The Daily Glance
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's oceanic x-ray contains poems on "paper" of different sizes that all work by layering text on top of text. It takes advantage of being an e-book by playing with the page size/image size. Some of the visual poems use color, but some remain just black and white--these appeal to me the most. The actual words seem less important that the experience of looking at the words layered. It feels like we are being asked to pay attention to actual words at the same time as being given words we cannot read easily or at all. Plus, without a cover page, author name, or cover at all, it makes us question our reading strategies. Is this a book in which one reads from beginning to end? Is there a beginning? Should we just scroll through? And knowing other works by Kervinen, I wonder what operators are behind the words in the book. Are they randomly written? Are they based on a process? Ultimately, they are interesting to see. As I "read" them, I looked to see if something emerged from the page, to see if a word floated to the top.
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