"Indeed, the main contribution of this painstakingly researched, visually striking book lies in its treatment of the Futurist books as interdisciplinary and multiplicitous wholes, where the book art, the visual art, and the verbal art all inform each other, resonate with each other, and gesture toward each other in rebellion against the mechanically reproducible, the rational, and the clear."--Eugene Ostashevsky "Los Angeles Review of Books " "At its core, Perloff's study does more than justice to the complexity of the Russian futurists' book experiments carried out some one hundred years ago. By opening up the discussion to the 'semantics of sound, ' Perloff allows the Russian futurist book to reverberate--or even explode--in our present day and beyond."--H-Net "This study combines literature and art in an examination of a very specific segment of futurist creativity: unique books handmade as works of art. Perloff puts the topic in context, and in the five chapters not only discusses examples in detail but also provides ample material on Russian avant-garde art, including areas such as the relationship between folk art and modernism."--Choice "Perloff uses the category of the book arts to meld the varied artistic, literary, and epistemological impulses of the 1910s. She convincingly shows that the creativity and energy of the Futurists can be captured only by seeing and experiencing the totality of their work as it was first presented to its audience."--Slavic and East European Journal "Richly illustrated and supplemented by a digital component that allows readers to see the original books in full, read translations, and hear the text in Russian through new recordings, the book provides a compelling account of the earliest experiments in sound poetry and book art."
--Burlington Magazine