July 18, 2025 
Brad Ramsey 
270  Milan St. 
Unit 205 
Toronto, ON 
M5A 3Z6 
Telephone: (416) 928-1231 
Email: bradramseytoronto@gmail.com 
2,386 words. 
Your Attention Coach House Press 
This is proof of Ignatius Apple 
Please follow our former correspondence. 
I resend whether near Seattle Permitting 
 
 
 
 
 
MOTH DIALECTS 
Poems by Ignatius Apple Restored Edition · Toronto, 2025 Originally Circulated (Speculative): 1974 Compiled by Brad Ramsey Scholarly Commentary by Callum Veritas 
 
 
✒️ Dedication 
To the moths who speak in powder, and to the shadows who listen. 
 
📘 Foreword by Brad Ramsey 
There are voices in poetry that don’t simply speak—they flutter, stammer, and dissolve into vapor. Ignatius Apple’s work has haunted the edge of literary consciousness for decades: fragmentary, mythic, elusive. Moth Dialects is a speculative restoration, built from scattered verses and archival echoes, brought together with reverence for Apple’s surrealist legacy. 
This chapbook may never have formally existed—or it may have been passed hand to hand, moth-wing to moth-wing, in a forgotten reading room in Minneapolis in the spring of 1974. Here, I’ve reconstructed what could have been: ten poems that breathe the language of powder, silence, and incandescent doubt. 
Each poem in this volume speaks in Apple’s unmistakable tongue—fusing body and metaphor, collapsing grammar into sensation, and revealing the heart as something that drifts instead of beats. 
If this reconstruction finds its way into the hands of another poet, reader, or dreamer: consider it an invitation not to certainty, but to unknowing. May these moths land gently. 
 
📖 Scholarly Foreword by Callum Veritas 
The poetry of Ignatius Apple teeters beautifully between dissolution and rebirth. In Moth Dialects, language does not merely convey meaning—it molts. Apple treats syntax like a chrysalis, cracking it open to reveal something fragile, trembling, and elemental. 
His metaphors resist permanence. They wish to be whispered into flame, inhaled as rumor, dusted into absence. The restored manuscript before you—a speculative facsimile curated by Brad Ramsey—echoes the poetic sensibility of a writer who never sought fame, only a vocabulary with wings. 
This chapbook is for those who believe that poetry can evaporate and still remain. 
 
📚 Table of Contents 
Moth Dialectics 
Lantern’s Breath 
Syntax for Flight 
Cocoon Logic 
The Flame’s Forgetting 
Powdered Tongue 
The Book That Closed 
Wing Memory 
Pupa (Fragment) 
The Last Rumor 
The Chirping of Forgotten Escapes (Bonus Poem) 
Preliminary Index of Motifs 
Visual Appendix 
Literary Lineage Chart 
Critical Dossier 
Colophon 
 
📝 POEM TEXTS 
Each poem is rendered in single-line format with line numbers every ten lines aligned to the right for scholarly reference. 
Moth Dialectics 
plaintext 
My speech lands softly, born in powder.                            [1]   
No sentence stays long on my tongue.   
I trade syntax for flight.   
Air stutters around me in patterns only wings remember.   
I ask nothing of the flame—only that it forgets me.   
A book closes inside the lantern’s breath.   
Every word folds inward, seeking cocoon.                           [7]   
 
 
Lantern’s Breath 
plaintext 
The lantern exhales memory in smoke.                              [1]   
I read its sighs like forgotten alphabets.   
Each flicker is a vowel lost to ash.   
The moths gather, spelling silence.   
I hold my breath to listen.                                       [5]   
 
 
Syntax for Flight 
plaintext 
Grammar breaks mid-wingbeat.                                      [1]   
Verbs flutter, nouns dissolve.   
I conjugate longing in dust.   
The sentence lifts, unpunctuated.   
Flight is the only tense I trust.                                 [5]   
 
 
Cocoon Logic 
plaintext 
I wrap thought in silk.                                           [1]   
It dreams of metamorphosis.   
Inside, logic softens.   
Time forgets its edges.   
I emerge with no memory of grammar.                               [5]   
 
 
The Flame’s Forgetting 
plaintext 
The flame remembers too much.                                     [1]   
I beg it to forget my wings.   
It answers in hunger.   
I offer my silence.   
It takes my shadow instead.                                       [5]   
 
