NICHOLAS SYRIANUS KATSAFANAS
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nicholaskatsafanas [at] gmail [dot] com

AMERICAN EPIC POEMS (>.667)
Echoes = Consonance + Assonance
[Echoes] / Syllables = Self-Similarity
=Modal Slant Rhyme


S+P (ΣΎΝΝΕΦΟ ΚΑΙ ΠΡΊΑΠΟΣ) [2025]
Cloud Strife of FF7 and the Greek God Priapus, both virtually depicted with shifting images depicted across eras—from Playstation 1 to Playstation 5, Democratic Athens to Imperial Rome—one gripping a Buster Sword that's, of course, vaguely phallic, and the other wielding a gigantic phallus that's, of course, often employed as a deadly weapon, both psychologically tortured via an ambiguous demigod-adjacent genetic lineage (Jenova and Aphrodite?)—this poem investigates these mirror images over the course of 20 cantos.
Mode: >.667

Excerpt
Canto I to "footnote to Plato or whatever"
(Jazz Edit)

ARCHIVAL AMERICAN EPIC POEMS (>.667)

$14.28 IS MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN $14.00 [2023]
John Hawkes rightfully noted the superfluous nature of plot, character, setting, and theme. In addition, Symeon The New Theologian's The Divine Eros was certainly an epic poem.
Mode: >.667

METROPOLIS + ISOSCELES [2021]
Adam Metropolis and Larry Isosceles, two moderately opinionated Greek theologians, share their thoughts on the true nature of the number 1.99999 repeating and various theories of the so-called Western world.
Mode: >.667

Note: Unlike some contemporary poetry these are meant to read (or at least "mouthed") aloud.

SELF-SIMILARITY IN THE EXTENDED LINE (w/ REFERENCE TO BIG PUN)

There’s “measurement” and “division”; there’s “self-similarity“ and “syllabic interval”.

There are two crucial elements that, at this point, it’s imperative for us to define if we’re going to continue to write poems. The first is the syllable, which is a simple unit; the syllable is unitary, a simple mathematical unit. But the second element is the echo. The echo is relational, something that exists only as a derivative of the unitary syllable. The echo is a mist, a notable participation in Likeness across two or more of these units, separated by a reasonable spatial distance, connected temporally via speech.

The echoes, in aggregate, become a measurement of self-similarity.

The line or block of text is composed of “syllables” and the echoes are the “measurements of likeness” between these fundamental elements. This will be the case for either in an individual line or a block of text that’s then either left as a block or then diced up into set intervals after the fact.

The canto itself is a “self-similar line”, and the (epic) poem is a “self-similar wave”, both of which come into being via measurement. The measurement defines the “mode” — a quotient range (>.667; .650-.800, etc) is just a variable restriction, like a mode.

These blocks of text could also be called “macrotones” in a sense, and by that I mean they have a measured quotient of self-similarity (which expresses itself via sound) that defines the unit, that can’t be divided without changing essentially. A macrotone of .754 even if divided equally into two will change essentially, it will no longer be .754. Whereas a microtone takes a tone and divides it — a macrotone is an aggregation of sound.

But the best example of all of this isn’t in Whitman or Pound or Ginsberg or Ashbery; it’s just the last line of the first verse of Big Pun’s “Twinz.”

“Dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know
that we riddled some middleman who didn't do diddily”

“[D]ead [i]n the [m][i][d]dle of [L][i]ttle [I]t[a][l][y] [l][i]ttle [d][i]d we know
that we r[i][d]dled some [m][i][d]dle[m]an who [d][i][d]n't [d]o [d][i][d]d[i][l][y]”

31:31 .100

The self-similarity of “1.00” — peak lyricism? There are no fixed syllables per line here, and there’s no fixed pattern of stressed syllables, and there’s no technical end-rhyme, because although “Italy” and “diddily” might technically rhyme, in the incessant referencing back upon itself of the line, this outright rhyme is diluted by various the D’s, soft I’s, and L’s that ricochet violently across the line, engaging in fractional portions of consonance and assonance. An echoing. What I might even call a modal slant rhyme.

POEMS THAT DON'T STRICTLY RHYME (SYLLABIC, TEXTSPLIT, FREE VERSE, ETC)

MECHANISM AND DIALOGUE [2025]
An American Epic Poem consisting solely of spoken dialogue by Ingo S, an adroit remote viewer, and the entities (a school bus sized orb, floor fan, and a tic tac shaped "UAP") he encounters during his various out of body sojourns.
Mode: 34-55 (8th Interval)

FEELINGS COME FROM GAIN OF FUNCTION LABS [2024]
48 lyric poems in the 8th Interval (34-55 syllables per line).

12 TONES OF TUMULT: A COMEDY [2023]
Two MUFON investigators investigate a strange series of incidents involving microtonal pianos.

UPDATES

—10.31.2025: The S+P Official PDF is now available for download above.
—10.17.2025: "Buying Soju in Pesos is Basically Treason" is now on Substack.
—10.10.2025: "Neo-Fascism & The Moldbuggian Paradox" is now on Substack.
—10.08.2025: The paperback for Blue Hydrangea, a Zuihitsu from Katreena Dayacap (disclosure: my wife, whom I'm married to), is now available via The Blue Velvet Review. My blurb: "Blue Hydrangea is a Zuihitsu of considerable scope and depth, perhaps the best example of the genre in recent American literature in my view. Katreena at her peak powers becomes one with the pen, not metaphorically, but actually synthesizing herself with the writing utensil until the subject-object assumption becomes a product of absurdist fiction."
—09.16.2025: "Koreatown Bok Choy" (50% of S+P: Σύννεφα και Πρίαπος) will be serialized in 5 weekly Wednesday installments on The Blue Velvet Review beginning on Wednesday, September 17, 2025 through Wednesday, October 15, 2025.

THE MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue was a screamo outfit led by Nicholas Syrianus Katsafanas, active from 2019-2020. The band's lyrics consisted primarily of tanka poems; it played one live show at an open mic at The Parlour in Providence RI.



the folly of juvenile athletics

juveniles in this
country are forced to compete

in sporting events
organized by resident
imbeciles and pedophiles


grocery stores

grocery stores are
casinos of delicious

emulsifiers
i love some maltodextrin
in my coffee it's yummy!


asexually glancing at guys in the gym

i saw a guy at
the gym who looked a lot like

muammar gaddafi
who died in the street with a
bayonet shoved up his ass


reminiscing on the spanish civil war

george orwell said that
journalists were pernicious

actors when it came
to the spanish civil war
they may still tell fibs today


working out my biceps

i enjoy having
sex as much as the next guy

but i don't like all
of this flexing of muscle
our biceps aren't penises


the true intentions of the straight a student

these straight a students
are future murderers they

turn blind eyes to our
inconvenient questions and
enjoy hagiography


my yiayia

i had a dream my
yiayia sat in a wheelchair

and told a guy she
was someone she wasn't so
i said sir: that's my yiayia


feeding ducks

feeding ducks i thought
about numbers and how we

don't know for sure they
don't have personalities
maybe number three's a dick


at rite aid

i saw chris conklin
in line at rite aid he looked

twenty years older
and i thought eventually
the two of us will be dead


cow butts

our latest findings
in science suggest when cows

fart profane methane
gas is released from cow butts
emerges pure pollution