Instant Messages

Instant Messages is a new kind of writing, a mash-up of straightforward and accessible poetry, koan-like brain teasers, the delicate observations of Haiku, the terseness of texts, surprise one-liners, daily mumbling, text-based art, and aphorisms of penetrating insight. By turns clever and witty, or deep and spiritual, this is not work that attempts to find universals in personal experience, but instead pressurizes life that’s common to all of us in language that is perfectly precise. Individuality is revealed as a quality of attention on the life that we all share. The “messages” appear on the page as comments that come from the inner voice and are intended for the inner ear. Everything is fair game, everything belongs here, from digital VCRs to tracks in the snow, to needles in the arm, to unidentifiable movements at the bottom of a lake, to the question of ghosts. In its inclusiveness of culture high and low, and the license and quirky originality of its language, Instant Messages has achieved a form for the 21st century.