This essay and illustrations were presented at the Avant Writing Symposium 2010 at Ohio State University. The Sackners were in attendence at this lecture.Marvin Sackner contributed a "blurb" for this book: Wow! I attended the Avant Writing conference where Nico Vassilakis composed staring@poetics and marvel how he is able to perform the formidable multitasking of writing this long poem and illustrating it with stunningly beautiful, computer generated, visual letter poems as his take on their emotional, visual impact while remaining attentive to the many oral presentations at this conference. But I shouldn't be surprised - I have followed his poetic career for many years and found him to be one of the most challenging, cutting-edge, American poets today. The long poem or the visual poems are each worth the price of the book. This book deserves a place in any library of contemporary poetry. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.