Paradoxism is a form of writing where the point is often to create verse that contains internal contradictions. And yet, within those contradictions it is possible to discern a greater meaning. It arose in the extremely repressive communist dictatorship of Rumania on the '80s, serving as a form of protest against a regime that forbade most publications. The basic thesis of the movement is a simple one: Everything has a meaning and a non-meaning in harmony with each other.
Florentin Smaranache is a Rumanian who fled the communist rule of Rumania in the '80s and is the originator of the paradoxist movement. His activity in verse and in many other forms of literature led to his nomination for the Nobel prize in literature in 1999. This collection of short items, written by many people in many countries, accurately reflects the basics of this form of writing. While all are short, there are some that will require a moment of pondering before the complete meaning can be discerned. Smarandache actively solicits paradoxist contributions from readers, either by mail, e-mail or on his web site.
Poetry and verse are often what you make them to be. Paradoxism takes that to an extreme. Like all forms of subtle protest against powerful forces, the message is often not direct, but must be extracted with a fine set of selective tweezers. If you are interested in avant-garde poetry, then this is a book you should look into.

My first exposure to the wealth of problems created by Florentin Smarandache was when I acquired a copy of this book. I read the list of problems with great interest and immediately set about trying to solve them. In some cases I was successful and in others a solution eluded me. In all cases, the search led me to interesting new areas of mathematics that I otherwise would not have explored. The fascination for these problems became so great that I ended up writing three books about them.
The Smarandache function itself is rather simple to state and understand. Given any integer n > 0, the value of the Smarandache function S(n) = m is the smallest integer such that n divides m factorial. However, there are an enormous number of subsequent problems that can be posed, several of which are listed in this book.
The contents are now somewhat dated, as many people have spent a great deal of effort in solving these problems. However, for a look at a "simple" function that opens up many different avenues of mathematical exploration, read this book and think for awhile. It is quite likely that you too will reach for your pencil and paper.

Poetry is a subject that is very much in the eye of the reader, and in this book, poetry takes many forms. The first few are constructed from French text, but the remaining are built from punctuation, lines, rectangles, drawings and empty space. Smarandache is the founder of the paradoxist movement, where the genre is the uttering of paradoxical statements such as "All is possible, the impossible too!" Despite the lack of dialog, many of the entries are full of emotion, reflecting Smarandache's childhood in the repressive environment of communist Rumania. He also fled Rumania, becoming a political refugee and spending years as a vagabond, supporting himself doing odd jobs.
If you don't believe that it is possible to express aspects of the human condition using lines, empty space and punctuation, then you should read this book. You must read it with an avant-garde state of mind, and if you can do that, you will be able to discern a deeper meaning in the marks on the paper.