What do you think?
Rate this book
Cryptopedia
“Everyone knows the uncanny is queer, and sexy. By cutting into Wikipedia articles about creepy phenomena, Andrew Demcak’s Cryptopedia magically brings forth layers of sexuality, and mystery, camp, culture, and humor. An intriguing and inspiring poetry.” - Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave, How To Grow Up.
“Andrew Demcak’s Cryptopedia is a collection that lives up to the mystery and intrigue promised by its title. Cryptopedia succeeds with that most fundamental and pleasing of poetic ideas: finding harmony between form and content. Demcak is a Renaissance man who works in unusual ways, cutting up blocks of text from a variety of sources and rearranging them, to create his poems. In Cryptopedia he mixes this method with the murky, monstrous, and mysterious to create something unsettling yet genuinely moving and thought-provoking. Demcak’s success comes from his pitch-perfect subject choices and his ability to turn a seemingly random selection of lines and quotes into a twisting narrative, a short, emotive gut-punch. It takes talent to write poetry, but Demcak has proved he is not only a great talent, but a true craftsman.” - Josh King @ NewFound Literary Journal
“Andrew Demcak’s Cryptopedia is a collection that lives up to the mystery and intrigue promised by its title. Cryptopedia succeeds with that most fundamental and pleasing of poetic ideas: finding harmony between form and content. Demcak is a Renaissance man who works in unusual ways, cutting up blocks of text from a variety of sources and rearranging them, to create his poems. In Cryptopedia he mixes this method with the murky, monstrous, and mysterious to create something unsettling yet genuinely moving and thought-provoking. Demcak’s success comes from his pitch-perfect subject choices and his ability to turn a seemingly random selection of lines and quotes into a twisting narrative, a short, emotive gut-punch. It takes talent to write poetry, but Demcak has proved he is not only a great talent, but a true craftsman.” - Josh King @ NewFound Literary Journal
68 pages, Paperback
Published January 11, 2020
1 person is currently reading
1 person want to read
About the author
Andrew Demcak
13 books170 followersAndrew Demčák is an award-winning, American poet and novelist, the author of six poetry collections and eight Young Adult novels. His books have been featured by The American Library Association, Verse Daily, The Lambda Literary Foundation, The Best American Poetry, Kirkus Reviews, and Poets & Writers. He was selected to be the keynote speaker for the California Library Association's annual conference to celebrate his contributions to LGBTQ+ Young Adult literature.
He has been a finalist for the prestigious Dorset Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, The Crazyhorse Poetry Award, and the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence in Poetry. He did win the Three Candles Press Open Book Award, selected by the phenomenal poet, Joan Larkin, for his first poetry collection, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (2007).
He has been a finalist for the prestigious Dorset Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, The Crazyhorse Poetry Award, and the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence in Poetry. He did win the Three Candles Press Open Book Award, selected by the phenomenal poet, Joan Larkin, for his first poetry collection, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (2007).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 12, 2020
The poems in this unique chapbook appear as prose poems: small blocks of text that Andrew Demcak has assembled by erasure of text from Wikipedia articles, thereby altering meaning and creating a new poetry.
For example, “THE BLOOP, n. Significant, but unexplained,sound. It’s more or less gibberish. Perhaps ice calving off Antarctica, or likely animal in origin.” The poet here draws a connection between calving of ice and animals, making - as poetry does - a linguistic connection that makes us think in new ways.
At times there is the verisimilitude of scientific language in these poems, which the poet disregards in making new language. This collection is in this manner subversive as it places scientific meaning secondary to its sound, or language. Demcak throws the rule book out in this transgressive chapbook Cryptopedia.
At other times there seems to be splicing together of disparate information to create a new narrative, as in “The Bunny Man” where something about rabbits is crossed with a murder/accident report.
Demcak seems here to be employing the very current “Lady Gaga philosophy” that everything old is new again, that everything has already been written and that we can make new art by recycling and cherry-picking old material to present it as relevant to today.
For example, “THE BLOOP, n. Significant, but unexplained,sound. It’s more or less gibberish. Perhaps ice calving off Antarctica, or likely animal in origin.” The poet here draws a connection between calving of ice and animals, making - as poetry does - a linguistic connection that makes us think in new ways.
At times there is the verisimilitude of scientific language in these poems, which the poet disregards in making new language. This collection is in this manner subversive as it places scientific meaning secondary to its sound, or language. Demcak throws the rule book out in this transgressive chapbook Cryptopedia.
At other times there seems to be splicing together of disparate information to create a new narrative, as in “The Bunny Man” where something about rabbits is crossed with a murder/accident report.
Demcak seems here to be employing the very current “Lady Gaga philosophy” that everything old is new again, that everything has already been written and that we can make new art by recycling and cherry-picking old material to present it as relevant to today.
December 19, 2022
From Amazon: “ I happened upon Cryptopedia when browsing a library catalog, looking for books with "___pedia" in their titles, and I checked it out and found the book wonderful: Demcak uses Wm S. Burroughs's cut-up method in his own way, with personal additions to the "found" material (Wikipedia!), idiosyncratic editing, additions of poetic metrics, and rhyme, which he briefly delineates at the beginning of the book.
Cut-ups tend to amplify language and its information content. As it does here.
Although I mention Wikipedia as his source material, if you read these poems, you won't recognize Wikipedia at all. Demcak simply chose cryptozoological, urban myths, weird physics, odd neurobiological phenomena, and other bizarre items from the field of wide Forteana, and cut the entries up, poetically enhanced certain aspects of the Wiki entries, and then - one assumes - cut up those, then polished the results. I love this alchemy! It tapped into the eerie, occult, dark side of my every day life, and influenced my dreams.
And I don't know if Demcak meant this, but in the prologue to the book, he asserts the entire thing is one big "metaphor." And, for me, this metaphor was hilarious in the extreme. When I live with and accept all the fears, shadows, and High Weirdness of my life and other peoples' lives in general, it's liberating. And one response (mine) is to laff.
This is a physically tiny, slim book that is however quite plump in its implications. I consider it a fortuitous find. Read it late at night, before bed!”
Cut-ups tend to amplify language and its information content. As it does here.
Although I mention Wikipedia as his source material, if you read these poems, you won't recognize Wikipedia at all. Demcak simply chose cryptozoological, urban myths, weird physics, odd neurobiological phenomena, and other bizarre items from the field of wide Forteana, and cut the entries up, poetically enhanced certain aspects of the Wiki entries, and then - one assumes - cut up those, then polished the results. I love this alchemy! It tapped into the eerie, occult, dark side of my every day life, and influenced my dreams.
And I don't know if Demcak meant this, but in the prologue to the book, he asserts the entire thing is one big "metaphor." And, for me, this metaphor was hilarious in the extreme. When I live with and accept all the fears, shadows, and High Weirdness of my life and other peoples' lives in general, it's liberating. And one response (mine) is to laff.
This is a physically tiny, slim book that is however quite plump in its implications. I consider it a fortuitous find. Read it late at night, before bed!”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews