This lovely new book from My Dance The Skull is one of the most hermetically optimal word/image collabs since Ernie Busmiller stopped doing “Nancy”. There is seamlessness to the interplay that begs the question: which came first, the words or the art? Wascovich steps outside himself here, eschewing his “standard” clevo/prole/boho approach (which is great, in itself) to engage in a descriptive imagist dialogue with the amazing visuals of Warsaw’s Aleksandra Waliszewska. They are truly working as a tag team for Fantastic Animals. None of the connections is jive or overt, but both these artists feel attuned to a central mystery, a truth that lurks inside the nightmare insect memory of anyone who ever had a heart.

Beautiful as an art book, beautiful as a poetry book, this baby offers it all.

– Byron Coley, Deerfield MA 2011

Matthew Wascovich doggedly pursues the quixotic agenda of delivering potent, ragged, present-day poetry to an overstimulated, attention-deficient, under-reflective world. However, person by person, his message is beginning to click.

– Weasel Walter, Brooklyn, New York 2011

Fantastic Animals (May 2011)

Edition of 100 copies
20 pages – 14 x 21 cm,
Printed on 115gr cyclus, cover on 140gr.

Aleksandra Waliszewska lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts with a degree in painting in 2001, since then she has had around 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions.

Born in 1972, Matthew Wascovich lives in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. He plays music with Scarcity Of Tanks and has published over 80 books of poetry, lyric, and drawing books.