WAR & OTHER POEMS

by Philip Newton

3/7/2025 –Durt Fibo in Der Koolschrank

KOOLSCHRANK PRESS is the newly-launched publishing house of Der Koolschrank –the world’s leading Surrealist newspaper- and can be accessed via the newspaper’s header menu as BOOKSTORE, or at its own stand-alone website (see direct link below). We already have a scheduled catalogue of poetry, novels, and fine arts lined up, but it is a unique triumph to begin our venture with Philip Newton’s WAR And Other Poems.  

In literature, some works are epochal, defining the times as no other could. WAR was written during and for just such a seasonal midnight, and it rightly assumes such importance besides The Wasteland, or as this generation’s Howl. With its timeliness, its immediacy and urgency, it is no coincidence that we elected to publish WAR as our opening salvo.

On societal battlefields replete with non-stop firefights, using money as well as bullets, there remain a few objects which have no apparent worth but are of immeasurable value. Art and literature have always been the shattered survivors, jewels of knowledge, or beliefs of some future. They are value itself.

True art is no mere sleight of hand, but is genuine magic. It suddenly creates windows where there were none before. And through those windows are worlds where there were none before. One can open them, slip out and explore if one likes. Returning is optional.

Philip Newton is one of the most natural magicians. In WAR And Other Poems, the worlds he conjures up before us reveal startling juxtapositions of wayfaring challenges, horizons of urges, the inhumanity of human cruelty, and labyrinthine rooms of love, hope and mercies. This volume expands his breadth in the living library of Surrealist poetry.

The glitzy publishing houses, which long ago forsook pretensions to literary art, have been inverted by their determination to keep the public as stupid as financially feasible. With the publication of our first book, and through all future releases, Koolschrank Press stands fast on the peaks of quality.

WAR And Other Poems is available at https://koolschrankpress.com