CONTENTS

Introduction: Charles Bernstein / xi

I.Foreword: Writing & the Book / 3

II. The Word Made Flesh, ³Through Light and the Alphabet,² Interview with Matthew G. Kirschenbaum / 9

III. Writing as Artifact The Material Word / 55

The Art of the Written Image / 57

Simulacral Exoticism / 76

Hypergraphy: A Note on Maurice Lemaître / 82 Language in the Landscape / 90

IV. Visual Poetics The Interior Eye: Performing the Visual Text / 103

Experimental/Visual/Concrete / 110

Linguistic Authority and the Visual Text / 137 The Visual Line / 140

Visual/Verbal: Symposium Response / 142

Letterpress Language / 146

V. Artists¹ Books Past and Future

The Corona Palimpsest: Present Tensions of the Book / 167

Critical Metalanguage for the Artists¹ Book / 171

The Myth of the Democratic Multiple / 175

Offset: The Work of Mechanical Art in the Age of Electronic (Re)production / 184

Iliazd and the Book / 194

VI. The Future of Writing Language as Information: Intimations of Immateriality / 213

The Future of Writing in Terms of Its Past / 221

Electronic Media and the Status of Writing / 232