Mathias Svalina, On Reading

"Reading is my mind. Through reading, I think. The text creates my thinking. There are discrete bodies & experiences of the mind. There is no discrete mind. Reading is my mind in other minds & other minds in mine. I am reading Samuel Delaney’s Dahlgren & my mind is a new mind. I cannot think what I think without Samuel Delaney’s Dahlgren. I am reading Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now & my mind is a new mind. I cannot think what I think without Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now. Noah Eli Gordon’s The Source is made up of text from thousands of other books that he read & cribbed from. I am reading Noah Eli Gordon’s The Source & my mind is a new mind of his mind in others’ minds. Noah Eli Gordon cannot think the things that become The Source without reading & I cannot think what I think without Noah Eli Gordon’s The Source. Reading reminds me that the true experience of thinking is that no thinking is interior, that knowledge is ontologically relational. Reading reminds me that the mind is composed in all things."


{Mathias Svalina is the author of one book of poems, Destruction Myth (Cleveland State Poetry Center), one book of prose that comes out July 2011, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur (Mud Luscious Press), & numerous chapbooks. With Zachary Schomburg he edits Octopus Magazine & Octopus Books. Visit him here for more information.}