POETICKS

Bob Grumman

Bio: as of the beginning of 2012

Born 2 February 1941, Norwalk, Connecticut. Graduate of California State University, Northridge, with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Worked for about 13 years as a substitute teacher in Charlotte County, mainly at Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Florida.  Previously worked as a factory worker and security guard in Norwalk, pharmacy helper (in the US Air Force), and computer operator in North Hollywood CA.  Began composing visual poetry around 1965, and made his first mathematical poem sometime in the early 1970′s.  Participant in international mail art since 1985.  Represented in a number of university libraries and the Ruth and Marvin Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami.  Considerations of his work have appeared in Meat Epoch, Factsheet Five, Taproot Reviews and elsewhere.  Reference books concerned with him and his visual poetry include Volume 25 of the Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Essays series (Gale research, Detroit: 1996) and A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Schirmer Books, New York: 2000).  Since around 2001 become more concerned with exhibiting his works as a visual artist than publishing them as a poet, and has contributed to a number of collective shows in visual art galleries.

Lives at 1708 Hayworth Road, Port Charlotte FL 33952.

Professional Positions

Columnist for Lost and Found Times, 1994 to 2009, when the magazine ceased publication
Contributing Editor for Small Magazine Review, 1993 to present
Contributing Editor for Poetic Briefs, 1992-1997
Columnist for Factsheet Five, 1987-1992
Publisher, The Runaway Spoon Press (RASP), 1983 to present
Co-Editor with Crag Hill of two anthologies, Vizpo auf Deutsch (1995) and Writing to be Seen (2001)
Editor of 12 Colorborations (2004)
Editor of Visio-Textual Selectricity (2008)

Professional Affiliations

Member, the National Book Critics Circle, the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, the Peace River Writers Center, the Charlotte County Visual Art Center, the Port Charlotte Tuesday Writers’ Group

Representative Shows

IV Bienal Internacional de Poesia Visual/Experimental, 1993 Monterrey, Mexico
Paradise Mail Art Exhibition, Belfast, Ireland, c. 1995
V Bienal Internacional de Poesia Visual/Experimental, 1996, Mexico City
Visuelle Poesie, Berlin, 1997
VI Bienal Internacional de Poesia Experimental, 1999, Mexico City
02txt, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2002
An American Avant Garde: Second Wave, Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, Ohio, 2002
Writing To Be Seen, New York Center for Book Arts, 2002
Writing To Be Seen, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, February 2003
WordSeen Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami, March 2003
Others in Edmonton, Beacon NY, Port Charlotte FL, Miami, Australia . . .

Publication Credits:

Score, Kaldron, Lost & Found Times, Modern Haiku, The Experioddicist, Transmog, Meat Epoch, Industrial Sabotage, The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage, Juxta, The New Orleans Review, Kalligram (Budapest, 2000), Das Haupt (Kiel, Germany, 1995), Freie Zeit Art (Vienna, 1992), Sub Bild (HeidelBerg, 1991), Das Haupt (Kiel, Germany, 1995) and numerous other zines and magazines. Also poetry (mathemaku) and a critical essay (on contemporary minimalist poetry) on-line at Karl Young’s light&dust website.

Books and Chapbooks

Poemns (visual haiku), privately-printed, 1966; reprinted by RASP, 1997
A StrayngeBook (a children’s book), Score Publications, 1987
An April Poem (visual poetry), RASP, 1989
Spring Poem No. 3,719,242 (visual poetry), RASP, 1990
Of Manywhere-at-Once (memoir), RASP, 1990; 2nd edition, 1991; 3rd edition, 1998
Mathemaku 1 – 5 (mathematical poetry), Tel-let, 1992
Barbaric Bart Meets Batperson and her Indian Companion Taco (a play), Stage Whisper, 1992
Barbaric Bart Visits God (a play), Abscond Press, 1993
Rabbit Stew, an Excerpt (a play), Hairy Labs Publishing Company, 1994
Mathemaku 6 – 12 (mathematical poetry), Tel-let, 1994
Of Poem (conventional poetry), dbqp press, 1995
Mathemaku 13 – 19 (mathematical poetry), Tel-let, 1996
min. kolt., matemakuk (translation of mathematical poetry), Budapest: Kalligram, 2000
Xerolage 30 (visual and mathematical poetry), Xexoxial Editions, 2001
Doing Long Division in Color (mathematical poetry), RASP, 2001
Mathemaku 20 – 24 (mathematical poetry), Tel-let, 2003)
Cryptographiku 1- 5 (cryptographic poetry), Tel-let, 2003
Excerpts from Poem’s Search for Meaning (conventional poetry), Sticks Press (on the Internet), 2004
Greatest Hits 1966–2005 (mixture of poetries), Pudding House, 2006
Shakespeare and the Rigidniks (theoretical psychology), RASP, 2006
From Haiku To Lyriku (literary criticism), RASP, 2007
April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now (collection of mathemaku), Otoliths, 2007
This Is Visual Poetry (visual Poetry), chapbookpublisher, 2010
Poem Demerging (conventional poetry), Phrygian Press, 2010.
A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry (Poetics), RASP, 2011.

