The Testament of François Villon - A. B. Robinson

“Were Samuel Johnson reborn intact a few decades ago, they might have written this variant on Villon’s last will and testament, but they probably would rather have written some computer games and smoked more ganja than anyone at their coffee shop—until, that is, pandemic broke out and problematized everything not already alienated. Instead, we have this relentlessly realistically divergent and diverting page-turner, touching everything within reach of sight and memory, as it somersaults down the moments that make up lost time and the occupations that take up the inadequate space of our virtual and computed age. To read it is to breathe the sigh of relief for belonging, like it or not, to our mysteriously common, privileged, doomed positions in a cosmos we find more distant all the while, their nodes perpetually referential to some self-named Andy, who welcomes you to contemplate your own while riding shotgun on the high roads and byways to ambiguity and oblivion. Don’t miss any of them.” - Steve Benson

“As Villon’s testament becomes Robinson’s testimony, translation scrambles the difference between signal and noise, becoming a vehicle for transition, opening a portal to otherness. This is a fully embodied art song channeled thru the static and crackle of low-fi radio, an extraordinary drag performance lip-synced in the shadows of police violence. But it’s also translation practiced as a kind of “new narrative,” transmuting gender into other forms of kinship and communion—with both the dead and the living— as Robinson draws Villon into the company of Jack Spicer’s Lorca and Kathy Acker’s Rimbaud, Robert Glück & Bruce Boone’s La Fontaine, and kari edwards’s Jeanne d’Arc. In short, The Testament of Francois Villon conducts a transfer of exquisite energy, charging the space between source text and target text with the rage aroused by our present moment and promise for renewed life.” - Rob Halpern