Emanations: I Am Not a Number
Carter Kaplan
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, June 5, 2017)
Justifying the assembly of yet another highly-regarded international literary anthology transcends conventional assessment measures, for justification is never an appropriate step to understanding the dynamics that lead to an accurate description of a volume of this nature. Considerations attending that descriptive task include the identification of a variety of conflicting factors: the manipulation of pattern recognition, the emergence of cross-cultural traditions, specious grammatical confluences, graphic grotesqueries, the illusion of narrative, the reification of abstractions—moreover rendered in the theatrical contrivance of a physical book, which plainly forces meaning and refracts understanding, so as to superimpose an unreal and scenic impression. The implications for literary art, like the attending syntactical possibilities themselves, are innumerable. Something “ingenious” is achieved when the countless opportunities for hermeneutic speculation at last fracture and break apart in our failure to arrive at what we could reasonably call an endpoint—where explanation and appreciation, in fluent apposition, minimize tension. Suffice it to say, therefore, that here are tales, here are poems, here are memoirs. Collectively regarded, arbitrarily divided, or as offered in the packaging of their removable labels, these are our emanations. Emanations: I Am Not a Number presents the latest work of writers and artists from around the world. Published by International Authors