User Rating:
6/10
To make a word ?epi? is to make it paratexual.by [secret] - June 7, 2007
Pros: Epigraph, a quote at the front of a book,
Cons: epitaph, concerning those beyond the grave,
Review:
(a marker between life and death) epithet, to replace one?s name with a phrase (or maybe even an epigram), epicentre, the point of earth above the earthquake, epidermis, what we use to touch the outside, and what we have to hold ourselves in. I realise all these words concern my study, so I wish to encompass and slide these words together, from here on in, in a word I call the epi(text). (Hint: There is a reason for the brackets that stems beyond sheer pomo hype, find it.) After workshopping several different ways of portraying the epi(text) in writing, including epi/text, epi-text, epitext, epiText, [epi]Text or (epi)text, I decided on epi(text) because all meanings of epi suggest that it is something that is around something else, and the brackets look like they are encompassing the word, and sitting around the ?text? like a globe or a hug or cupped hands or some kind of paratextual surface. In this kind of nod to concrete poetry, the writing of the word also manages to include the meaning of the word, where as other ideas such as epiText just looked somewhat eye pleasing. ) An epi word is something placed slightly to the outside of something else; not necessarily attached to something else, but always representing a threshold between, or a touching of things.