Samsara Congeries by mIEKAL aND

Impossible to characterize in a few sweeping phrases, Samsara Congeries, an epic in many pieces, channels land-ancestors, land-heirs, langue-ancestors, langue-heirs, all the detritus of material and linguistic (t)ex(t)(ins)istence that insists on itself in cycles of embodied living. A singular congeries conjures a welter of emotions and enunciations across the span of a lifetime, which in turn emblematizes all lives, all samsaric “selves” and their de- and re-constructions. The glorious whole, also an abject hole, is “a kind of red/ yes” that accepts all text as its transient own.

—Maria Damon

Samsara Congeries, mIEKAL aND’s ambidextrous epic of deep time and polyvalent dimension, is written in a “splitting language” where linguistic, visual, and alphabetic architecture meet at an interactive complexity. Throughout this 500-page, 40-year-long serial poem, a propulsive “actual imaginary” undermines superficial, entrenched, and dogmatic conceptions of reality, self, language, identity, and literary form, offering instead an emergent and approximate ecology, at once subterranean and extraterrestrial, everywhere and nowhere. The poem is written in 14 books sculpted by the occult speech acts of different narrators, conceivably the iterations of a reincarnated self in the Samsara cycle of birth and death to which the title refers. The typescripts introducing each book and internal fonts vividly shift, reading like personalities or characters in the incantatory pantheon that has been released here. The scope of forms and characters, and the focus on language as material and mediated through fluid acts of perception, story, and desire, position the text as a trans-human travelogue, one of a traveler outside of space and time or a collective identity inside all times. In this context the poem is a ship of spacetime. The artistic lineage of this work includes many who, like the author, have lived and made art and literature outside the mainstream. Samsara Congeries is an extraordinary contribution to the experimental, an extension of the experimental life of mIEKAL aND, known for his participation and leadership in global DIY and anarchist art and literature networks; his pioneering work in electronic literature; his linguistic, typographical, and translation inventions; his collaborative books of poetry; his innovative publishing initiatives; and his art, hypermedia, and organic-farming community and home at Dreamtime Village. Samsara Congeries cannot be read without engaging in a novel experience with language, where the open and critical mind moves with the poem into previously inaccessible realms, waking up to lucidly dream in its textual village. This book, like the author’s life, itself a poem, is an intervention into dire times.

—Amy Catanzano

mIEKAL aND lives outside the constraints of academia in the most lush and rural part of the unglaciated Driftless area of southwest Wisconsin. Choosing to focus on creating wilderness and abundance surrounded by the perfect setting for limitless imagination his course of action includes demonstrating alternatives to inbred aesthetics, delighting in the play of DIY culture, and making art and writing that is both anarchic and noisy.

aND is the author of numerous books, many available via Xexoxial Editions (http://xexoxial.org). After many years working in the realms of digital poetry and video, he has surrendered his role as author and focused exclusively on interactions that allow the author to be reconfigured by the mysteries of the collaborative process. Anyone wanting to tap into his stream can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/miekal.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 532 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-247-1