Nomadic and Archeological Scriptures

These “asemic” texts by Carlos Martínez Luis are basically completely “semic”: that is, they communicate to us by means of glyphs that have forms resonant of the human body, of human culture, and of human consciousness and memory. In the second part of this work, frequent use is made of a well-known drawing by Alfred Jarry of Père Ubu as if it were a linguistic glyph presented in a different way on each occasion with differing expressive ends. The Ubu glyph serves to open up a way of communicating with these fascinating texts, of reading and seeing them with a simultaneity which enriches the possibilities of understanding and of the experience of perception. The poet, artist, essayist, scholar, and curator Carlos Martínez Luis has created a work which pullulates with interpretive possibilities, beautiful, and which enhances the capacity of human understanding in a rare and uncommon way. -John M. Bennett