Treatise on Luck
Description

The nested design (mise-en-abyme) of Mark Francis Johnson’s poetry book was created by Jonathan Gorman. It reproduces every page of a copy made just for this purpose, with each page torn out, scanned, and set on a page with a broad black margin, including front and back covers. The source book, which no longer exists, was apparently also a print-on-demand book, as suggested by the reproduction of the cover, which has the cheap-looking and reflective foliation typical of print-on-demand books. The reflective approach to the materiality of the book, accessible only through multiple stages of mediation, mirrors the reflections on luck and memory in Johnson’s poems.