CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/11/2014

Ray Johnson: The Paper Snake

In Siglio's new collection of Ray Johnson's Writings, Elizabeth Zuba excerpts a 1968 interview with the artist: "Well, I shouldn't call myself a poet but other people have. What I do is classify the words as poetry. Something Else Press published a book in 1965 called The Paper Snake which is all my writings, rubbings, plays, things that I had given to the publisher Dick Higgins, editor and publisher, which I mailed to him or brought to him in cardboard boxes or shoved under his door, or left in his sink, or whatever, over a period of years. He saved all these things and designed and published a book, and I simply as an artist did what I did without classification. So when the book appeared the book stated, "Ray Johnson is a poet," but I never said, "This is a poem," I simply wrote what I wrote and it later became classified." Featured detail is reproduced from Siglio's notable facsimile reprint of The Paper Snake, released this week.