Jump-cut 12 yrs in publishing time since the last bk, MNEMONOTECHNICS, that I reviewed by Alan. This seems like Alan's Buddhist bk to me. I don't know whether Alan's a Buddhist now or if he was one in 1994 but I noticed some Buddhist bks at his apt the last time I visited him & I have a vague memory of his mentioning Buddhism in the past. That ain't much to go on, I 'know'.

I don't know what the connection between Davies & Winterford is, I don't know if they're friends or if the publisher connected them or what. I reckon I cd find the answers to these questions easily enuf but I want to write the review NOW, not later, so I gonna go w/ what I 'know' already. My copy of the bk is signed by both so maybe they were at least in the same physical space for a bk launch or some such. Maybe not.

The writing here is considerably less formally experimental than Alan's work of a decade earlier & the fotos don't strike me as formally experimental either. There's one foto of a listing sailboat that has splotches of developing-fluid-made-obvious, there's some male & female nudity, some stone carving, some simple compositions, some seemingly spontaneous framings. The writing, perhaps, follows a similar trajectory. Take, eg:

"Pond. Basho.
Frog. Basho.
Splash. Basho."

The reference is presumed to be to the famous Japanese haiku poet & the form is presumably haiku-like. One cd say this is somewhat formal.

Then there's:

"You mean that she's just sitting there
and her panties
are touching the chair?"

That cd be a quote, it cd be a deliberate intrusion of the implied visceral/sexual into a largely philosophical text - a disruption of sorts.

Opposite a picture of a Buddha drawing of linear precision against a background of crumple-like texture there's:

"Spirit is life energy.

Soul is life source.

They manifest.

Spirit is individual as it manifests. People appear as spirits.

Persons appear into and out of and into soul.

There are pure forms of each. Purity means absence of attachments to the detritus. The detritus is that which is otherwise attached to.

Soul and spirit are in love."

Is this work didactic? Not exactly. It's "poetic". I don't actually use that word very much. Don't usually like it. But Alan's seriously into poetry, many of the bks in his library are poetry bks. & it seems to me that this work uses what's commonly distinct about poetry in the way most formally appropriate to it. What am I saying? Maybe not something sufficiently articulated. So I'll try a different tact:

Usually when I hear lyrics in a song I think that I'd rather just hear the music & read the words. Together I often don't find them to amt to much, apart they often amt to even less. When I look thru this bk, I PREFER the fotos & the words together - as they are. I don't want to read Alan's words separately as a philosophical/Buddhist essay or whatnot & I don't want to see the fotos separately either. They work together just fine - observing & commenting w/o an irrelevant fixed formal structure.