Issue 3.1
Winter 2023
Alistair
McCartney
Ode to Jeppe Hein's Wrecking Ball
at König Galerie Berlin
As soon
As I put
The finishing touches
On this book
Jeppe Hein installed
His silver
Wrecking ball inside it.
Whenever anyone tried
To read the book
—That is to say
Enter its confined space—
The wrecking ball rolled
Around and around and around
Taking big chunks out of the book's walls,
Destroying the book so thoroughly
We had to abandon
The textual premises and
Relocate to a new site.
Alistair's Book Recommendations
The Book to Come, Maurice Blanchot
The Infinite Conversation, Maurice Blanchot
Reflection
As I work on this poem, over and over again, I’ve been reading Maurice Blanchot’s essay “The Absence of the Book”, over and over again, I’ve been thinking about the book as limit, book destruction, the violent im/possibility of the book.
Alistair McCartney is the author of The Disintegrations and The End of the World Book, both published with University of Wisconsin Press. The Disintegrations is the recipient of The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. TEOTWB was a finalist for the PEN USA Fiction Award and the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White debut fiction award. His poetry and cross-genre writing has appeared in journals such as Hotel, Fence, Light/Air, LIT, Altadena Poetry Review, 3:AM, Vestiges, Nat.Brut, Animal Shelter (Semiotexte), and Queer Quarterly. He is currently working on two books of poetry. Originally from Australia, he lives in Los Angeles, where he is Teaching Faculty in Antioch University's MFA and Undergraduate programs.