macabre magic (13. 907)

Shortly after leaving the priesthood to pursue the vocations of poet and playwright, Joseph Pintauro collaborated with illustrator Norman Laliberté to write his Seasonal Quartet: Rainbow Box, a tetralogy of four volumes published as a cube. Along with The Peace Box, The Rabbit Box, A Box of Sun, The Magic Box was a thanatopsis and a reflection on how death is not something to be regarded with dread, a consequence of living—
though that impulse to fear the hereafter probably is the driver behind much of what we all do and don’t do—and is both very much a product of the aesthetic of the late 1960s and early 1970s and timeless in its currency in terms of style and as a heuristic for gauging and dispelling haunted, halting anxieties with tricks and treats—likewise very much sought after then as now. More from the Daily Heller at the link above.