X E R O L A G E 3 4
Xerolage 34 features two new sequences by David Daniels, whose epic The Gates of Paradise (http://www.thegatesofparadise.com) is featured at UbuWeb. Comprising twenty-two of his shape poems, "The Flowers of Mental Illness" and "The Big Bozo" bear Daniels' torch of unprecedented tradition with elaborate vispo compositions in his signature medium, Microsoft Word. An obsessive devotion to carving out micro-liberations in the totalizing and programmatic structure of (the) Word is at the heart of this poet's formalist genius. If you don't hear a verbalized music ringing contrapuntal thru the dialogue in "Flowers," do unsolve the secret algorithm of visual spacing and shaping that manifests as sonic landscaping in "The Big Bozo." Read Xerolage 34 until the pictures fade or let your eyes cross dazed until the words all blur, the pictures becoming the square root of their unrooted presence. It's a trip either way you look at it. - jUStin!katKO <hypermedia intern> Xexoxial Editions, May 2005
Daniels in his own words:
"I've gotten to the point where I can write out pictures on the computer just about the way you could write longhand, because I've done it for so many years. Some take me a week, and some take me a day . . . It's like weaving or carving. It's very easy in Word . . . I'm using shape as poets use meter." (from an interview with
John Strausbaugh, New York Press http://www.ubu.com/papers/daniels.html)
"So I sent [The Gates of Paradise] to Kenny Goldsmith and I got back a one whole page 8x11 email that said things like, this is a major work of the 20th century. I am going to put the whole thing on UbuWeb. And I couldn’t believe it. Of course, everyone likes to hear that, especially someone who thinks they’re Jesus or something or at least Dickens." (from an interview with Michael Basinski, UbuWeb - see link above)
24 pages, 8.5 x 11, $6 includes postage
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XEXOXIAL EDITIONS
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