Desire for a Beginning Dread of One Single End

Also from Granary, a New York art book publisher headed by Steve Clay, come two related poems by Edmond Jab s, Desire for a Beginning and Dread of One Single End, presented with digital art work by Ed Epping, director of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in this small, glossy-paged book. Translated from the French by poet and Burning Deck books publisher Rosmarie Waldrop, Jab s's aphoristic sentences and fragments take us from seeing that ""A block of ice is nothing but a limited quantity of water surprised by cold"" to the realization that ""At death's door, it is not the future of the soul that worries us, but how the body behaves."" (May 1)