Rhapsodomancy

(Paperback)

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Reading is slow, and writing is slower. Words are old-fashioned. Why not consider the communication of the future In 1837, Sir Isaac Pitman began a sixty-year obsession with producing a system of Shorthand that accurately and swiftly captures voice as evidence of the minds movements. In the 1950s, John Malone developed Unifon, a forty-character phonetic alphabet intended for international communication by the airline industry. Both projects reached for artful utility, and both have largely been forgotten.

In Rhapsodomancy, kevin mcpherson eckhoff remembers them. Exploring these two phonic alphabets as image, these poems playfully interrogate the relationship between voice and visual poetry. Can pictures represent voice Can unutterable writing express thought Rhapsodomancy offers an imaginative response to such questions via empty suits reciting onomatopoeia, letters defying the laws of reality, and drawings divining the future.

Reviews

'A feast for the eyes (and mind).' -- Broken Pencil 'Lovely, punny, & slyly alliterative ... A visual delight.' -- Eclectic Ruckus 'Eckhoff's work travels the bumpy road between voice and words and visual poetry -- offering a wild, energetic and defiantly unique strain of experimental verse.' -- Calgary Herald

Author Bio

kevin mcpherson eckhoff's visual poetry has appeared in the anthology Boredom Fighters (Tightrope Books) and in such magazines as dandelion and filling Station. A winner of the Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award, he studied English literature at the University of Calgary. He recently traded his life for a house in Armstrong, British Columbia, and a job teaching literature at Okanagan College.