For some time, the artist and poet Anne Germanacos set herself a simple task: to write texts of exactly one thousand words each, moving forward without looking back. Later, she returned to divide the initial twenty-five thousand words by ten, making the smaller portion into a tithe, and releasing the rest.
What remains is a work of fragments and flashes: a text that embodies the rhythm of the daily— food, humor, illness, reading, the sound of a child crying—and images with layered fields of color and half-concealed words.
In The Thousands, Germanacos writes within an ethic of openness: the willingness to be changed by what enters, to let interruption become form. The result is a book that listens as it speaks, and in doing so, transforms language into “a larger, more hospitable space.”
Praise for The Thousands
“The Thousands is beautiful, very—sharp, spontaneous, careful and carefree at once, a little solicitous, always inviting, also defiant—taking care to point its restlessness toward tenderness. As a meditation on the problem of presence it is especially bright. Presence: all we have, and always escaping us. And the paintings/drawings/writings—each is part palimpsest and part pentimento—they are perfect with the text, and add a tactile sensuality to the book. They are the book’s translucence, literally.”
—Jason Francisco
About the Author
Anne Germanacos writes, paints, teaches, and convenes groups in San Francisco, Jerusalem, Athens, and on Crete, inviting individuals to form creative communities through the Firehouse—an actual place in San Francisco as well as a concept and form of social practice. For more information on Anne’s work, see www.mergemerge.com.
