A BOOK WRITTEN WITH A PHOTOCOPYING MACHINE: THE ANONYMOUS POET BY JUAN LUIS MARTÍNEZ.

In the eighties, Juan Luis Martínez worked in the confection of his book, El poeta anónimo (19421993) . Before dying, he left the material organized in a file folder and, in 2012, it was launched by the Brazilian publisher Cosac & Naify. The anonymous poet was made almost entirely with photocopies of texts and images from books, newspapers and magazines. In this essay, I will analyze the formal characteristics of the book and the traces of the electrographic process of the photocopy, in order to reveal key aspects of its manufacture. I give an account of different strategies carried out by Juan Luis Martínez, which deconstruct monumental notions of author, work and book. In addition, I suggest that The Anonymous Poetcan be understood as an artist's book, based on the characterization that Johanna Drucker presents in her renowned study The Century of Artists' Books . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]