“ghost machines came out of an initial urge to write a sequel to Ghost Machine, my first book. It began with a set of calligraphic poems I made with my typewriter, sometime during 2006. These poems were created contemporaneously with many of the poems in my Ghost Machine. ghost machines also grew out of a second set of poems from a chapbook I self-published in 2005. These poems were collage poems that were heavily influenced by Ted Berrigan's The Sonnets. The collage poems and the calligrams became the original sources for ghost machines. The other source material in ghost machines was gathered later on during the writing process. Specifically, the prose pieces were taken from sources I encountered during the period I wrote ghost machines. I included these sources because they either helped me to make aesthetic decisions about ghost machines, or because their language seemed strongly related to the poetics of ghost machines. Eventually all these sources found their way into the final version of ghost machines.”
-- Ben Mirov
