Fractal Economies

by Beaulieu, Derek

• ISBN13: 9780889225398
• ISBN10: 0889225397
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-02-01
• Publisher: Talonbooks Ltd

Summary

In fractal economies, derek beaulieu pushes the limits of poetry and poetics by grinding language through the mill of photocopiers, found material, collage, printmaking, frottage and Letraset--creating a new language for the genre. These "fractal economies," or series of increasingly complex replications of forms through the repeated application of a fixed set of rules, challenge the status quo of poetry and of the politics of language itself, which is, with respect to any human script yet deciphered, capitalist in its very origin. Letters are freed from their "normal" behavior, machines are let loose to create on their own and the borders between poetry and artwork are blurred. In an intriguing and well-argued afterword, beaulieu also theorizes ways that concrete poetry--poetry that deals with language in a physical, material way--can move forward into the twenty-first century beyond the limitations of the page, the author and even the poem itself.

Table of Contents

problems in composition	9	(6)
surface:
velvet touch lettering	15	(7)
selectum	22	(2)
untitled	24	(1)
dream poem	25	(1)
untitled	26	(1)
ascend	27	(1)
untitled	28	(1)
dec 27	29	(2)
rpt	31	(1)
sinus headache	32	(1)
summer skies	33	(1)
vocabulary	34	(3)
depression:
portrait	37	(4)
untitled	41	(1)
&/or	42	(5)
a comprehensive force between the cam & the follower	47	(3)
framing the narrative	50	(1)
new directions in canadian poetry	51	(1)
discourse on paranoia	52	(3)
text/er	55	(1)
sheet music	56	(3)
trig	59	(4)
blister:
pitt graphit 129904 4B	63	(16)
an afterward after words: notes toward a concrete poetic	79	(12)
Works Cited	91	(4)
Acknowledgments	95