologice, Literatura Romana si Universala, Nr.1-12, 1997

ANDREI CODRESCU’S MIORITIC SPACE by Richard Collins. MELUS, Volume 23, Number 3, Fall 1998.

Some reviews of the Posthuman Dada Guide:

THE VILLAGE VOICE, Tuesday, March 31st 2009

A Pleasing Secret History: Andrei Codrescu's Posthuman Dada Guide
Tzara ain't so bizarra, says NPR essayist
By Eli Epstein-Deutsch

The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess
By Andrei Codrescu
Princeton, 235 pp., $16.95

Dada: An absurdist art movement declaring itself against rationality, tradition, and—above all—Dada. Catholic mystic Hugo Ball and poet/impresario Tristan Tzara launched it in Zurich as World War I blazed all around.

Posthuman: A sci-fi term that came of age in the mid-1980s through texts like Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. It's what we homo sapiens supposedly become when technological enhancements allow us to transcend our biology.

The Posthuman Dada Guide: A hard-edged, rapier-like volume, perfect for sliding into a back pocket of skinny hipster pants or stabbing into the complacent underbelly of bourgeois (or bourgeois-bohemian) society. Authored by NPR commentator and essayist Andrei Codrescu, it offers a headier-than-usual tour of the early-1900s avant-garde, sprinkled with sex appeal for the would-be MySpace-age revolutionary. Jacket blurbs from the likes of Josephine Baker and Aleister Crowley affirm the Guide's period credentials. Meanwhile, the whole thing is a kind of hypertext, composed of cross-referenced "database" entries—so you can't doubt its cyberpunk legitimacy.

The Guide's Web-savvy structure isn't just a gimmick: It aids in the seamless formation of Codrescu's manic associative trains, which reach to the Middle Ages and back, tracing elements from surrealism to gothic vampire cults, Communist revolutions to Christian carnivals, artists' love for Peggy Guggenheim to differences between American and European witch hunts. This book might've vied with Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces for the subtitle A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.

As art theory, the Guide could even be preferable to a college seminar on modernism: I'd take its page-long analysis of why poor people make modernist artwork and rich people buy it over Clement Greenberg's classic essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" any day. Codrescu takes potshots at academics' sacred cows, such as the pessimistic notion that "Dadaism" is obsolete, a corpse to be dissected. He insists it's been alive and well, and he wants to keep it that way.

He also places Dada on a broader historical stage than it usually receives, mingling it with world politics. Hence the book's main framing device: a hypothetical chess game played by Tristan Tzara, the soul of Dada, and Lenin, who apparently gets to represent the Posthuman. It's a tantalizing conceit. In 1916, Lenin plotted revolution just down the road in Zurich from where Tzara (a future fair-weather Stalinist) was helping invent Dada performance at the Cabaret Voltaire. The two men never met, but think if they had! Here, their imagined rivalry dramatizes the struggle Codrescu views as central to the last 100-odd years of Western civilization—between "mindless, repetitious" mechanization on the one hand and "drunken," "anarchic" spontaneity on the other.

Of course, Tzara and Lenin were both fighting against the tyranny of traditional elites. Yes, Lenin liked mechanization and believed in rationality. The Dadaists' contempt for both of these things, on the other hand, was largely directed at the bourgeois-capitalist war machine; they were hardly anti-socialist. Meanwhile, the Italian Futurist avant-garde—Dada's major contemporary, which barely gets a paragraph from Codrescu—idolized the war machines while still hating rationality, the bourgeoisie, and the Leftists. In other words, Codrescu's categories don't always divide up as neatly as he suggests. In fact, sleight of hand may be involved in some of his key arguments. Nevertheless, he's such an entertaining conjurer that you often just want to let him get away with it.

THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE, April 1, 2009

Professional provocateur Andrei Codrescu's latest work is a guidebook to a strange new era, by Susan Larson, Book editor

Even for professional provocateur Andrei Codrescu, he of the playful intelligence and sardonic wit, this new book, "The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess," (Princeton University Press, $16.95), is quite something.

It's out there -- a chronicle of an imagined chess game between V.I. Lenin and Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada, set in the cafe culture of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916, amid the ferment of bohemianism and revolution. It's a scholarly work, with extensive footnotes; it's a work of imagination; it's a guidebook to a strange new era. It's a call to remember humanity in a post-human time, and an incitement. To read it is to light a mental fuse.

