Albert Mobilio brings a poet’s perspective and approach to understanding works of language-based art. He reads the visual texts in terms of poetic mechanism and form. The look and shape of words has always been an animating concern for poets; the work of visual artists who employ language is a vital extension of this core aesthetic principle. By engaging the intellectual, emotional, and physical nature of that response, he plans to compose distinctly experiential accounts of verbal/visual artworks.
Mobilio is the recipient of a Whiting Award and the National Book Critics Circle award for reviewing. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Black Clock, BOMB, Cabinet, Hambone, Lithub, and Tin House. Books of poetry include Bendable Siege, The Geographics, Me with Animal Towering, and Touch Wood. Collaborations with artists have yielded three artist’s books (Hillary Lorenz, “A Handbook of Phrenology”; Roger Andersson, “Letters from Mayhem”; Mark Schlesinger, “Categories of Apprehension”). His volume of short fictions, Games and Stunts, will be published by Black Square Editions in 2017. He is an assistant professor of literary studies at The New School’s Eugene Lang College, a contributing editor at Bookforum, and an editor for Hyperallergic Weekend.