I'm going to perform for you some constraint-based work.
These are a series of anagrams, the first one
of which appeared as a book made entirely out of LEGO bricks.
The pages, the text, the binding, the cover--
all of it was made entirely from LEGO tiles,
no piece bigger than a 2-by-2 peg tile, the most atomistic
bits of LEGO, so of course, you could dismantle this book
and turn it into something else.
Each page had a single line of poetry,
and the book consisted of 10 pages, each of which
consisted of a single anagram of the title.
The title is "Ten Maps of Sardonic Wit."
"Atoms in space now drift on a swift and epic storm.
Soft wind can stir a poem.
Snow fits an optic dream into a scant prism of do.
Words spin a faint comet.
Some words, in fact, paint two stars of an epic mind.
Manic words spit on fate."
This next anagram was produced as a work of conceptual art
with the Canadian artist Micah Lexier.
It consists of two short texts displayed directly
on the gallery wall side by side.
The first text is by Micah Lexier,
and the second text is by me.
The poem is entitled "Two Equal Texts."
"One.
This text and the one beside it are equal.
I wrote this one first, and then I
gave it to my friend Christian Bok
and asked him to generate a new text using
every letter and every punctuation mark
that I used in mine.
The other text is his.
Two.
Micah Lexier requested in advance
that I reinvent his text.
So I unknotted it and reknitted it into this very form,
but then I began to think that his message had already resewn
a touted art of genuine poetry.
His eerie text was mine."