DONATO MANCINI -

AETHEL - NewStarBooks2007

-Subjecthood and the Light Verb, by Donato Mancini

I had the good fortune to run into concrete poet and 'pataphysical impressario Donato Mancini this week. I've now finally aquired a copy of his fantastic new book with NewStar, AEthel - following-up his 2005 Ligatures. I've been anticipating the arrival of this volume since Donato and I became first acquinted c.1998 - he shared some of these type-drawings with me on one of our earliest meetings - any lover of graphic design and visual poetry will shudder with spastic delight when paging through Donato's fractious, sonorous, hilariously elegant typographic constructions. When I met him, Donato claimed to be naive the visual poetry 'tradition' developed in Toronto around the CoachHouse 'pataphysicians Darren Wershler-Henry, Christian Bok, Steve McCaffery, BPNichol, etc... and of the laurels he should wear amidst those authors... at the time I was tremendously excited to have 'found' what seemed like such a rare thing - a great 'pataphysical talent growing untended in BC - maybe we could build a western tower, a Vancouver 'pataphysics could emerge and make international contribution to the most exciting of poetical phenomena. Donato had seemingly intuitively found his gnomic way from musical composition to doing backflips on the narrow beam of concrete language poetry even before he knew there was such a game. I've been anticipating and coveting this volume since way before it went to press, so big thanks to New Star Books for recognizing a significant talent in Donato Mancini, and big ups to Donato for assiging his considerable wits to the penurious task of bending language's rule with its own levers.