Poet, philosopher, speculative architect and transdisciplinary artist, Madeline Gins is well known for her collaborations with her husband, the artist Arakawa, on the experimental architectural project Reversible Destiny, in which they sought to arrest mortality by transforming the built environment. Yet, her own writings — in the form of poetry, essays, experimental prose and philosophical inquiries — represent her most visionary and transformative work. Like Gertrude Stein before her, Gins transfigures grammar and liberates words. Like her contemporaries in conceptual art, her writing is attuned to the energized, collaborative space between reader and page.

The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader is a revelatory anthology, edited and with an introduction by the writer and critic Lucy Ives. It brings never-before-published poems and essays together with a complete facsimile reproduction of Gins’ 1969 masterpiece, WORD RAIN (or A Discursive Introduction to the Intimate Philosophical Investigations of G, R, E, T, A, G, A, R, B, O, It Says), along with substantial excerpts from her two later books What the President Will Say and Do!! (1984) and Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994). Long out of print or unpublished, Gins’ poems and prose form a powerful corpus of experimental literature, one which is sure to upend existing narratives of American poetics at the close of the 20th century.

Edited by Lucy Ives.

诗人、哲学家、推测性建筑师和跨学科艺术家 Madeline Gins 因其与丈夫、艺术家 Arakaw 合作的实验性建筑项目《Reversible Destiny》而闻名，在该项目中，他们试图通过改造建筑环境来阻止死亡。然而，她自己的著作—以诗歌、散文、实验性散文和哲学探究的形式—代表了她最有远见和变革性的工作。像她之前的 Gertrude Stein 一样，Gins 改变了语法，解放了文字。就像她同时代的概念艺术一样，她的写作适应于读者和页面之间充满活力的合作空间。

《The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader》是一本具有启示意义的文集，由作家和评论家 Lucy Ives 编辑并作了介绍。它将从未发表过的诗歌和散文与Gins 1969年的代表作《WORD RAIN》（或《A Discursive Introduction to the Intimate Philosophical Investigations of G, R, E, T, A, G, A, R, B, O, It Says》（1984年）和《What the President Will Say and Do!! 》中的大量节选放在一起。 (1984）和《Helen Keller or Arakawa》（1994）。Gins的诗歌和散文长期绝版或未出版，形成了一个强大的实验文学语料库，它肯定会颠覆20世纪末美国诗学的现有叙述。

由Lucy Ives编辑。