Each poem begins with an epigraph that distills a subject and then goes on to elaborate, extrapolate, complicate. Each poem reverses "communication"; pushes meaning from one image to the next, taking it apart, transferring it from line to line in a series of transformations that finally create an experience of the present.Pierre Alferi is the author of over fifteen novels and books of poetry as well as three volumes of philosophy/essay. He has worked extensively in the short ciné-poème form, and co-founded the influential Revue de littérature générale (1990–1996). His translations include works by John Donne, Meyer Shapiro, and Giorgio Agamben. Born in 1963, he graduated from the École Normale Supérieur, rue d'Ulm. He has taught at the ENSBA in Lyon, France, and currently at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France.