Experimental Literature

I enjoy multi-media and linguistically distinct literature, often with a comic sensibility, seeking to make a point.

My minimalist, 20th-century disposition has informed an approach to working with the tactile elements of design and text, combining physical materiel and the digital. At the same time, my love of philology and foreign languages has reflected on my own understanding of English and, perhaps, a future language.

Some Experimental Literature by Christopher Deliso:

“Vesalius Reconstellated,” The Traveller’s Literary Supplicant, November 11. 2023.

-The Early-Modern physician Vesalius, his fatal final voyage to Jerusalem and back to the Greek islands, are narrated in the unusual format of the second-person-singular in this story with a nod to Vesalius’ inspiration, Swedenborg.

“Poem Brut #45:Questionnaire for National Security,” 3:AM Magazine, October 6, 2018.

-From careful observation of the lunacy of forms, a multi-media art and wry fictional story on the legendary ‘TSC form,’ created with the help of coffee rinds, lipstick, pen and a sticky-note. The scenario is simply that ofa drunken college student filling out a form, sending it in, and gaining unexpected interest from the powers-that-be.

“Some Notes on the Inflection of ‘Lobster,'” The Pedestal, 2013 (original 2000 version)

-The original text, written in 2000, is uploaded here; it is the original draft of an unchanged story later published in the former Pedestal poetry magazine. ‘Some Notes’ is a mock-academic essay with footnotes, written by a future author, on the declensional system of an elevated linguistic structure known as ‘New Poetic English.’ The story raises important linguistic issues, and stands as the first creative effort toward the 2000 novella, The Third Emperor of California, taking place in that same future space.