Jim Leftwich, Some Personal History Involving Asemic Writing, 1996 - 1997

​​Jim Leftwich
SUBJECTIVE ASEMI​​C ​​POSTULATES, PART 2 (2015)​​
​with AM HORSESHOE, Luna Bisonte Prods, 1996​
and a page of spirit writing from LAFT 39, 1997

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Asemic writing did not evolve from handwriting, it​ ​emerged from typewriting, and more specifically​ ​from typing on a keyboard for a computer screen.

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Asemic writing developed from typography, not​ ​from calligraphy.

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Asemic writing is derived from the manipulation​ ​of letter-arrangements in words, phrases and​ ​sentences.

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Asemic writing did not come into being as a​ ​result of emptying the mind and imitating​ ​the processes of nature. It came into being as​ ​a result of activating the mind and analyzing​ ​the processes of writing.

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We can read things that are not written. We can​ ​be frustrated in our attempts to read things that​ ​are not written. But we gain nothing and learn​ ​nothing by choosing to call things that are not​ ​written asemic writing. We look at the sand on​ ​a beach, or the bark on a tree, or the ripples in​ ​a stream, and we can if we wish say that we are​ ​reading what we are looking at, or that we are​ ​unable to read what we are looking at, even​ ​though in some ways it reminds us of writing,​ ​but it does not become writing if we take a​ ​photograph of it, it only becomes a photograph,​ ​and it does not become writing if we make a​ ​rubbing or an imprint, it only becomes a rubbing​ ​or an imprint.

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Asemic writing began as a kind of experimental​ ​textual poetry, not as visual poetry or visual​ ​writing. It was in a sense a by-product of the​ ​processes of recombination, permutation,​ ​improvisation, and iteration.

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Asemic writing has as one of its immediate​ ​antecedents my experiment of rewriting a​ ​John M. Bennett poem while thinking about​ ​Stephen Smale's horseshoe map and the​ ​concept of topological mixing. Words and​ ​letters that begin far apart will eventually​ ​be close together, and words and letters​ ​that begin close together will eventually​ ​be far apart.  The variations are at least​ ​in theory endless. (cf., Am Horseshoe,​ ​John M. Bennett & Jim Leftwich, Luna​ ​Bisonte Prods, 1996)

I took this kind of procedural experimentation​ ​and added to it a subjective, processual stage​ ​of associational improvisation. One source​ ​text could provide the initial conditions, so to​ ​speak, for the generation of a long series of​ ​derivative texts.

The kinds of texts produced via these procedures​ ​and processes seemed at least potentially​ ​destined for asemia. The crucial aspect of this​ ​critical concept was (and is) its existence as​ ​potential, not as actuality.

Therefore, then and now: no such thing as asemic​ ​writing, only a kind of unattainable goal posited​ ​as a source of energy for our ongoing textual​ ​mutations.

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My first explorations of quasi-calligraphic faux​ ​writing came the morning after a particularly​ ​intense experience of taking what Terence​ ​McKenna ​has ​call​ed​ a "heroic dose" of psilocybin​ ​mushrooms. I had experienced a complete​ ​annihilation of the self, and not one of merging​ ​harmoniously with the universe, rather one of​ ​being ripped apart, as if in a ritual sparagmos.​ ​The next morning i was sitting in my car and ​I ​​started for the first time to write lines of illegible​ ​fake writing. It felt as if I were being guided to do​ ​this, as a kind of healing for the night before.​ ​When I sent some of these pages to John ​M. ​Bennett​ ​for LAFT he called  them "spirit writings". I had​ ​no argument with that name. Later Tim Gaze​ ​published a book of them with that title. My​ ​contribution to the recent Anthology of Asemic​ ​Handwriting is taken from that book, in response​ ​to a request from Tim.


07.06.2015

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AM HORSESHOE 

Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett

Luna Bisonte Prods, 1996

jim leftwich spirit writing LAFT 39 1997

John M. Bennett, SIX MONTHS' HACKING or, Six Years Hacking Six Months Aint No Sentence

 

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SIX MONTHS' HACKING or, Six Years Hacking Six Months Aint No Sentence

John M. Bennett Hacks Jim Leftwich's Six Months Aint No Sentence 2011-2016 & Other Mysteries

By​ ​John Bennett​ ​Jim Leftwich

be/ond seh flinges by jim leftwich and steve dalachinsky

from luna bisonte prods

be/ond seh flinges

by jim leftwich and steve dalachinsky

With some sort of strange anxiety caused by the unknowable elements of the title of the book bugging my brain, I brave myself to go through the table of contents. Poems. OK. They are poems. A relief. Then, my mind gets messy again following the massive endless list of the poem titles. It starts with 1. plums; 2. plopperly slashed; 3. astral viaduct frogret... ends with 128. WOODY BLIN BLEEDING (another casualty of the real). Just to go through all the titles makes me dizzy & unstable. Am I uncomfortable in this “crazy-ness”? Yes, definitely. & “No” at the same time. How strangely fabulous it is to be able to have the oppositional feelings together as if embracing the long lost twin emotions you didn’t know you had! Poems presented here are all like amalgams of Plus/Minus; Black/White; Color(s)/Non-Color(s); Music/Anti-Music; Sanity/Insanity; Fun/Disgust & Joy/Resignation... all gelled into gems. Not just experimenting with the language for the experiments’ sake, but Jim & Steve are playing with the language as musicians play with notes & artists play with their métier & ideas. --Yuko Otomo

