Alain Arias-Misson

In 1969 poet-artist Alain Arias-Misson (born
in 1936 in Brussels) staged The Public A MADRID Poem in the Spanish capitol. He had friends carry the human-sized, white cardboard letters A, M, A, D, R, I, and D through the streets to generate words in an anagrammatic fashion from this matrix at various precise locations: in front of the parliament and imposing churches, in busy streets, and on popular squares. The performative and ephemeral literary form of the Public Poem that he had invented shortly before allowed him to write a text in the social context of a city. He describes it as an “enactment of language—fluid, enmeshed in the real-street processes.” In a country that was still dominated by the Fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco, such a poetic guerrilla action of appropriation of urban space, neither announced nor officially authorized, was a risky undertaking. For this reason, it had to be “capable of vanishing, while preserving its eminent public, spectacular character.” This is the most complete documentation of this significant event ever published. It consists of thirty-six photographs with statements by the artist on their backsides that give insight into what happened in the course of the Public Poem. They are accompanied by two manifesto-like texts and the reproduction of a collage from 1969 based on a map of Madrid on which the stations of this Public Poem are marked.… (mere)

Edited and with a text by / Hrsg. und mit einem englischen Text von
Christoph Benjamin Schulz In 1969 poet-artist Alain Arias-Misson (born
in 1936 in Brussels) staged The Public A MADRID Poem in the Spanish capitol. He had friends carry the human-sized, white cardboard letters A, M, A, D, R, I, and D through the streets to generate words in an anagrammatic fashion from this matrix at various precise locations: in front of the parliament and imposing churches, in busy streets, and on popular squares. The performative and ephemeral literary form of the Public Poem that he had invented shortly before allowed him to write a text in the social context of a city. He describes it as an “enactment of language—fluid, enmeshed in the real-street processes.” In a country that was still dominated by the Fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco, such a poetic guerrilla action of appropriation of urban space, neither announced nor officially authorized, was a risky undertaking. For this reason, it had to be “capable of vanishing, while preserving its eminent public, spectacular character.” This is the most complete documentation of this significant event ever published. It consists of thirty-six photographs with statements by the artist on their backsides that give insight into what happened in the course of the Public Poem. They are accompanied by two manifesto-like texts and the reproduction of a collage from 1969 based on a map of Madrid on which the stations of this Public Poem are marked.… (mere)

This is a horrible book, and not because of the subject matter. It is poorly conceived and poorly written...

The house imagery of windows and doors, which could also be parts of stage scenery, also fails. Instead of "providing" the story a soul, as the house does for Roderick and Madeline in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," the psychoanalytic framework of windows, doors, scenery, and structure is static. It frames the uninspired "erotic" scenes that are really non-scenes. Using the words "cock," "mound," and "pudenda" incessantly doesn't create a sensual scene. It bores. If you want to write about sex, then sear it into the reader's mind, like Henry Miller or William S. Burroughs or the Marquis de Sade do. If you are going to write about sexual taboos, then you better "go all the way."

Read it all at
http://troysworktable.blogspot.com/2008/01/theatre-of-incest.html… (mere)