Axis Z Book 3
Read Wang Guanglin's introduction to Axis Z Book 3.
ISBN: 9780645761603
Dear Readers: I hope you have a good experience reading this book. Z Book 3 is the third of my long poem AXIS, coming nearly one decade after the first. The first two, AXIS Book 1: ‘Areal’ and AXIS Book 2, were both written in ‘vertical stanzas’. These prioritised not left to right but top to bottom running of words, as with various calligraphic traditions. Writing downward in columns allows for very long lines. AXIS Z Book 3 is no different in that regard.
No special skill is required for reading this book. The ‘structure’, if one should call it that, of the phrasing is mostly a ‘Let … For’ syntax, which was used by Christopher Smart in Jubilate Agno (1759–1763). Smart does praise and prophecy. Z Book 3 is more praise than prophecy. Voices not my own came from innumerable places and times to speak in the Mythic System of Z Book 3 – characters both major and minor, they speak at will.
It was written in the midst of a grave imbalance among the axes of the world, which produces war. I dedicate Z Book 3 to the Peace Forces of this Earth, and to a greater material and spiritual share between nations.
–A J Carruthers