a statement re: "sourced" poems in VANITY RELEASE

I have become increasingly intrigued by late 19th and early 20th century shorthand dictionaries and manuals (and most recently a mid-20th-century typewriting manual), in addition to phrase books for travellers through the 20th century.

The choice of word lists, sentences to learn by, and the exercises in these respective manuals reflect not only the ongoing changes in North American English for this period, but also the shifts in educational, business, and technological terminology. To engage with these terms in a context of contemporary investigational poetic practices is one way to meaningfully perplex what is so easily taken for granted technologically, linguistically, and socially in our own times.