from  Aya Press, 1978

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The Viridical Book of the Silent Planet came together in 1977 and was published by Glynn Davies’ small press, Aya, in 1978 in three, (count ’em – 3!) versions. There’s a paper edition, ISBN 0-920-544-05-3; 06-1 is a cloth edition, and 07-X is a very short run “deluxe” edition.

The title page calligraphy is by Ann Housden and the whimsical illustrations by Stephen Wohleber. I was thrilled to have these wonderful additions to the text. The deluxe edition is hard cover and hand illuminated by Stephen and comes in a slipcase box. The book includes the very first calagramic letters that ended up as The Alphamiricon in 1987 from Underwhich Editions.

The book takes us into the outer space of language and into the black hole of love where very strange things occur and we are all space and time travellers. So there’s a kind of sci-fi metanarrative running throughout. Just as an example of the sorts of highjacks that can be expected: there’s no such word as “viridical”; there is “vivid” and “viridian”  which refer to a certain green colour, and then there is “veridical” which refers to the possibility of reaching truth through language, the assertion of truth or it’s saying. But beware, here be dragons.

Here is a link to one of the 26 hand-illumninated copies:

https://www.biblio.com/book/viridical-book-silent-planet-henderson-brian/d/79356369

And to order this book, please click this link.

from Porcupine’s Quill, 1977

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Sample Poems from Paracelsus

Bank

Bank, said the clerk with the seersucker suit.
Bank, said the pilot with leather jacket &
               winged insignia.
Bank, said the fisherman with wading boots &
               flies.
Bank,
     said Paracelsus, with a smile.
How is it possible?
It just isn’t — not in ‘these’ dimensions.

from Black Moss Press, 1977

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Sample Poem from The Expanding Room

Absinthe Letters

1

Dear Doctor,
               From the first letter
               due to its condition
               we may read only the following:

                         as to yr queries
attend yr reading
               cadences which are
no voice
          compact exact
                         but obsessed
favourite composer when
                    Pigolesi (sic)
chance
     feeding on the brain

               And then:

                    Have you not thought
of safer opium. I know
it doesn’t align close enough
but doesn’t
          doesn’t this body?

And the other day I saw
those hogs rooting again
in the refuse (somehow they’d gotten loose).
They were tearing at something
that was no simple heap of tubers.

2

I have not seen you in five days
you attend yr meetings, or are locked in yr room

someone plays a whitened
a bleached music while I write this

the page gets more intense
as I scratch at it
but you know all about that:
the sections obliterated
enact angles, parabolas:
the signs of a semi-literate person

It drinks up the ink
the negative of the nights
we spend together

3

Not only long-necked
glass, a delicate stem
on the table
you never finish
at first you thought flamingo

this letter a warning
x the doctor explains
my hallucinations are sympathetic
sympathy is a head tax

a warning he who devours the pig
is devoured by its images
finds it whole in his head
going straight there
do not sit at that table get up

squealing through nipple fornix
and nozzle cells cells of political
agitation words in a pig-latin syntax

it carves the knuckles
(actually I think it starts there)
the spiked ear the brain fume
drawn out in its ribbon
the parabolas of the wormwood grain
it snouts          it snouts
          you               you

the aesthete at the table
the dumb food of words
anyways Rimbaud took up a trade

          love
               yr sister
ps I will not be coming to dinner
there will be nothing left of you

4

Jan. 13
          this bed: not asylum enough
          do not worry, it is empty
          my life has been simplified

          the hospital they keep you in
          has white walls, do not worry
          you live with permanent ghosts
          whitely

          the letters occupy you like bad tenants
          in moments of lucidity you may read

          yr mind a supernova
          connections permanently fused
          will you recognize me this time?

          Artemisia, you miss her
          she left you               children

5

you tell me
          (seed under rind)
a crystal grows in your brain
you still love me

when someone looks through a facet
trees, breasts, open, their minds
display before them
                    the world
twisted into light
that is something

but yr body has disappeared
and you tell me
you want no more books

6

dear idiot brother
               pig-head
they tell me you are not eating

(you should have listened to me)

where are yr politics now?
you have not written a poem in months
you say they are alive
                    in yr head

you may grow divine
but I grow old
I am not paying for another day of this
I am looking for another lover

          (say hello to the angels)