A founding member of Fluxus and the concrete poetry movement, Emmett Williams (1925-2007) made several performances and poems that stand today as defining gems of those genres. Among them is the book-length concrete poem Sweethearts, first published by Something Else Press (where Williams was editor in chief) in 1968, and back in print for the first time, still sporting its classic cover by Marcel Duchamp… Richard Hamilton described Sweethearts as being “to concrete poetry as Wuthering Heights is to the English novel… compelling in its emotional scope, readable, a sweetly heartfelt, jokey, crying, laughing, tender expression of love.” (via amazon)

I am so SO excited that this is back in print. The book is brilliant, playful and romantic – here’s an excerpt from Frank Chimero‘s entry about the book.

The letters maintain the same spacing in every word on each page, lending the volume a flipbook dimension that Williams enhances by organizing the text to read backwards, so that the reader can flip the book with her or his left hand (thus the front cover is on the back, and vice versa).