Scarf-in-a-Box

Here's a shot of the Asemic Kill City/Raw Power scarf in its habitus at the Text Festival in Bury, England, in the art gallery's accompanying exhibit. Thanks to Nico Vassilakis for sending me the photo. And here, Ron Silliman tweets about it! The background of his Twitter account looks like a repeating pattern of artwork by the great collagist Jess, Robert Duncan's life partner: ornate, rococo and postmodernly lush. It's an honor to have the scarf displayed at this Festival, where a host of luminaries, including Ron himself, Christian Bök, and later on, Adeena Karasick, my collaborator, are reading their work. In response to my query, James Williamson has expressed a preference for a short fringe in accordance with men's fashion protocol, and to keep it secular (I told him the long fringe might make people mistake him for a rabbi). I will donate (!) the leftover thrums to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts for their papermaking mavens.

It's in the mail...

The (Asemic) Raw Power/Kill City scarf is in the mail to Bury, England, UK. Whew.


I asked my colleague Michael Hancher to scan in a piece I'd made for him back when he was the chair of my department. He did a great job of being fair, even-handed, non-defensive and intellectually engaged. I called it, obviously, SOS. He salvaged the department. It looks a little psychedelic, with a central mandala and smaller "bubbles" around it, and it looks to me as if it were floating past on a river of linen drifting off to the viewer's right. I made the Iggy piece, "Open Up and Bleed," after this one, and I can see the resonance: the big circle (O) in the center and the other letters swirling around it. I've read that the shape of the letter O comes from the eye; some ancient alphabets have a dot in the center for the pupil. That works for TV Eye in Stooge-speak.