A Note on A Supplement to Imagining Language
This portfolio, or supplement, is not really intended as any kind of prosthesis to Imagining Language, nor does it intend to compensate for any possible lack in IL. It is an attempt to model some of the ways that this big, strange book may serve as a kind of unsanctioned yet extremely compelling stance towards knowledge, inheritance, and language. And perhaps more practically, this portfolio is specifically geared for those unfamiliar with the book: I wish to present a slight glimpse of the range and type of work to be found in Imagining Language.
Obviously, a modest selection of material arranged by a still-apprenticing editor such as myself can hardly even gesture at the richness and range of the material in a 600+ page anthology curated by two of our leading scholars, poets and critics. Both McCaffery and Rasula have authored some of the most compelling books of the last twenty years, from Rasula's American Poetry Wax Museum and Tabula Rasula and (my favorite) This Compost to McCaffery's Theory of Sediment and Prior to Meaning and (my favorite) Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine (with bp Nichol). So, when I heard whispers a year or two ago from Joe Donahue of this bizarre, beautiful anthology that the two of them put together in the late 90s, it reminded me of this recurring dream I've had since I was in high school of finding a lost album by my favorite rock band in some dusty record store (three bands have been the dream one: Pearl Jam, Guided by Voices, The Band). Except this time, miraculously, the holy object was actually in circulation.
Imagining Language is comprised of five parts: Revolution of the Word (which features a large selection of work from the great journal of the 20s and 30s, transition); Oralities, Rituals, and Colloquies; Lost and Found in Translation; Letters to Words; and Matter and Atom. This portfolio only attempts to touch upon a couple of the book's emphases. I've mostly attempted to track down additional work from writers and figures highlighted in the book, or else worked off of the editors' extensive bibiliography or, in a couple of cases (like with Henri Bergson), I included material that seemed relevant. I've almost exclusively brought in texts which were already in the public domain.
The selection of writing in this portfolio's transition section presents poems and other material from American expatriates Eugene Jolas (the founder and co-editor, with Elliot Paul) and Abraham Lincoln Gillespie (a frequent contributor), both of whose work I guarantee you will find to be thrilling and revelatory. I'd like to extend effusive thanks to Betsy Jolas for permission to reprint Jolas' poems and prose, and to Richard Milazzo, who edited The Syntactic Revolution, which collects the (known) entirety of Gillespie's output, and was the source for the material found in this portfolio. (A side note: The Syntactic Revolution is now out of print, and Gillespie's work has entered the public domain. We need another publisher-saint.) Also included in this section are Jolas' translations of a Kurt Schwitters poem and an essay by Andre Breton, as well as two poems from Sidney Hunt; all of these are drawn from the pages of transition itself (as is Jolas' translation of a section of Arno Holz's Phantasus, which I've placed in the "Letters to Words" section).
The "Communities, Divinites, etc" section combines the emphasis of two subsets of IL's Oralities, Rituals, and Colloquies chapter, with the original subsets being titled "Communities" and "Divinities and Aliens." Perhaps because of my own personal inclinations, I've focused more on the 'divinity' angle, presenting mystical writings by Emanuel Swedenborg, Jacob Böhme, and AE (George Russell). Also included in this miscellany section is the 17th century knight Sir Thomas Urquhart's The Jewel, "a volume Urquhart prepared in an attempt to restore his depleted fortune."1 I've also included selections from another unique 17th century text featured in IL, John Bulwer's Chirologia; or the Natural Language of the Hand, a kind of proto-semiotic handbook three hundred or so years ahead of its time.
The last section of this portfolio is titled "Letters to Words" and intends to correspond to some degree to the section of Imagining Language that bears the same title. The contemporary artist Michael Winkler has graciously contributed a previously unpublished work entitled "Flip-Flop." His "Where Signs Resemble Thoughts" is excerpted in IL. Also in this section is the previously noted selection from Arno Holz, whose focus on, in Friedrich Kittler's words, "unconscious optokinetics," to me anticipates some of the concerns of the great American poet Ronald Johnson, whose erasure of Milton, Radi Os, is featured in IL. This portfolio presents Johnson's "ABC Spire" from ARK, his brilliantly constructed epic. I would like to thank Peter O'Leary, Johnson's literary executor, for permission to present this, one of Johnson's most beautiful Spires. The rest of this section focuses on work of a speculative and discursive nature, including the mysterious Edna Sarah Beardsley, whose highly original writings have apparently gone completely unnoticed except for in Imagining Language and now in Fascicle. Also featured in this section is Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher whose Process & Reality was essential to Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, among others; the selection here is from his small Symbolism book. Whitehead's near-, or semi-near-, contemporaries Henri Bergson, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Benjamin Paul Blood are also featured, all of whom speculate on the relation of role of language as signifier, the nature of knowledge and perception, and sundry other relevant topics with varying types and degrees of rigor.
Additionally, Jed Rasula has been generous enough to engage in a brief interview to provide additional context and information regarding Imagining Language. Additionally, those interested in Imagining Language should also check out Steve McCaffery's North American Center for Interdisciplinary Poetics site, where you can find related material, including information about McCaffery's theories of Para-Poetics.
I hope you will poke around in this portfolio, as I think there's quite a bit here worth your attention. Ideally, the work here will help spur you to investigate, or re-investigate, the anthology itself, surely one of the most important, entertaining and valuable texts of recent memory.
Tony Tost
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
February 9, 2006
back to Imagining Language supplement
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1. IL, p.206
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