Richard Kostelanetz

English, Incredible English Addendum Iv/iv Richard Kostelanetz

Interested now in producing only texts significant enough to survive me I wanted to write a long poem devoid of personal expression, though not my discriminatory taste--a really long poem in a great American tradition, that would monumentally synthesize my interests in working with existing words, maximal minimalism, uniqueness, and esthetic selection. So I discovered more than 5450 words that, though unfamiliar to me and, may I venture, to most sophisticated English readers, exist in sophisticated dictionaries. As Casey Stengel memorably admonished, ?You can look it up.? A second criterion informing my selection held that each word has sufficient poetic weight to stand alone on its own page. A-B/C-E, etc represents the first/second/third/fourth/fifth/sixth/seventh/eighth of eight volumes that complete this classic American poem.