About the Author

Peter Schwenger is resident fellow at the University of Western Ontario's Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism. He is the author of several books, including The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects and At the Borders of Sleep: On Liminal Literature (both from Minnesota).

Reviews

"How does the noncommunicative communicate? This is the seemingly innocent question Peter Schwenger unpacks. At once storehouse and treatise, Asemic has the clarity of a dictionary entry, its sagacity delivered with deceptive ease, revealing a domain vaster than anyone would have thought: a Copernican marvel."-Jed Rasula, author of History of a Shiver: The Sublime Impudence of Modernism"Asemic is a long-overdue study of poetries that occupy liminal spaces between art, like Twombly's paintings, and recognizable words, like Michaux's poetry. Peter Schwenger offers an extended theory and an introductory survey of contemporary asemic writing by Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, Christopher Skinner, and others. From this book one can learn to read and, by extension, teach a-semiological texts."-Craig Saper, co-editor of Readies for Bob Brown's Machine"This is the first full-length exploration of the history and meaning of asemic writing. Important figures such as Michaux, Twombly, Barthes, Jim Leftwich, and Rosaire Appel are included, as well as examples from Chinese culture. Well-chosen illustrations accompany Peter Schwenger's insightful text. This book is a solid first map of a territory previously unknown to academic study."-Tim Gaze, publisher of Asemic magazine "What emerges in Schwenger’s book is an aesthetics of language, and of reading in par- ticular, that draws attention to how asemic writing lets us dive into the untapped possibilities of incomprehension."-Literary Review of Canada"The Art of Writing,Peter Schwenger’s engaging and groundbreaking book focused on the asemic as a cultural phenomenon and ratified genre of modern and contemporary art."-Art in America"Peter Schwenger offers a history of the practice, linking modern era pioneers like Barthes, Henri Michaux, and Cy Twombly to lesser-known contemporary practitioners Michael Jacobson, Rosaire Appel, and Christopher Skinner. Pulling examples of asemic writing from a diversity of fields-across contemporary art, comics, notation, and even nature-he demonstrates poet Michael Jacobson’s fitting definition of his field: “Without words, asemic writing is able to relate to all words, colors, and even music, irrespective of the author or the reader’s original language.”"-The Brooklyn Rail"Peter Schwenger offers the first book-length academic study of this vibrant field; it is an important and valuable start to the formal study of asemic writing."-Rain Taxi Review of Books"Vital and fateful . . . engagingly international."-CAA Reviews"In a clear and in-depth way, Asemic: the Art of Writing can be seen as a first official notation of that dance, excelling in the ability to bring to a wider audience the intricacies of a subject often seen as a niche of encrypted doodles legible only to a few."-Electric Book Review