The Laboratory of Time (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781962316057)

The Laboratory of Time, and other cutup poems, Peter Wortsman's third collection of experiments in the form, lets time be told in the way we live it, sometimes stretching a second into seeming eternity, sometimes compressing eternity into a second. The first part, titled "The True Glue," comprises recycled assemblages of words cut out of the newspaper that make a newfangled poetic sense. The second part, titled "The Five Books," is an admittedly unorthodox retelling of biblical narrative, the poetic sap and zap of it extracted by means of a vertical transcription.

Exhalations burdened with meaning, they are forever being uttered, stuttered and forgotten, trashed and mulched to fertilize new formulations. What else is a cutup poem after all, or any kind of poem for that matter, but a wild flower sprouting out of the dirt!