Random Poetry 05 January 24, 2008: ----------------- "thus can books that come I judge come infinite" (By coincidence, the first nine words drawn at random, in this order, from the jumbled lexicon of all words in an English translation of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges) ----------------- Jean Baudrillard remarks that "[c]hance itself is a special effect; it assumes [...] by Christian Bök

Random Poetry 04 January 22, 2008: ----------------- "Contemplate hexagonal air normal closets each the is railing endlessly say great of dictum Centre hexagons and not capital exists librarian elegant the seated up says books remote each and that have established" (An acrostic text, generated by taking two short aphorisms about chance by Jean Baudrillard and using them to "read [...] by Christian Bök

Random Poetry 03 January 18, 2008: ———————————————— "I have seen old men who, for long periods of time, would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly mimic the divine disorder." [A sentence quoted from an English version of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges.] "T TTTT HTTH TTT THH TTH HTH HHHT TTHHTTT [...] by Christian Bök

Random Poetry 02 January 15, 2008: ----------------- "art, by, contemplate, distribution, except, free, galleries, hexagonal, is, just, know, letters, melancholy, number, of, part, quite, railings, shafts, this, universe, variations, with, you, zero." (First appearances of words that begin with a chosen letter of the alphabet in an English translation of "The Library of Babel" by [...] by Christian Bök

Random Poetry 01 January 14, 2008: ----------------- TRIUMVIRATE (The only English word that might be enciphered in the famous, random series of letters cited by Jorge Luis Borges, who writes in "The Library of Babel": "I cannot combine some characters, dhcmrlchtdj, which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible [...] by Christian Bök

Visual Poetics 08 January 11, 2008: ----------------- "Untitled #22" from The Untitled Project by Matt Siber ----------------- Darren Wershler-Henry has argued that, despite rumours of its decline, visual poetry has in fact colonized the entire, iconic landscape of capitalism, creating a graphic terrain already infused with optical artistry—and he goes on to suggest that most [...] by Christian Bök

Visual Poetics 07 January 9, 2008: ----------------- "09 January 2008" from Code X by Mario Cutajar ----------------- Mario Cutajar in Code X has created an algorithm that can convert the text of a webpage into a set of abstract pictures. Every day at 12:01 AM, his program fetches text from the newsfeed at Google and extracts a pattern based upon such formal traits as the length [...] by Christian Bök

Visual Poetics 06 January 4, 2008: ----------------- The Alphabet from Univers Revolved by Ji Lee Harry N. Abrams, 2004 ----------------- Ji Lee has created a 3-D font called Univers Revolved, in which each letter of the alphabet consists of a spatial contour, created by rotating a san-serif, capital letter, 360° around a vertical axis. The resultant set of funnels, toroids, [...] by Christian Bök

Five Avant-Garde Canadians of 2007 December 20, 2007: ----------------- I am embarking upon my vacation for the holidays—but before departing, I am going to propose five of the best books of avant-garde poetry published in Canada during this last year. I recommend them all to any interested readership outside my country: 1. Yesno by Dennis Lee 2. The Alphabet Game by bpNichol 3. Thumbscrews by [...] by Christian Bök

Visual Poetics 05 December 20, 2007: ----------------- "Miss Bodoni" from Studio Pin-Ups by Taylor Lane ----------------- Taylor Lane is a British company, specializing in graphic designs for advertisers, and the corporation has won an Epica Award for publishing a calendar that features twelve pin-ups, each one produced from one of twelve different typefonts—and like any set of [...] by Christian Bök