Archivi categoria: zines & authors

the optimism of the unwilling / jim leftwich. 2022

The Optimism of the Unwilling
Jim Leftwich
Summer 2022
Nevada

I was I was.
I was thinking. At least I think I was thinking.
Is it possible to think about the fact of 4.6 billion years? I don’t think so.

So. Photographs. We have seen a few, maybe a few hundred thousand. We think we know how to think about photographs.

When are you reading this?
Are you reading it 4.6 billion years after it was written? No.
Are you reading it 4.6 million years after it was written? No.
Are you reading it four thousand and six hundred years after it was written? Maybe. Probably not. But at least I can imagine such a thing.
Are you reading it 460 years after it was written? Could be. I would like to think so.
Are you reading it 46 years after it was written? Sure! Why not? I know: megadroughts, 100-year floods, heat domes, forest fires, resource wars, famines… Another world is possible, and in it you could be reading this… If. If only.
Are you reading it four and a half years after it was written? Yes? Thank you. Where you are, it is January, 2027. I know it isn’t much. But that’s how.. one not much after another… there isn’t any other way.

as con pre re sumes / jim leftwich. 2022

As con pre re SUMES
Jim Leftwich
Summer 2022
Nevada

Assume the weather the flame the feather assume no highways.

Consume the new the rest the time consume no highways.

Presume the nest the next the door presume no highways.

Resume the crest the thirst the name resume no highways.

Assume the sane whether bother assume no highways.

Consume the zest flew tether consume no highways.

Presume the sate the nerve the lather presume no highways.

Resume the boss the curse the seme resume no highways.

Presume the lather resume the seme the preseme the reseme sate no boss no salt asseme the highways are frilled with semic heroes never conseme the nerve of a curse.

unwriting / jim leftwich. 2022

Unwriting
Jim Leftwich
Summer 2022
Nevada

Here it comes again, like an avalanche, oceanic, rolling across the desert, every imaginary uprooted route at once, enough to make you think it has a mind of its own, language cannot be trusted to mind its own business, sit down and shut up, work independently without disturbing others.

The word “unwriting” arrived most recently in my mind’s ear as a misreading of my first thing in the morning no glasses on handscrawled note about “the unwilling”.

What, then, is this unwriting? Is it a rewriting of a misreading? Is it an acknowledgement of misreading as rewriting? Is it the revelation of a parallel text, a parallel universe, another world is possible, the ancient branes of string theory, asemic messages encoded in those astonishing photographs from the James Webb telescope?

I think we know. Life is more than life. Language is more than language. Life is never life and life only. Life is beside itself with joy, beside itself with bewilderment, disbelief, semiosis, mitosis, osmosis, baskets of fish and loaves of bread, the news from far and near, some of which is true, the felt presence of experiential reality.

You can’t step in the same stream walking beside the lake, where the two creeks flow in from the mountains to the west, reading an old book of poems, remembering how it all got started in your tiny little life your tiny little world, what that small patch of the cosmos looked like 5 billion years ago, twice.

That is another reason, if not several, for wandering wide-eyed in the wonder, while the species is surely dying of its own devices, and there is no humanly semiotic future to care for our writings or unwritings, singing, between the two deserts, having driven ourselves softly or brutally insane, such that the human experiment seems to have failed entirely, if we can say so in some sort of poem, what hypothesis exactly was the experiment meant to test?

unorma: universal norms of absurdity / jim leftwich. 2022

UNORMA: Universal Norms of Absurdity
Jim Leftwich
Summer 2022
Nevada

Venn Diagrams glean presentiment where never the twains shall melt. Therein the Vesica Piscis, renumerable counterfactuals, munerates aeration of comeuppance, until the bittern fends.

First, it must be logical, the absurd must be predictable. To live out on the lawn / You must be honest.

Second: the absurd must be predictable; it must be a replica of itself. Do as I say to do, not as the duly unsaid, which is your duty. Unruly: an unmeasured quantity; the quality of being unmeasuring; a cup of what else, unfulfilled.

Third: the absurd is local. Lies about the absurd are global.

Fourth: go forth and multiple, multiply tables, The Plicate Cult of Mults, fables breathe froth before us — you are complicated; try to contain your selves!

The absurd is polysemic, is nothing if not. But you (You!) must remember: this is not Your Uncle’s Absurdity. You inherit what you invent.

Don’t make me tell you the whole treacherous tale again.