Creating the character of Tristan Tzara was easy for Codrescu; he is devoted to the poet's work and named one of his sons after him. "The name Tristan Tzara was one of those we whispered around when I was 16 years old," Codrescu said, speaking by phone from Louisiana State University, where he is the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature. This is his last semester before he retires after a long teaching career.

"When I started to write poetry, we knew in Romania that there were these forbidden poets who packed a dynamic charge; the other was Lucien Blaga." Codrescu's eldest son is named Lucien.

"Just the sound of their names caused a frisson of revolt or rebellion," Codrescu said. "Later, when I left Romania, I started reading him in French and learned that he wasn't just an avant garde poet but the founder of an art movement that had profound influence on a lot of artists and writers."

Lenin was somewhat more difficult. "I had to recover Tzara and bring him to rightful dimensions, but in the case of Lenin, it was the opposite," Codrescu said.

"He was bigger than life, drummed into our heads since I was a child. So I had to bring him down to some human dimension. So I read quite a few books, read Solzhenitsyn's book on Lenin, read Trotsky on Lenin. There's even a film of Lenin speaking on the Internet. I tried to look at as much physical evidence as there was. He turned out to be a perfect example of an ideologue obsessed with revolution and the logical resolution of history."

Part of the charm of Codrescu's book is the lively milieu.

"Europe was at war, Zurich was neutral and it served many purposes," he said. "All the refugees of Europe came there to get away from war -- artists and spies and revolutionaries, every kind of war-tossed riffraff. Tzara and Lenin were there. It was the city of Carl Jung. Einstein was there. There was this incredible concentration of superheated brains in a state of agitation in a somewhat peaceful bourgeois Swiss town. Even if they didn't know each other, it was enough that they passed each other on the street.

"They invented a movement in the middle of a work crisis. There was no economy to speak of, they were all poor artists, but every night they made art, had a cabaret. They had fun. It was a really good time for a joyous explosion of 'I don't really care about economies, I care about my soul.'¤"

The book was inspired by a meeting with a Princeton University Press editor at the Frankfurt Book Fair. "We had a 15-minute conversation, and that was it," Codrescu said. "Now I'm writing another one, '1001 Nights, Scheherezade's Bodies, Notes on Narration and Extinction.'¤"

And yes, Codrescu plays chess: "We have in Romania, two sports -- soccer and chess, and the guys who play soccer were the brutes and they beat us up. Chess, oddly enough, was an obsession in the state that Lenin sets up later. Chess was being taught at all levels in the schools."

Dada continues to inspire Codrescu to this day. "It never allowed itself to be defined like other avant garde movements," he said. "Dada insisted on the raw energy of unconsciousness and freedom. And it's stayed attractive to young people. Neodadas keep being reborn, and some are very influential. We do this a lot, we try to confine things to a certain historical time and keep them safely there. Then they come out of the box and we realize how fierce and savage they are. You can't do without that if you're an artist."

"The Posthuman Dada Guide" is new even for Codrescu, with its hybrid form of guide, meditation, history, invention. The author of numerous collections of poetry, autobiography, essays ("New Orleans, Mon Amour" collects 20 years of writing just about New Orleans), and several novels, he is always at work, seemingly at play.

What is he going to do in retirement? "Whittle. I'm going to start to whittle," he said, deadpan. "Maybe grow grapes there up at my place on the border of Arkansas and Missouri on the Buffalo River. It's a wilderness. But I still have my apartment in New Orleans and I mean to spend at least two or three months a year there. And the rest of the time I'll read and write in these mountains."

Book editor Susan Larson can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , at nola.com/books or 504.826.3457.

LOS ANGELES TIMES, March 29, 2009
by Carly Berwick

The job is gone, the 401(k) is gutted, college tuition is due, and "Grey's Anatomy" is a shadow of its former self. Can't decide whether to cry or laugh? Laugh at absurdity, laugh at hardship, laugh at poverty, says Andrei Codrescu in his maddening, enlightening, self-contradictory, highly amusing new book, "The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess." It's what dada -- the manic, prankish art-cult of wartime and depression -- advises.

Codrescu, the NPR commentator and author, has rolled into one slim guide a postmodern self-help manual, a history lesson, a love letter to dissident poets, a hard jab at communism and a veiled autobiography. Dada was the name given to the collection of unholy noises, obscene poems and Picasso etchings displayed in Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire in1916 by a motley assembly of war refugees, among them Frenchpoet Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball and his wife, Emmy Hennings. Marcel Duchamp, with his rotated urinal, became the most famous Dadaist, although he eventually renounced everything except chess -- a very Dada gesture itself.