Blasphemy is holy—and exciting, outrageous literature in Hilton Obenzinger’s new book Treyf Pesach (Unkosher Passover).

Join Hilton, and jazz musicians Don Alberts, Chris Amberger and Noel Jewkes, at Bird & Beckett on Thursday. March 29th for an evening of poetry and treyf that’s un-kosher for Passover or any other time!

Novelist Paul Auster declares that this collection of poems “strikes with all the force of an exploding bomb—because it speaks the truth.” Treyf Pesach presents radical departures from traditional rituals, formats and conventions: alternative Passover Seders, Yom Kippur liturgy, Thanksgiving prayers, psalms and other poems in the form of proclamations, resolutions, jazz improvisations, incantations, rants, orations, comic monologues, oil spills, life spills, songs, visions, undocumented documents, borders, suns, farewells, minutes of meetings, talk-stories.

In this book the symbolic plate is arrayed with treyf (un-kosher food) and the story of the Exodus with untypical meanings, whiskey instead of wine, recounting the continual slavery of wars and military occupations. The poems in Treyf Pesach have been written over the course of years and spring from the context of various cruel travesties — from vicious aggressions, to absurd walls, to smallpox blankets, to oil spouting across the Gulf, and more, all framed by the first months of the Trump regime.

Hilton Obenzinger writes poetry, fiction, history, and criticism, and is the recipient of the American Book Award.

According to poet Diane di Prima, “he is the American Jonathan Swift.”