Xexoxial Editions classic in new edition—
TRILOBITE by mIEKAL aND
2006, 76 pages, 6 x 9,
b&w $12. 4th edition. Postage included.
ISBN 0-9770049-2-9 | ISBN 978-0-9770049-2-8
Imagine the days of visual poetry before the widespread use of computers. Copy machines were the black & white lens through which the daily collage of headlines, fonts, graphic noise, clippings were reconstituted. Each component piece specifically found (selected) from quadrillions of possible choices. Pen knife, glue stick & boxes of discarded magazines were always waiting their turn. At the time, there was something perfect about this chaotically imperfect practice. This is how books were made.
Trilobites are short one page poems, typo-fossils embedded with syntactical mysteries & multiple possible references, missing links between semantic precision & indecipherable code. This book was originally published by Xerox Sutra Editions in 1983.
"We know trilobites existed through the fossil record, fortuitous encounters with geochemical processes. We know Miekal And’s Trilobite because the work flat-out matters millenniums later, because the chemistry—mix of text, image, collage, collage/image, image/collage, text—combusts, conflagrates, bursts into our presence today, a bright, blinding flash to remind us of what came before at the same time pointing toward more, to the future, toward now."
—Crag Hill
"interesting you call it visual poetry, which it is, but wanted to know
was the text stenciled or lifted from existing page text.
has b porter feel and pre computer zine aesthetic. 1983, right.
early aND with early L=Anguish is earliest fossil foundings.
where the margins are cut to get to the center of its meaning what it means.
there, to interpret. decypher"
—nico vassilakis
“mIEKAL aND’s Trilobite is important pre-digital work that advanced the outgrowth of visual poetry from its origins in concrete poetry to a new but related idiom. Trilobite’s ingenious juxtapositions of images and variable fonts create haiku-like pieces whose perceptions mean and be in ways that conventional linear text or traditional visual art cannot achieve independent of each other. In the course of creating his forerunner’s art, aND infuses his aesthetic and social commentary with a sense of humor that is simultaneously wicked and playful. The republication of Trilobite is an important and welcome occasion.”
—Vernon Frazer
mIEKAL aND is the author of more than 20 books of visual-verbal literature, poetry & fiction. Recent efforts have focussed on completing Samsara Congeries, a lifelong cycle of poetic hyper-narrative incarnations spanning 30 years.
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