Abstract Refuse presents a collection of English language words identified as heteronyms or homographs: two or more words with the same spelling, different pronunciation, and different meaning. In this book, the dual, sometimes triple, existence of these words is combined with images to examine the mechanics of remembering and forgetting. The qualities of memory are constructed around the conditions formed by the single and paired heteronyms on every page.

The book is organized to examine six stations of constituent and cultural memory: isolating the subject on a selected field; the mapped relations between remembered structures; the mnemonic systems of cataloging and storage; the static inference of memories in conflict; the ground that remembers the disjointed forms; and the final station, recall. There are four conductors within each station who control the passages between analysis, intimacy, dream, and ancestry.