The Voynich Manuscript

Issue 21

July 2020

The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown writing system, dating back to the beginning of the 15th century.It has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. The manuscript has never been demonstrably deciphered, and the mystery of its meaning and origin has excited imaginative minds.

Playlist inspired by the stimulus

The Art of Punctuation

Eponine Howarth

We punctuate a life, as we punctuate a story, or a poem. It’s the art of cutting, pacing, harnessing, detaching...

Trumping Machiavelli

Jack Kamm

Many of us have heard—if not used at least once—the word Machiavellian as it applies to the extremity of power.

Voynich

Katie Elconin-Donoho

You emerge out of your beastiary Hairless, With eyes the same unsettled blue as sea water.

Regrown from the Pleistocene

Joyce Schmid

The petals are much narrower, more splayed, and yet they look as fresh as modern campion...

Poetics of Fragmentation

Vasiliki Poula

The readers of Cavafy were limited to the select group who received his poems, privately printed...

Passion Fruit

Francis Flavin

If you would bend . . . | Just a little. | Then I could know, | The last fig,

The Street of Crocodiles, The Cinnamon Shops

Scott Jones

Bruno Schulz, an art teacher and painter in Drogobych, Poland, scribed three literary works of art and then was shot...

Inheritance

Alexandra McIntosh

Last fall, my parents had the locust tree cut down in the back yard.

Mystery and the V. Mss.

Lynne Shapiro

Bless the hive that cannot be pried that skep of clay that denies every Pandora her urge

Perception and Leaves

Jeremy Ford

Can we give up our eyes and ears, mouth, nose, and skin, and find new ones, never worn;

There Are Two Suns

Konstantinos Doxiadis

There are two suns that rise every morning One scorching red and the other its reflection

Chapter Thirty-One Or The Lost Chapter

Joude Bazzoun

Candide, Cunégonde and their companions soon realised that their garden...

Ghosts and Landscapes

Nicole Zdeb

Bearing no resemblance to the world that I bear, there’s a world.

Thirst and Vigil

Oisin Breen

Sa n'áit n'ard na gaoithe In the place of the high winds. Here is the caught, the girdled, and exalted.

The Bowl and Nightshade

Steven Van Pelt

To old men who stumble onto the fiery plain pity be given.

Ghost songs

Samantha Cramer

Cities hoard their dead, layers of clay and memory, paving stones and fossilized teeth

Snow-Globes

Sarah White

Lady Liberty, patron of my souvenirs, rules the skyline of Manhattan, raising high her weightless lamp.

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