Mi'ani'festo Poems are energy. And pwoermds are the smallest, talismanic scraps of energy. They leave the barest suggestion of meaning that the reader can interpret, spin-off, double-read, see and then see again- but most of the time they refuse even that, and I love them for it. They are fragments; they are essence; they are spells. The glass poems I have made are haptic poems that began as pwoermds. Over time, I reworked these clandestine and evocative pieces into physical objects meant to be handled, turned about in the hands, held up to light and experienced. The photographs in this collection replicate this experience of handling and seeing, and duplicate the variations of this experience. Because they are glass, they are never the same experience twice. Because most of them are made with dichroic glass- a variety of glass which displays two or more different colors in certain lighting conditions- this variety is even more pronounced. Dichroic glass is wonderfully gaudy and transient, a passionate and lively material, filled with fugitive colors that change and engage playfully throughout the day, depending on the angle of view, the light, the weather, or even what is reflected, sky, face, or earth. I love glass because it is inherently responsive. Lively and reflective by nature, it participates in the environment. It doesn’t exclude the world around it. It can’t help itself. It fits these pwoermds because they too invite participation, never settling on meaning. Mirrors always reflect something, even when nothing is there, and glass is the eye taking you in and seeing you right back. I believe mirrors hold history and record the soul. When I see myself reflected, I am speaking to the past, to the ghosts who once gazed as I gaze.. These pieces are therefore participatory- they’re brevity invites and provokes thought, emotion, and memory. This is a part of their life, their depth, their jouissance. I want to offer my special and heartfelt thanks to Sadie for her expert advice on the nature of glass, assistance with the engineering, and for kindly giving me her dichroic glass remnants. This work would have been a lot more difficult without her help. Thanks especially to mIEKAL aND for helping to make sassafracas- the pieces of which now reside in a box and await glass-fusing, the next incarnation of object making that will break the colors up into glittering stars- become an object I can share with the world.