[New-Poetry] Poems about inanimate objects only

[Anny Ballardini]

I also have Crystallography here, 
such a wonderful book to hold in your hands,
you will love it Bob, or whoever is going to buy it.

>From Lucid Writing:

...

The first edition of this book was published by the old Coach House Press in 1994. When Margaret McClintock, the editor, accepted the book for publication, she admitted that no one in her office had the skill to typeset such an unorthodox manuscript. Surprised that a press renowned for the quality of its design could no longer call upon the talents of its traditional typesetters, I brazenly declared that, if necessary, I would teach myself the software and set the book myself.
Crystallography appeared in print only because my friend Katy Chan, a designer, donated weeks of her own expertise to this meticulous enterprise, letting me supervise while she did the layout on my behalf. We dragooned friends into trimming by hand more than one thousand acetate tip-ins, the cost of which I absorbed because the publisher could not afford it. We also faced many frustrating limitations in the software used, and often we had to resort to makeshift solutions. 
The second edition of this book attempts to redress some of these intractable typographic problems that went unresolved in the original printing. Since the work, predicates itself upon an aesthetics of structural perfection, these deficiencies, although minor, have often caused me private concern. Most improvements incorporate changes proposed in 1994 by Katy Chan, but never executed by her because of economic decisions and logistic deadlines imposed by the publisher. 
Whenever possible I have streamlined the design for the sake of a much cleaner, much tighter look. Typos have been corrected. Poems once crowded onto a single page in order to limit the length of the work have expanded to fill more space. I have altered the layout of some pieces in order to accommodate the parameters of the new font, and a few weaker poems have undergone either excision (if their presence seems extraneous) or revision (if their presence seems obligatory).
...

  From: Bob Grumman 
  Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 9:11 PM


  Thanks, Skip.  I actually met Christian a while back but he was doing mostly sound poetry I wasn't getting--plus hanging with a different crowd than mine.  But I'll have to look into his stuff.  

  By the way, my blog entry for today is on the poem of his you brought to our attention--with you acknowledged as its finder, and your dots re-discussed.  It's at http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/Index.html.

  --Bob
    From: Skip Fox 
    Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 12:56 PM


    Bob-



    Yes, come to think of it, Bok would seem to be immediately up your alley. _Crystallography_. Over 150 pages of intelligent work, some with transparent overlays and crystalline or fractalic (?) figures. Also, the pataphysics which he and others have revived from Oulipo days may be of significant interest to you:



    http://nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-1877-7



    That's his book on the matter, but there is much on the web. (It's not strongly in my flow of interests, but it _is_ interesting.)



    His _Eunoia_ is a brilliant book of constraint based literature:



    http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bok/eunoia_final.html



    Most people do not believe what hs is able to do. Each fascicle has only a single vowel. Each uses 97% of the monovowelic words. Each has a banquet, a sex scene, a perilous sea voyage, etc. Very interesting.



    Skip Fox

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