Scope and Contents

In this essay, Bok points out that crysallography, which denotes scientific study of crystals, literally means 'lucid writing.' He analyzes writings by Wittgenstein, Escher, Gallois, Deleuze, etc. in this context. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This book is a compendium of Canadian avant garde writing from 1965 to 1985. Margaret Atwood, who contributed an over-view essay of the work produced during those years, collaborated with Bok to organize the selections of experimental fiction by the authors. John Riddell contributed "Pope Leo: El Lope" from Criss-Cross. It is a lipogram using only the letters e, o, l and p. The contribution by bp Nichol is from "Still... a novel that depicts in minute detail the scenography for a potential, but postponed , story... his words provide a kind of textual terrain across which the eye pans like a camera." Steve McCaffery's "Panopticon" is an enigmatic whodunnit...The panopticon symbolizes the maze of words through which the reader must wander, playing the role of invisible spectator." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This issue deals with Pataphysica as expoused by Jarry and current interpretations by Canadian writers. The introductory essay by the Editors, Christian Bok and Darren Werschler-Henry, indicates that " 'Pataphysics (a neologism fraught with polysemy) makes its debut at the turn of the century when Ubu, the nihilist scaramouche, describes himself as a "Professor of 'pataphysics, a branch of science which we have invented and for which a crying need is generally experienced." Jarry precedes the orthography of the French word 'pataphysique with an apostrophe in order to avoid a "simple pun", but ironically enough, such a diacritical mark only signals, as present by proxy, what is absent by edict, so that the word invokes apostrophically the homophonic phrases that it revokes catastrophically. Ubu, for example is a slapstick comedian (pataud physique ) of unhealthy obesity (pateax physique), whose bodily language (patois physique) foments an astounded physics (epatee physique) that is...

Scope and Contents

This work was published for the session on "Innovation and the Carnivalesque in Postmodern Canadian Poetry" at the Northeast Modern Language Association. The text is designed in short spaced paragraphs in two columns. The loose sheet contains variations of Gomringer's poem Silencio by Christian Wagenknecht. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.