Thirty-One Octets
About the book
Word Tech Communications/CW Books (2014)
Explorations of language and the mind using anaphora, the Ginsbergian breath-centered line, and the oracular voice. In the tradition of Walter Abish’s Alphabetical Africa, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, and Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines, Thirty-One Octets is an intricate exploration of an invented literary form. Spontaneous in their language, the Octets are also compellingly human in the way they map our journey through the world, with all its confusions and unexpected epiphanies.
What writers say
"Steven Wingate's Thirty-One Octets is an original, genre-bending joy. Out of the flux these sentences seem to utter themselves with shameless eloquence, playful erudition and fierce satire. You won't find another book remotely like it."
—David Mason, author of Ludlow and Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade
“In the wild territories between aphorism and narrative, populated by Edmond Jabes, E.M. Cioran, Joe Brainard, Stephen Crane, Malcolm de Chazal, and others, Steven Wingate settles his most passionate, and introspective work, written with honesty and power, a set of Octets to sip at with pleasure, and to let inform your leisure.”
—Steve Katz, author of Swanny's Ways and Antonello's Lion
“It’s easy to get swept up in Steven Wingate’s good humor and his ability to embrace life’s absurdities. This poetry is more than entertaining. It doesn’t break down our most necessary bafflements; instead, it reaches for them with tenderness.”
—Elizabeth Robinson, author of The Orphan & Its Relations and Counterpart
“Wingate’s multiplying runs of words (a joy in and of themselves) search tirelessly for the word or words that will unlock the ineffable even as they admit the difficulty, perhaps impossibility of knowing our own minds, let alone the infinitely-faceted world.”
—Robert Cording, author of Walking with Ruskin and A Word in My Mouth
Where to get it
Amazon and Barnes & Noble (ISBN-13: 978-1625491084)