HAVANA SYNDROME

Slicing through genre and convention like a razor through celluloid, Sacha Archer’s HAVANA SYNDROME is a grimy, ink-splattered adventure in the hinterlands of typographic representation. Like a clandestine dossier of photocopied documents, these poems disclose themselves in furtive fragments, drawing the reader into a conspiracy of text and visual detritus. Which fingerprints are Archer’s and which are left by the reader? Whether you’re a detective or the culprit, HAVANA SYNDROME will enlist you into a secret agency of interpretation.

“Those focals, those visuals talking to whom: self, you, him, her. Turned phrases of felt knowns introverted/extroverted cogent and urgent. We, cohabiters in the syndrome embodied fact & metaphor in beginning pulse-waves, staple-gripped, typed text with a worn ribbon, stamp work when ink runs dry = dry figures in crumpled origami paper time. Archer at his best, bound by band and ring, his marriage with visuals & text become stronger, wider, come close at hand, fingernail and thumbprint, with gas clouds from under the front door... Jump! Jump! You already have...”

—Brian Dedora

“Only Archer could so aptly deliver this true and defective report: apocalypse in a pack of staples, the dread smoke interior to every thing; X-ray division, Adam's decay, CT petroglyphs in counterfeit sand; the rotting mass of black cords under all our green dreaming and the necessary hilarity of oblivion. There is something realer than true in these radiochemical shadows, not magic or magnetism so much as a metaphysics-shaped knife doing the talking that language couldn't. Thank truancy or god that this clotty pearl is here to fulfill language's failure. The world is bleaker and more precious for this book – Ingest With Caution.”

—Franco Cortese

Below you will find a small selection of pages excerpted from HAVANA SYNDROME. Limited edition books are available in paperback from The Blasted Tree’s online store, and you can download the project in PDF format HERE.

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