Afterimage was published by Ugly Duckling Presse, New York (2011). It is out of print, although a limited number of original copies are available from the 20-20-20 website. I am sharing the text here in the spirit of digital piracy. The book is divided into five chapters, each of which is posted separately. The text is bracketed with photographs by Naomi Yang - those that open the book follow this introductory note, those that close the book can be found at the end of Chapter V.
Portions of this text were first published in Amplified, ed. Julie Schaper and Steven Horwitz (Brooklyn: Melville House); Poses: Cédrick Eymenier, ed. Matthias Alaguillaume (Paris: Éditions Ordet); The BSC Manual, ed. Bhob Rainey (New Orleans: NO Books); and Figuring Color, ed. Jeremy Sigler and Jenelle Porter (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz). Grateful acknowledgment is made to those editors, and to Anna Moschovakis, editor of the Dossier Series for UDP.
From the back cover:
“In his elegant, lyrical prose, Krukowski records the dream logic of the nightmare that is life permanently trapped in an afterimage of war; where the impossibility of ‘personal history’ makes us cling all the more to subjective particulars. He takes us to locales where we don’t speak the language, and conjures memories that are not ours. Or are they? In this deeply personal book about family and displacement, there is no place to rest. The past kicks out the present and the present sends letters to the future. Even writing evicts its tenants. Which is slightly paradoxical, since Krukowski is so good at it.”
— Jennifer Moxley
“Bookended by the riotously colorful silence of Naomi Yang’s photographs, this is a work about what remains, what lodges in the inner eye and inmost mind and keeps on traveling with us. With the itinerant life of a musician as backdrop, Krukowski’s vivid blocks of text shift through haunted spaces — rooms, dreams, memories — in a very present grapple with the past. And all the while, the book is being written; tenuously, marvelously, it is taking place right before our eyes.”
— Cole Swensen
Contents
I. Books, My Unlucky Obsession
II. Dear Friend
III. Visit to the La Jetée Bar
IV. Dear Poet
V. Flying Down to Rio