Frank Kuppner · 2008 · EPUB · Calibre ID 2912
Resurfaced in Only the Incipit (2026-09-30).
Role in the triad
The incipit as the whole book: 4,108 first lines of a lost anthology, alphabetized, no poems behind them.
Why this book
The purest case in the library of Flannery’s ‘book that is only an incipit’. Alphabet replaces plot; the phantom country Oblivia (91 lines) supplies a ghost literature; two lines pastiche Hesiod and Genesis, Jullien’s Western openings. Title = initials of ‘A Revised Index Of First Lines Of The Great Anthology’.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “I have only had glimpses of the life I would like to have had.” (epigraph)
- “A,b,c,d and so on. Where’s the problem?” (first line, under A)
- “At first, in the beginning, there was no such thing as Time.” (under A)
- “All poets fail. That is, perhaps, what poetry is.” (under A)
- “I can’t get these bloody openings out of my mind.” (under I)
- “Let me, I beg you, O Muse, begin this epic about poetry,” (under L)
- “No actual poem anywhere would begin like this” (under N)
- “Zzzzz. No, no. Don’t wake me up. In fact,” (last line, under Z)
- Excerpt: the compiler’s bracketed note (front matter)
Themes
alphabetical order · anthology · first lines · index · lost poems · Oblivia · parody