Absence So Great and Spontaneous It Is Evidence of Light

Poetry. Hybrid Genre. "These poems began in 2011 with an investigation into John Cage's adventures with chance. I was working at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and we had a small museum, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, with a regular exhibition called Reading Objects. The idea of the show is to explore and expand on what is traditionally said on those little cards next to paintings. So we were presented with an array of visual work, and could pick pieces to write about. I decided to write something to accompany a musical score by Cage that was to be part of exhibition. I wrote something, and I came to hate it. This poem was displayed next to Cage's score. I felt I didn't nearly go far enough with the poem to really engage with Cage. So I started again by researching Cage, and I also spent time with Jackson Mac Low's Representative Works.




"Around this time, I began to really notice and found myself entertained by the way search engines attempt to anticipate our needs. I began to slowly type lines of poetry (eventually working my way toward entire short poems) into the Google and Bing search boxes, and laugh my way through the list of wrongly anticipated results that appeared underneath my search. I began to make poems out of these (wrong) search results. At first, I thought I was adding chance into the poem, but I came to realize it was just the opposite: these search results came from the zeitgeist's algorithmic desire, not my own, which ended up expanding the possibilities for the poem. The poetic 'I' dissolves in this desire."--Anne Gorrick

Anne Gorrick is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of several books including AN ABSENCE SO GREAT AND SPONTANEOUS IT IS EVIDENCE OF LIGHT (The Operating System, 2018), The Olfactions: Poems on Perfume (BlazeVOX Books, 2017), A's Visuality (BlazeVOX, 2015), I-FORMATION, BOOK 1 and BOOK 2 (Shearsman Books, 2010 and 2012), and KYOTOLOGIC (Shearsman Books, 2008). She co-edited (with Sam Truitt) IN|FILTRATION: AN ANTHOLOGY OF INNOVATIIVE POETRY FROM THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY (Station Hill Press, 2016). She has collaborated with artist Cynthia Winika to produce a limited edition artists' book, "Swans, the ice," she said, funded by the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has also collaborated on in-depth visual and textual projects with Scott Helmes and John Bloomberg-Rissman.

With Melanie Klein, she curates the reading series "Process to Text," which focuses on innovative writing from in and around New York's Hudson Valley. She is a past President, and continuing member of the Board of Trustees at Century House Historical Society, home of the Widow Jane Mine, an all-volunteer organization (www.centuryhouse.org) that presents a variety of arts events (including the annual Subterranean Poetry Festival), and preserves the history of the now-defunct local cement industry. Anne Gorrick lives in West Park, New York.