Invisible Manuscripts is a counterintuitive title by design. It invokes not just texts, but ways of reading. This is done by using tension, & that human impulse to seek its resolution— to imbed a question: How do you read them? Curiosity is the threshold of desire’s first gate: a wanting (to read).

Some of the best poems orbit what they can’t say out-loud. They’re not just cognitive, they’re affective— (they caress at the level of deep feeling). Some of the best advertising & propaganda campaigns follow a similar course: The friction between what they say & what they don’t say— what you’re left with— is the point.

Toni Morrison calls this “writing the reading”: Invisible Ink. “Invisible Ink is what lies under, between, outside the lines.”

It disrupts the location of meaning, how it’s made—& by whom. “The text” she writes, “is not always a quiet patient the reader brings to life.”

made possible by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor & the New York State Legislature.