 
Powdered Tongue 
plaintext 
My tongue powders with each word.                                 [1]   
Speech becomes a shedding.   
I whisper in fragments.   
The air collects my meaning.   
Only the moths understand.                                        [5]   
 
 
The Book That Closed 
plaintext 
A book closed itself last night.                                  [1]   
Its pages folded like wings.   
The story escaped.   
I found its ending in a lampshade.   
It flickered once, then vanished.                                 [5]   
 
 
Wing Memory 
plaintext 
My wings remember languages I never spoke.                        [1]   
They tremble with forgotten syntax.   
Each beat is a translation.   
I fly through metaphors.   
The sky reads me like a poem.                                     [5]   
 
 
Pupa (Fragment) 
plaintext 
I slept inside a sentence.                                        [1]   
It curled around me, warm and unread.   
Outside, the world conjugated.   
Inside, I dreamed of verbs.   
I woke with wings.                                                [5]   
 
 
The Last Rumor 
plaintext 
I heard the moth’s last rumor.                                    [1]   
It spoke of flame and forgetting.   
Its voice was dust.   
I inhaled it.   
Now I speak in powder.                                            [5]   
 
 
The Chirping of Forgotten Escapes (Bonus Poem) 
plaintext 
Window teeth grind in the wind's apology.                         [1]   
Clock lungs collapse under echo.   
I wear yesterday’s shadow like a borrowed name.   
The stairwells murmur in moth dialects.   
Ink drips from the mouth of mirrors.   
My footsteps cancel themselves mid-thought.   
Streetlamps kneel in circles, casting prayers.   
I cannot read, only answer in ash.   
Time wears gloves stitched with whispers.   
My bones remember maps no hand has drawn.                         [10]   
Thunder writes elegies in citrus tongue.   
Each silence is padded in velvet teeth.   
The sky sheds its seams and sells the thread.   
Paper clocks bruise the moon's confession.   
I swap my breath for a moth's last rumor.   
 
 
📂 Preliminary Index of Poetic Motifs 
Preliminary Index of Poetic Motifs in Moth Dialects 
This index documents recurring images, metaphors, and thematic symbols across the restored chapbook. It is organized alphabetically by motif with references to the poem title and approximate line location. 
Motif 
Description 
Appears In 
Line Estimate 
Ash 
Symbol of response, erasure, ritual, and loss 
Lantern’s Breath, Last Rumor 
L4–5 
Book/Language 
Metaphor for narrative collapse, unspeakable memory 
The Book That Closed, Lantern’s Breath 
L1–3 
Cocoon 
Symbol of transformation, enclosure, soft logic 
Cocoon Logic, Pupa 
L3–7 
Dust/Powder 
Fragility of speech and poetic dissolution 
Powdered Tongue, Moth Dialectics 
Throughout 
Flame 
Desire, forgetting, danger 
The Flame’s Forgetting, Last Rumor 
L2–5 
Grammar/Syntax 
Apple’s broken linguistic scaffold — fleeing meaning 
Syntax for Flight, Wing Memory 
L1–4 
Lamp/Lantern 
Source of insight, fleeting illumination 
Lantern’s Breath, The Book That Closed 
L1–4 
Moth 
Core image: winged vulnerability, coded language 
All poems 
Entire suite 
Silence 
Medium for communication, protective space 
Powdered Tongue, Lantern’s Breath 
L3–5 
Sky 
External mirror, horizon of metaphors 
Wing Memory 
L5 
Speech/Voice 
Disintegration of expression, rumor as breath 
Last Rumor, Moth Dialectics 
L1, L5 
Wings/Flight 
Escape, translation, instability 
Syntax for Flight, Wing Memory 
Throughout 
Note: This index is provisional and expandable as more texts are reconstructed or discovered. “Line Estimate” refers to line position in Apple’s original free-verse layout, not rigid numbering. 
 
