Found Criticism

Following from our pamphlet of the Bio Notes of Larry Eigner, Wave Books will be publishing pamphlets and broadsides dedicated to found criticism. Each publication will gather together practical efforts around literary work that were not initially considered criticism. The publications, created from public and private sources, will include literary trial transcripts, fbi files of authors, collected blurbs, book descriptions, marginalia, proofreaders notes, reproductions of book designs, and many other interesting things. We hope over the course of this project to actively consider a criticism focused on inquisitiveness and investigation.

We will begin with five pamphlets:

Jargon Books: A collection of press descriptions from the backs of twenty Jargon Books by Jonathan Williams

Thirty Words: A small collection of words for which Samuel Taylor Coleridge is author of the first recognized English quotation in the OED

Daily News: Poems and the headlines from the days on which they were written

     Translator’s Questions: two pamphlets of translator’s questions:

John Ashbery’s HOUSEBOAT DAYS into Bengali (translator: Aryanil Mukherjee)

Philip Lamantia’s SELECTED POEMS into Japanese (translator: Koichiro Yamauchi)

Found criticism pamphlets will be part of the Wave Pamphlet Series, available by Wave Books subscription.