One Word Poems
John Robert Colombo
One Word Poems is a collection of poems, each
poem of which is one word in length – sometimes two words long, occasionally
three words – but which are nonetheless complete and expressive in themselves.
The reader is offered an unusual reading experience, one that requires
co-operation (indeed, co-creation) alongside the poet. In these pages will be
found approximately 3,000 poems (sometimes called "rewords" because they are
"reworked" to release their latent powers and possibilities) that have been
arranged under 1,600 or so headings. The rewords are reprinted from four volumes
which first appeared in QuasiBook Editions issued in the years 1994, 1996, 2000,
and 2003, along with unpublished "rewords" that date from the years since then.
This is one of a limited number of innovative volumes of inventive work to
appear in many a year.
John Robert Colombo is nationally known as the Master Gatherer for his
compilations of Canadiana. Current books include A Little Book of Facts about a
Really Big Country, a book of trivia and treasure, and Strange but True, a
compilation of told-as-true tales of the supernatural and the paranormal. He is
also a poet of note who has published a volume of verse every year for the last
dozen years, culminating in the appearance of All the Poems of John Robert
Colombo in 2005. All the Aphorisms of John Robert Colombo was issued in 2006.
The same year saw the appearance of Miniatures, an anthology of 50-word stories
by a hundred or so writers. Andrei Voznesensky wrote, "The searchings of John
Robert Colombo are significant and profound."
Other Books Written or Introduced by John Robert
Colombo