A Map by a Dim Lamp
by Ron Starr

Description

Often dividing his work into the Digital and the Static, Ron Starr experiments poetically in the company of the famous Oulipo group (see note at bottom), The Workshop for Potential Literature.

“Starr aims at “developing new forms,” because “forms are heuristic, exploratory, each revealing new areas and new limits.” These poems he has created are delightful, intriguing; anything but sterile. Consider State of Myself, a “computer-assisted merging” of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and one of Bush’s State of the Union addresses: “I celebrate mothers and sing terrorism, and what I assume you shall assume…” (Jason B. Jones)

[The Oulipo (Ouvroir de la literature potentielle or Workshop for Potential Literature) group was established by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, and has been associated with Georges Perec (A Void), Italo Calvino, and Harry Matthews. (Drunken Boat has recently hosted a massive and very useful online feature on Oulipo and Oulipo-inspired work.]