6 books by Jim Leftwich from Luna Bisonte Prods

6 books by Jim Leftwich from Luna Bisonte Prods

Luna Bisonte Prods at Small Press Distribution

Jim Leftwich

Tres tresss trisss trieesss tril trilssss: Transmutations of César Vallejo

Jim Leftwich’s transmutations (not translations) of the poetry of César Vallejo are nothing short of brilliant. They feel more Vallejo in English than any previous translations ever have . Vallejo is certainly, bar none, among the greatest poets of the 20th century. Human, more than immediately human, tortured, both baroque and surreal, and lyrical beyond compare, his poetry defies translation, so difficult does it appear at times. This is especially the case with his early work Trilce (Tres tresss trisss treesss tril trilssss, as Leftwich’s title has it). Claimed by the surrealists as a master in that genre, Vallejo is that and more than that, opaque as Góngora or bittersweetly acerbic as Lorca, the complexity of his language and imagery find few parallels (the poetry of Dino Campana’s Canti orfici leaps to mind). Leftwich has created a Vallejo more Vallejo than Vallejo at times, and certainly makes for far more interesting and challenging a read than, for example, the deliberately strained translations of Clayton Eshelman. Leftwich, a poet renowned in his own way for complexity and baffling linguistic virtuosity, has certainly found an equal, a compatriot, one might say, in Vallejo. These transmutations have all the speed, energy and enigmatic beauty of the originals on which they are based. The foreword by Retorico Unentesi is also something to be savored for its rich and layered interpretations. -Ivan Arguelles

Jim Leftwich
rascible & kempt Vols 1 - 3

Vol. 3

This 3rd volume of Jim Leftwich's unique and ground-breaking examination of the explosion of marginal literatures can also be seen, like the first 2, as an example of that literature. It has an enormous variety of approaches to language-based arts that are ignored by the academies, the publishers, and the cliques that make up the dominant worlds of letters today. This exciting art, of which Leftwich is also a practitioner, is what will shape the literary world of the future, and his documentation of it is, and will be, of immense value. He takes on this extraordinary material in extensive real and imagined conversations, exhaustive discussions and contextualizations, detailed analyses, bibliographic documentation, and other approaches difficult to categorize, because the categories for it do not yet exist. These 3 essential books open a portal to a world of major literary creation, a world that is, for the moment, largely invisible. -John M. Bennett

Vol. 2

rascible & kempt-vol.2 grapples with the new poetics in ways that are ideal for the subjects addressed. These essays, conversations, collaborative adventures, and reports from the inside explain and celebrate some of the most innovative writing and literary explorations on the scene today. As Olchar Lindsann puts it, “From reading to writing, thought to non-thought, vast macrohistorical analysis to sub-lettral investigations, epistemology to pragmatics, discourses: poetics, linguistics, hermeticism, economics, history, psychology, politics, metaphysics, and more.” Among the writers engaged with are Thomas L. Taylor, César Figueiredo, Steve Dalachinsky, John M. Bennett, Rea Nikonova, Amy Trussel, Lanny Quarles, Mike Basinski, Jake Berry, John High, Scott MacLeod, David Baptiste Chirot, and many others, including a posse of fascinating heteronymic writers. If you are puzzled by the mysteries of this new avant-garde, these volumes will go a long way to illuminate them.

Vol. 1

VOLUME 1 (of 2) Rascible & Kempt bears geode-like secrets, exposing the living nerves of a geography where the beating heart of the avant guard glows lava red, while the book itself is a geology of Leftwich's life-long question to his own calling: How to keep all modes of writing “absolutely as OPEN as possible.” This book is as much a training manual as it is a mechanism to reignite the fires of poetry. -Michael Peters, author of Vaast Bin and other language artworks. 

About Rascible & Kempt: From reading to writing, thought to non-thought, vast macrohistorical analysis to sub-lettral investigations, epistemology to pragmatics, discourses: poetics, linguistics, hermeticism, economics, history, psychology, politics, metaphysics, and more. -Olchar E. Lindsann, author of ARTHUR DIES and other books, editor of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press

Containers Projecting Multitudes: Expositions on The Poetry of John M. Bennett

Jim Leftwich takes on the enigmatic, complex poetry of John M. Bennett in a series of explorations of Bennett's books. Leftwich, a poet, is an authority on Bennett's ways of writing. His expositions include essay-like discussions, close readings of individual poems and lines, and glosses, hacks, and re-writings of Bennett's texts. The re-writings create new poems and are ways in which Leftwich inhabits and/or illuminates the originals. At each chapter's end, there is an email exchange between the two, discussing or clarifying aspects of the preceding exposition. The book is a fascinating journey toward the heart of a unique poet, whose work is generally impossible to approach using standard critical methodologies. This is a great opportunity to examine not only the mysteries of John M. Bennett's poetry under the sharp magnification of the mind of Jim Leftwich, but a way to engage with Leftwich's remarkable work as a poet and thinker about poetry.

I reMEmber petrOLeum

Jim Leftwich's I REMEMBER PETROLEUM, is a single long poem of 391 cantos or a series of 391 poems, both structures are valid, that can be read or experienced as a vast mirror in which you will see yourself and the world which is your matrix. When you read it again or look again into its pages, you and the world you see will be different. This is not "confessional" poetry, nor cultural critique, nor political posturing, but something quite different: it is an authentic immersion into a self through the medium of written language. And because it is so complete and fearless in that immersion, in its unflinching consciousness and unconsciousness, a self, or all selves, are revealed. This is why you will see your own unique beings and worlds in this book. His skill with written language is such that there seems to be no barrier, no hesitation, between his intention or experience and his writing of it. It is remarkable that this entire book was written in less than three weeks. His is an authentic and powerful human voice speaking thinking mumbling explaining stumbling being blindingly clear.