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
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
Brian Ang, “Preface: Totality and Method,” The Totality Cantos (Atelos, 2022), 9-11. ↩
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.