The 2008 economic crisis and global backdrop of struggles by 2011 renewed possibilities for thinking totality, materializing it for apprehension. Ang wrote The Totality Cantos out of a desire to be interested in everything, sampling from discourses of history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities, all offering knowledges of what constitute totality. This major work is constructed along the principles of assemblage poetics, and exemplifies constructive verse: writing adequate to apprehending totality.
Asked by Creative Editor Jessica Zhou for a selection from my book The Totality Cantos (Atelos, 2022), I searched the text for the word “luck” and found it in eight of the text’s one thousand sections, assembled below. I also offer “The Totality Cantos Diagram” images by Marc Ngui (2021) which appear on The Totality Cantos’ covers and an excerpt from The Totality Cantos’ “Preface: Totality and Method”:
[The Totality Cantos is] open to the totality of discourses in one hundred cantos of one hundred lines each. Every line [is] a complete poem, a totalization, a singularity, a made thought. Every canto consist[s] of ten sections of ten lines each, each consisting of lines of one through ten words long and aligned flush left and to nine indentations in order to produce dynamic durations and spacings. Every length and alignment occur[s] before being repeated in the next section. Arrangement of lines [is] determined by random numbers. In the transition between sections, equal lengths and alignments [are] prevented from being adjacent in order to maintain dynamic consistency. Any section [can] be excerpted and connected to any other as long as equal lengths and alignments are not adjacent. A hundred cantos, a thousand sections, ten thousand lines. Every canto [is] differently constituted by fifteen vocabularies from the totality of discourses. The fifteen vocabularies... consist of five groups of three: two tertiary groups, two secondary groups, and a primary group designating the dominance of each group in the canto, each group drawn from a different set of three discourses. In the poem’s transformation across cantos, sets... emerge and ascend the hierarchy, dominate, then descend and disappear, each set getting its dominant canto in combination with subordinate sets. Three hundred discourses, one hundred sets of three, [are] drawn from in total. Proper nouns [are] suppressed in order to decenter attention toward discourses. Repetition of words in a canto [is] prevented in order to maximize heterogeneity, repetitions of words across cantos delineating dimensions of the poem traversing singular thoughts…. Verbs [are] suppressed in order to maximize connections in a smooth syntax. Repetition of word pairs [is] prevented in order to maintain singular combinations….totalitycantos.net includes the complete, searchable text in order to find words of interest and a generator that randomizes assemblages of its one thousand sections.1
From The Totality Cantos: 4-1 + 2-2 + 45-2 + 25-4 + 95-10 + 65-8 + 74-2 + 85-4
4-1 Breakthrough fact burn delusion soul pilgrims
Disillusioned women’s cross-examined electronic shining lucky language camp production mujtahids
Depaganized purpose lightning path goal bliss view elephant sexes
Nature combination singularity supply
Varied culture resolution text politics
Elderly pious crucial expansion female professor contexts
Kin house countries
Kosher wages
Attention
Established confidence innovation mouth homosexuality closeness businessman activities
2-2 Historians
Discipline foodstuffs
Middle present community luck schism acts
Truth patience weapons
Transcendent tandem emancipatory election posthuman halakha love curve women boroughs
Convex camp convention monotheism spots
Dazzling capitalist celluloid caste gender encoding lotus teaching storage
New unlikable creativity rights
Hard great council range book theory achievements
Solidified ordinary commercial poet healer state sociology self
45-2 Population tomb territory homeland framework
Long-armed victims’ unlucky online patronage machine mandolin corpse kangaroos
Poetry
Premodern estate balance comedy contrast cross company control
Trinity freezer mouth component safeguard human
Outer complicated motivation modicum self-discipline recension desktop
New line guess
Developing slap advantage quotas
Descendant board
Stable superman women tragedy church week love block theology sites
25-4 Applied hypocrisy linguistics community earshot anthropology behavior organization écrits
Tradition
Doctrinal rococo concept book fact security ruins
Nostalgia presence responses
Quotation architecture
Abuse angle science spectator vengeance betters
Racism confrontation collapse knowledge checks
Many visual inevitable plausible creative legitimacy following act zenith intensities
Baroque sperm mother mood plasterwork dimension diagnosis truth
Lucky archrival’s imperial effort
95-10 Living strategy reserve burden experience dollar humanism symptoms
Direct clash capital modernism capita concern phenomenon word value
Unspeakable master intelligence neurosis nation fate
Egalitarian women control
New meager reusable exile descendants
Challenged unitary palpable minorities
Chosen strand blood bone orbis lamina landmark evidence commitment creation
Agriculture
Unified acts
Unlucky pleasure performance egg fire space law
65-8 Outside atomic data death range tosses
Crumbling lacunous target span component yawn period nucleotides
Vertical spore luck asylum
Anti-apartheid oral-fecal foreheads
Interested studies
Sample
Environmental lifestyle grandeur fashion circle republican psychoses
Inherited political devolved deputy hammer feather syndrome nicotine cottage caffeine
Million same worldwide location mollusks
Squashed surgical hostage voorpost coffin driver dicynodont licentiousness ovaries
74-2 Unique cookies
Assets
Anticipated target increase hero thinker brand entropy detail skeptics
Repeated crater critique millennia follow-up fossil traction amateur
Luckily dogmatic neoplasia apostrophe distribution caution
Dysfunction epidemiology reforms
Somebody’s overall embraced appellate stock stimulus amendment land concern schools
Biblical homeless comfort reward evaluation emission events
Network frequency morning healers
Different subordinate convertible progressivism revolutions
85-4 Tiny lucky inspired medieval restoration nightfall spacecraft similarity children hypotheses
Proprietors
Westward evidence inquiries
Eminent material goal satellite existence ocean campuses
Perfect step folk brain breath corpus discoverer numbers
Semipublic battle historian women poor
Boat bishop emperor theism
Meaningful muckle ammonium rebirth notebook present
Coming pulpit castle imagery beginning route speech time words
Satanic politics
Notes
Footnotes
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Brian Ang, “Preface: Totality and Method,” The Totality Cantos (Atelos, 2022), 9-11. ↩
Author
Brian Ang
Brian Ang wrote The Totality Cantos (Atelos 2022). totalitycantos.net includes the complete text and a generator that randomizes assemblages of its one thousand sections. Prose: “Assemblage Poetics”; editor: Assemblage Sampler and ASSEMBLAGE; current poetic project: A Thousand Records, open to the totality of music.