3 anthologies of concrete poetry

info thx to Derek Beaulieu:

Download PDFs of 3 exceptional early anthologies of concrete poetry: Text–Sound Texts (1980, https://monoskop.org/log/?p=18969), An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967/2013, https://monoskop.org/log/?p=15439), Astronauts of Inner Space (1966, https://monoskop.org/log/?p=4404) all courtesy Monoskop Log.

tra i (possibili) libri per l’estate, due tic: “la gente non sa cosa si perde” e “qualche uscita. postpoesia e dintorni”

Un grazie particolarmente sentito a Sara Sorrentino e Simone Biundo per aver scelto La gente non sa cosa si perde (Tic) come libro da suggerire per l’estate, da parte del sito La balena bianca https://www.labalenabianca.com/2022/07/13/i-consigli-dellestate-poesia/

Noto con altrettanta e maggiore felicità che un secondo libro Tic è segnalato, nel corpo della stessa rassegna, stavolta da Stella Poli: Qualche uscita. Postpoesia e dintorni, di Jean-Marie Gleize, tradotto da Michele Zaffarano.

graphic novel & graphic journalism: ultimi giorni per la call for proposals di ‘roots§routes’

English below ↓

Ultimi giorni per partecipare alla
Call for Proposals

§Graphic Realities
La linea urgente del Graphic Novel e Graphic Journalism

Anno XII, n°40, Settembre – Dicembre 2022

a cura di Elettra Stamboulis e Viviana Gravano

Abstract Deadline: 20 Luglio 2022

Le graphic novel affrontano tematiche complesse come i razzismi e le questioni identitarie collettive e individuali, così come il graphic journalism sostituisce il reportage fotografico di guerra, diviene lo strumento di conoscenza per le violazioni dei diritti umani nel mondo, diventa azione diretta nella realtà.

Vogliamo dedicare questo numero di roots§routes a quelle graphic novel o opere di graphic journalism che si interessano esplicitamente di fenomeni sociali rilevanti, che agiscono quindi in qualche modo come forme di “art-attivismo”.

… leggi la Call for Proposals QUI

*

§Graphic Realities

Graphic Novel & Graphic Journalism

Year XII, n°40, September – December 2022

curated by Elettra Stamboulis e Viviana Gravano

Abstract Deadline: 20 July 2022

Graphic novels deal with complex topics such as racism and collective and individual identity issues, just as graphic journalism replaces the photographic war reportage, becomes the knowledge tool for human rights violations around the world and becomes direct action in reality.

We would like to devote this issue of roots_routes to those graphic novels or works of graphic journalism that are explicitly concerned with relevant social phenomena, thus acting in some way as forms of  ‘art-activism’.

… read more on roots-routes magazine

asemic writing as a kind of poetry / jim leftwich. 2022

Jim Leftwich

Asemic Writing Is A Kind Of Poetry
Summer 2022 / Utah

If, at times (if not, in fact, all the time), it must seem as if I have no idea what asemic writing is, I can only defend myself through an appeal to my experience of the theory and the practice: asemic writing came into my life as a continuation and an extension of my practice as a poet.

I wrote textual poetry for a little over twenty years before I started making visual poems. After making visual poems for a few years, I started making what was originally called spirit writing (by John M. Bennett, in his capacity as the editor of Lost and Found Times, a magazine of experimental poetry and related matters).

That was in 1997. The following year, Tim Gaze published a small chapbook of my quasi-calligraphic scribblings entitled Spirit Writing. Maybe I didn’t know what I was doing at the time (the theory and history came later), but I had no reason to think of this new development in my work as anything other than poetry.

These days, and maybe for the past fifteen years or so, it seems that very few theorists or practitioners think of asemic writing as a kind of poetry.

Asemic writing, as a kind of poetry, is all but limitless in its potential. We should take the same sort of approach to it’s study. For example: I have been told that asemic writing is all about linguistics. I have no doubt that the study of linguistics, and the application of that study to an engagement with asemic writing, will add substantially to our understanding of the subject. But, as with all other varieties of poetry, linguistics is only one among very many approaches to the study of asemic writing.

I am never interested in having the last word on any of these matters. Maybe I am interested in having the next word — and then, in having had some of the recent words. The conversation around asemic writing is ongoing and, like all conversations around all varieties of poetry, it seems to have no necessary or inevitable end. I am interested in expanding the spectrum of acceptable discourse concerning the subject of asemic writing. I hope my writings on the subject will function as invitations to others to participate in this process.