Author: John Paetsch Publisher: H*d*ng Press (2020) Ctasy, —of shapes off-shore is the first part of a five-part (never to be completed) work. Itself in five cycles—the end of each cycle flowing (more or less) into the beginning of any other, including itself (to say nothing of the (now submerged) epicycles ebbing and flowing into one another within the cycles themselves)—Ctasy, consecrates itself to this act: trashing “early modern” images of Nature. But why? Perhaps trashing a proteiform plenum, self-valorizing substance, or manifold surface will pattern new ways of thinking with Nature rather than merely ofit. At the least, it might ensnare us in a labyrinth more disorienting than any image of Nature. Ctasy, sive Natura .... Of the branching, folding, pulsating, faltering, collapsing, flowing, leeching, lapsing, erring, ramifying, gasping, deliquescing, irradiating ashen cycles that figure the labyrinth vexing this work, ask: Do we have time or coin enough to get back in, who can’t tell inside from out? “It’s as if a picture held us captive ....” Warden!