. 
🧬 Literary Lineage of Ignatius Apple 
Charting stylistic descent and thematic affinities 
Movement / Figure 
Influence Type 
Reflected in Apple's Work 
Symbolism (late 19th c.) 
Tonal ancestor 
Interior landscapes, dream logic, subjective metaphors 
Surrealism (1920s–1940s) 
Foundational aesthetic 
Unconscious imagery, absurd juxtapositions, rejection of reason 
Antonin Artaud 
Linguistic dissenter 
Body-as-language metaphors, violent syntax, poetic fragmentation 
Fluxus (1960s–1970s) 
Countercultural gesture 
Ephemeral form, anti-institutional publishing, multidisciplinary echoes 
Language Poetry (1970s) 
Structural influence 
Syntax disruptions, grammar collapse, meaning as unstable 
Dada (1916–1924) 
Philosophical spirit 
Anti-form, absurd structure, emphasis on decay and spontaneity 
Lorine Niedecker 
Minimalist ancestor 
Compressed imagery, intimate abstraction, nature as metaphor 
John Ashbery 
Stylistic parallel 
Disjunctive lyricism, narrative refusal, recursive ambiguity 
Mimeograph Revolution 
Material connection 
Chapbook form, typewritten aesthetic, independent circulation 
Post-Surreal Experimentalists 
Direct peer group 
Apple’s likely tribe: poets escaping formal lineage for fluid invention 
This chart is meant as a springboard. While Apple’s work doesn’t sit neatly inside any box, the stylistic DNA from these movements pulses through his poetry. 
 
 
 
🖼️ Visual Appendix (Selected Imagery Inspired by Apple’s Language) 
These AI-generated descriptions can later be rendered into visual art, or used to guide a designer. The intent is to evoke the symbolic landscape of Moth Dialects. 
1. 🦋 Powdered Tongue 
Image concept: A moth with fragmented wings dissolves into pale ink as it lands on an open mouth. The tongue is textured with ash, curling like a papyrus scroll. 
2. 🔥 The Flame’s Forgetting 
Image concept: A flickering candle stands inside a ribcage. Shadowy moths circle it as one offers a breath shaped like a question mark. The flame sighs, swallowing memory. 
3. 📘 The Book That Closed 
Image concept: A book folds into wings mid-air. Its pages scatter like feathers, each printed with fading letters. A lampshade in the background glows faintly, haloed by static. 
4. 🌌 Wing Memory 
Image concept: A sky stitched from sentences. A moth with translucent wings is being read by stars. Conjugated verbs shimmer along its flight path like constellations. 
5. 🕯️ Lantern’s Breath 
Image concept: A lantern breathes out mist containing alphabetic fragments. Moths gather like scholars, decoding the fog. A silent mouth hovers in the corner, stitched shut. 
 
 
🖼️ Visual Appendix 
(See previous descriptions for visual interpretations of selected poems.) 
 
🧬 Literary Lineage Chart 
(See prior chart for stylistic ancestry, including Dada, Fluxus, Symbolism.) 
 
📁 Critical Dossier: Ignatius Apple and the Language of Dissolution 
Author Profile (Speculative) Ignatius Apple emerged—if one can use such a word—through a fog of fragmentary chapbooks and marginal literary references in the 1970s. Often published via ephemeral presses such as Whiptail Editions and the mimeographed Prism Glyph Quarterly, Apple evaded not only literary fame but the archival record itself. His poems, whisper-thin and syntax-defiant, aligned with no explicit school, yet echoed surrealist, post-symbolist, and experimental lineages. Apple’s work is characterized less by biography than by poetics: language disintegrating into metaphor, time rendered biologically, and memory dressed in dust. 
📚 Poetic Philosophy 
Apple treated language not as a vessel for clarity but as a membrane through which memory, trauma, and transformation seep. His poems often resist grammar in favor of intuitive rupture—folded speech, verbs shedding their tenses, and meanings that tremble instead of anchor. In Apple’s vision, communication is an act of forgetting, and metaphor the only reliable residue. 
This is poetry for the half-lit reader—those willing to navigate dream logic and linguistic erosion. His surrealism is not ornamental; it is atmospheric, creating space for the reader to fall through the gaps. 
🧠 Stylistic Signature 
Syntax Collapse: Apple avoids conventional sentence structure. His lines often begin with metaphor and end with disappearance. 
Metaphoric Fusion: He combines bodily, mechanical, and natural elements (e.g., “clock lungs,” “moth dialects”) to create hybrid sensations. 
Sensory Precision: Despite their abstract tone, Apple’s poems are tactile: powder, silk, ash, breath, wings. 
Temporal Embodiment: Time is portrayed as biological and fallible—lungs collapsing, clocks bruising, silence wearing gloves. 
 
