N18 (Complete)

Poetry. Hank Lazer's N18 (COMPLETE), the eighteenth of twenty handwritten notebook projects, is an extended exploration of the relations between shape and meaning. These handwritten poems enact an improvisational reading of Immanuel Levinas's Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence.

If angels could sing we would not understand them. But angels do understand our songs and Hank Lazer's N18 is the pure product of such listening. Philosophical notations, lyric utterances, journal entries, and aphoristic gleanings are set in a holographic space of the imaginary's shapes. Human readers, hearken to these calls as they echo into silence.--Charles Bernstein