This suite of three minimalist poems take the electronic letter to its most basic components: symbol, sound, and behavior. This piece resonates with Isidore Isou’s Manifesto of Letterist Poetry (1942).
TAKING ALL LETTERS AS A WHOLE; UNFOLDING BEFORE DAZZLED
SPECTATORS MARVELS CREATED FROM LETTERS (DEBRIS FROM
THE DESTRUCTION);
CREATING AN ARCHITECTURE OF LETTRIC RHYTHMS;
ACCUMULATING FLUCTUATING LETTERS IN A PRECISE FRAME;
ELABORATING SPLENDIDLY THE CUSTOMARY COOING;
COAGULATING THE CRUMBS OF LETTERS FOR A REAL MEAL;
RESUSCITATING THE JUMBLE IN A DENSER ORDER;
MAKING UNDERSTANDABLE AND TANGIBLE THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
AND VAGUE; CONCRETIZING SILENCE;
WRITING THE NOTHINGNESS.
The letters in Piringer’s playful pieces all follow programmed and randomized behaviors reacting in diverse ways when they collide against each other or against the borders of the window they are framed by. In “Predator vs. Prey,” for example, we hear the letters spoken through time, as they move through their space, leaving traces behind. Is “A” a single sound, stamped on a brief moment of time as a typewriter stamps the inked mark on a page or as uttered as part of a word? Or is it an indefinitely continuous sound, as in: “Say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?”
Featured in Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2.