🏛️ Historical Context 
Apple’s work likely emerged from the confluence of the Mimeograph Revolution, post-Beat experimental poetry, and anti-establishment literary collectives active in Minneapolis and broader North America between 1969 and 1975. His association with Whiptail Editions—a press rumored to print single-run surrealist chapbooks—places him in a lineage alongside poets like Diane Di Prima, Ed Dorn, and Al Young, though his work is markedly more ephemeral and elliptical. 
The 1970s underground poetry scene rejected academic poetics in favor of urgency and dissolution. Apple pushed further, treating language itself as an unreliable technology. 
 
📈 Analytical Notes on Moth Dialects 
The moth is not simply a motif—it is a linguistic cipher. Moths whisper, shed, flutter, and evaporate. Their powder becomes metaphor for memory. 
The recurring tension between flame and forgetting stages a metaphor for desire and loss. Flames devour wings and stories alike. 
Grammar is not merely broken—it is refused. Poems like Syntax for Flight declare flight as the only tense, dismissing linear time. 
The chapbook’s central thesis might be summarized as: Language dreams of metamorphosis, but only powder remains. 
 
🎓 Thesis Statement by Callum Veritas 
In the speculative chapbook Moth Dialects, Ignatius Apple enacts a poetics of dissolution wherein language sheds its syntactic body to become volatile, ephemeral, and embodied. This suite of surrealist verse resists fixed meaning, instead staging metamorphosis through fractured grammar, powder-as-voice metaphors, and flight-imagery that recodes linguistic structure into physical transformation. Apple’s work emerges from the post-symbolist lineage, informed by the Mimeograph Revolution and the anti-form aesthetics of Fluxus, treating language not as conveyance but as cocoon: each line folds inward, ruptures meaning, and releases fleeting insight. In so doing, Moth Dialects positions poetic speech as a species of molting—where expression must abandon coherence in order to migrate toward truth. 
 
📇 Colophon 
This restored edition of Moth Dialects was compiled by Brad Ramsey, originally born Ignatius Apple, later known as Bradley Andrew Short. Scholarly framework and thesis provided under the pen name Callum Veritas. Cover image: Powdered Tongue (2025), generated in homage to the speculative poetic legacy. 
Printed virtually in Toronto, Canada · 2025 Mimeograph aesthetics simulated · Binding suggested: Saddle stitch Fonts: Courier (body), Garamond Italic (headers) Original circulation: Presumed 1974 via Whiptail Editions. 
 
Scholarly Footnotes for Select Lines in Moth Dialectics 
Line 1: “My speech lands softly, born in powder.” Footnote 1: Powder is a frequent motif in surrealist poetry as a metaphor for fragility and transience. Apple’s evocation recalls André Breton’s concept of “explosive softness,” where meaning dissolves into atmosphere.¹ 
Line 3: “I trade syntax for flight.” Footnote 2: This line exemplifies Apple’s rebellion against formal structure, mirroring the aims of the 1970s Language Poets who viewed syntax as a colonial constraint. His surrender of grammar parallels Artaud’s declaration that “language must be torn from its throat.”² 
Line 4: “Air stutters around me in patterns only wings remember.” Footnote 3: Apple’s personification of air aligns with surrealist automatism, wherein nature becomes semantically animate. It also suggests non-verbal memory—moths retaining code Apple cannot linguistically access. 
Line 5: “I ask nothing of the flame—only that it forgets me.” Footnote 4: The flame appears throughout the chapbook as a metaphor for desire and destruction. This line speaks to the surrealist tradition of eros-as-obliteration, found in the work of Paul Éluard.³ Apple wishes not to burn—but to be unremembered. 
Line 7: “Every word folds inward, seeking cocoon.” Footnote 5: Cocoon imagery literalizes language’s metamorphic potential. Apple transforms the written word into biological form, echoing the 1970s underground ethos: texts must be lived and shed, not merely read. 
🪞 Notes on Historical Placement 
Apple’s stylistic revolt aligns him with writers operating in non-academic, mimeograph-driven circles: the Noigandres Group, the San Francisco Renaissance, and fringe publications like Floating Bear. Like these contemporaries, Apple’s verse privileges metaphor over message and process over polish. 
His work also demonstrates the Dada spirit of anti-object: refusing narrative, abandoning coherent identity, and using poetry to unsettle rather than resolve. 
André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 1924 ² Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, 1938 ³ Paul Éluard, Capital of Pain, 1926.