Review of Jim Leftwich’s “Public Displays of Affection”

Review of Public Displays of Affection

by Daniel Barbiero

in Artedolia

August 2023

Jim Leftwich Public Displays of Affection

available from LULU

This unique book, written while the author and his wife have been moving around the Western USA, is full of references to place names, and flora and fauna of California, which reminds one of Californian writing of the 1960's, when poets, beats, and hippies were hanging out in places like Big Sur, Bolinas, Venice, and San Francisco. That resonance brings a level of lyricism to Leftwich’s work. But his writing is very different from those halcyon days, though there is a similarity in the attention paid to common moments and things, a Zen-like attitude. But here, words are often juxtaposed with little apparent semantic relationship, making for phrases and lines that create multiple possibilities of meaning and resonance. In Part One of this book especially, each of Leftwich’s “stanzas” are separate poems/worlds/perceptions/ and each rewards attention. They are not “thought", but mirrors of attention, blank minds open - not like the Californian 1960's at all, where such things were talked about but not manifested so much. Leftwich manifests that kind of mind, as in a classical Japanese Haiku sequence. It requires a kind of open and shifting attention of the reader, an attention that does not include any kind of searching for facile instructions about how to live. It is, rather, documentation of an acceptance and exploration of the relationship between mind and world.

this week the role of shoes / images of hats and nostrils / insomuch as the map pages / are unreadable illegible / desemantized & repetitive

- John M. Bennett

marco giovenale -- “asemics. sense without meaning” (ikonalíber): hints of history and theory of asemic writing

 

“asemics. sense without meaning” (ikonalíber): hints of history and theory of asemic writing

http://www.ikona.net/marco-giovenale-asemics-senso-senza-significato/
cover image: Paul Klee, Abstract Writing

The book is in print / The book is in print
Testo in lingua italiana / Text in Italian

With images by / With images by
Rosaire Appel , Anneke Baeten , May Bery , Marcia Brauer , Axel Calatayud , Cecelia Chapman , Tim Gaze , Ariel González Losada , Michael Jacobson , Satu Kaikkonen , Paul Klee , Karri Kokko , Jim Leftwich , Arturo Martini , John McConnochie , Miriam Midley , Stephen Nelson , Laura Ortiz , Ekaterina Samigulina/ Tae Ateh , Lucinda Sherlock , Jay Snodgrass , Lina Stern , Miron Tee , Cecil Touchon

—> you can pre-order it here / pre-order the book here <—

Back cover :
This sequence of annotations, beyond any hypothesis of exhaustion , proposes a possible itinerary through the history of the expressions "asemic writing" (or "asemantic" or "desemantic") and "asemic writing"; and furthermore it offers some elements of theory which configure the identity of this artistic practice as «a machine of disorganization and disintegration of meaning by means of sense itself.
/
Blurb :
This sequence of annotations, beyond any hypothesis of exhaustion , draws a possible itinerary through the historyof the expressions “scrittura asemica” (or “asemantica” [asemantic] or “desemantizzata” [“desemantized”]) and “asemic writing”; and also offers some theoretical elements that configure the identity of this artistic practice as «a machine of disorganization and disintegration of meaning by means of sense itself»

More information here / more infos here:
http://www.ikona.net/marco-giovenale-asemics-senso-senza-significato/

Preview / preview:
https://issuu.com/ikonaliber/docs/asemics_preview

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/giovenale.asemics.ikonaliber

*

Print edition : PREORDINARE QUI / PRE-ORDER IT HERE
E-book : soon available at https://www.bookrepublic.it/

 

desemantized writing in the journals of allen ginsberg and william burroughs / jim leftwich. summer 2022

fluxus pea island 2007

Recluse Theater: performances without audiences

jim leftwich

fluxus pea island 

2007 

photo by sue leftwich

 

jim leftwich, workspace, 1512 Mountainside Ct, 2005

jim leftwich

workspace

1512 Mountainside Ct

Charlottesville VA

2005

 

pansemic playhouse 1460

jim leftwich

cut-up & collaged stamps 

pansemic playhouse 1460 

05.03.2017

jim leftwich

conceptual asemia -- The Non 

pansemic playhouse 1460 

05.03.2017

 

pansemic playhouse 1461

 

jim leftwich

That's not what they meant 

pansemic playhouse 1461 

05.06.2017

jim leftwich

Regardless of what you think 

pansemic playhouse 1461 

05.06.2017

pansemic playhouse 1462

jim leftwich

staples, desemantized writing 

pansemic playhouse 1462 

05.10.2017

jim leftwich

emprientes, pareidolia, Dubuffet 

pansemic playhouse 1462 

05.10.2017

pansemic playhouse 1463

jim leftwich

The 

pansemic playhouse 1463 

05.12.2017

jim leftwich 

cut-up collage poem with asemic writing 

pansemic playhouse 1463 

05.12.2017

jim leftwich

bursts, script-dwelling 

pansemic playhouse 1463 

05.12.2017

 

pansemic playhouse 1464

 

jim leftwich

I'm -- cut-up collage poem 

pansemic playhouse 1464 

05.15.2017

jim leftwich

gestural & letteral quasi-calligraphic drawing 

pansemic playhouse 1464 

05.15.2017

The Last Pansemic Playhouse #1465

 

jim leftwich

eat at yet -- pansemic vispo dwelling 

pansemic playhouse 1465 

05.19.2017

jim leftwich, a page from No Such Thing As Repetition (2001)

jim leftwich
Death Text Book 8 (2003)
When bears prevail Take ___ breath (microbooks, 2011)
Pixies----Calcium (2010)
Things Rescued From Eternal Nonexistence (2001)
No Such Thing As Repetition (2001)
WHAT (1996)
turtle fish sun flower. cat kite beetle boat. (2001)
noodle had (2001)
quasi-letteral anti-calligraphy (2011)
mead memo (2007)
mead memo (2004-2007)
mead memo (2002-2006)
mead memo (2006)

 

fragments in hand pansemic playhouse 278 04.09.12

jim leftwich

fragments in hand  

pansemic playhouse 278 

04.09.12