ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents John Strausbaugh, writing in New York Press, August 2-8, 2000, Volume 13, Number 31 commented on this book and the author as follows. "Kenneth Goldsmith came by the office to show me a book of poetry he knew I'd appreciate. Not a normal book of poetry, and not published. It's a black ledger book, fat with 394 8-1/2-by- 11 pages containing more than 350 poems. And not just any poems. These poems form shapes, black & white computer printout silhouettes of birds and men, stars and trees, urns and amphorae; an elephant of words, a poem shaped like a stiff penis, one shaped like a toilet in the White House, others shaped like a rectal thermometer, a church, a lemon, a seal, a snake, a vacuum cleaner, a flowering vagina, a winged griffin, a diagram of a traffic accident, a mushroom cloud, a Mixmaster, a gun, a New Yorker "pissing on the sidewalk." Apollinaire and the Chinese pictograms called Phoenix Dragon writing are the most obvious antecedents. Some are as funny and fantastical...