Böcker av Rosaire Appel

These poems are non-verbal, gestural, asemic -- and deaf. They can't hear me, neither can they hear you.Yet they call themselves poems --- what is a poem?Who decides?When the hand knows what it's doing, is there a problem?

This visual essay uses marks and numbers instead of words. They are fragments and scraps, shredded ideas, remains that coalesce momentarily before disintegrating further. Active rather than solidified, these are traces of traces whose origins no longer exist. We live among traces - language itself is a trace of the mind's wanderings. Shadows are traces, as are echoes, photos, memories, thoughts....

This book transforms email scams about money into poetry about human desire by way of erasure. Both the original and the transformation are presented on facing pages. These emails were accumulating in my junk mail box until I transferred them to my raw materials folder which I open in idle moments. These missives, these attempts to get something from someone for nothing and the language they use ? is it intentional, or is it the result of a translation algorithm? Do these promises of money ever hook anyone? Erasure brings out another layer, no less desperate. The search for connection continues -- for better or worse.