Anthologies

Visuelle Poesie aus den USA (Germany: 1995)
a haiku celebration of fall (Napanee, Ontario: Haiku Canada,1996)
WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY (London: Writers Forum, 1998)
Loose Watch (London: Invisible Books, 1998)
The Secret Life of Words (San Diego: Teaching Resource Center, 2000)
Another South (Tuscaloosa AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2002)

A Brief Artist’s Statement

I’ve long composed visual poems–poems, that is, that do things visually that are as important as what they say verbally.   In the past few years, I’ve become almost exclusively a composer of mathematical visual poems–visual poems, that is, that are as mathematical as they are visual and verbal.  My aim with these “mathemaku,” as I call them, is to play mathematical elements off the (hopefully rich) sensory effects of painted images and poetic phraseology.  My main hope for them is simply that they come across as visually appealing.  But it’d be great if they also jolted an observer or two into interesting new experiences beyond the visual alone–or the verbal or mathematical alone.

                                            –Bob Grumman, 25 December 2002

Diary Entry for 18 November 2011, 9:30 A.M.: I just ran out of gas, but expect to get back in gear before too long. I listed my fifteen framed pieces. I thought I had seventeen but was probably counting three in those cardboard frames I can’t remember the name of–and forgot to count another. My next exhibition chore should be easy: just write at least one short commentary daily on each piece I’ll be using (I don’t expect to use all the ones presently framed–some I’ll replace, and I hope to frame a few more piece).

3 P.M.: I have now made two commentaries of framed mathematical poems. I feel good about them, and semi-ready to do more. But I have to work on my book at some point, and I don’t wanna. (I hate to admit it, but I’m playing Civilization daily again. I’ve won my last two games and am doing well in my latest. So far I’ve rarely done more than dip into it while waiting for downloads, or resting from some reall accomplishment like one of my poetry commentaries.)

Final note: I did get an adequate amount of work done on my book.  I’m still not done with the socioplex, but should be in two days at the very most.  Meanwhile, I have new term to announce: “conseplex” for “consequential knowleplex.”  This I needed to represent a vocation or avocation that is at or near the center of a person’s life.  Every conspiranoid has one, one the conspiranoid is attached with exceptional intensity to.

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Here’s my present situation: in a month-and-a-half, I will have space for an exhibition of some twenty of my framed works at the building shared by the local arts & humanities council and the local chamber of commerce.   Since I’m almost 71, it is imperative that I take full advantage of this opportunity, my main remaining life’s goal being to win sufficient LargeWorld recognition to feel secure that I’ve indeed accomplished the main thing I’ve spent my life pursuing: at least one cultural work of world-class importance, in this case, my poetic oeuvre.  Meanwhile, in certain literary circles there’s a lot of commotion about who wrote the works of Shakespeare, something I’ve published two editions of a book on.  I have what should be the final version of that book under way at this time.  I really really needed to have gotten it published a month ago to take advantage of the interest in its subject.  I dawdled.  My health limited me, too.  In any case, finishing that book as soon as possible is another pressing need of mine. 

Meanwhile, there’s the pact I made with myself to get a blog entry posted daily.  I’m dutybound to show up for my tennis team’s practices and matches.  Otherwise, all I really have to do is co shopping once in a while, take out the garbage now and then, do the laundry when the dirty clothes have piled up, etc.  So, taking all this into consideration, how do I organize my time for the next three-and-a-half months or so? 

Take things one at a time is the obvious cliche to follow.  There’s also Thoreau’s “Our life is frittered away by detail . . .  Simplify, simplify.”  And the dictum: “Be Methodical,” something I’ve tried for many times, sometimes even successfully if rarely for very long.   The first step, I’m pretty sure, is to do what I’m now doing: get a decent idea of the situation down on paper–or, in this case, onto a computer file.  A list of what has to be done, when.  It would seem I’vemore or less done that here.  I have to do three things daily without fail: work on my book, work on my exhibition, and get a blog entry written and posted.   Tennis four times a week (which I should be able to combine with whatever shopping I need to do, on the way back from tennis.)  Everything else when forced to.

It’d be nice if I could concentrate on just one Important, Difficult Chore–in this case, either the book or the exhibition–but I don’t think I can.  So I must simply spend a few hours each day on one of the two, take a break, then shift to the other.  If things go at all well, I should be able to make a daily blog entry out of what I’ve been doing with regard to one or the other of these.  (Yes, my blog will be even more boring than it usually is.)  To be more specific, I need to schedule the material to be treated for my book.  I already have them divided into four or five subjects.  Here I can use the one thing at a time procedure.  When done with them, I should be able to step back and determine what else needs to be done, and how it should be done.

I think the one thing at a time should be right for the exhibition, too: just choose one work for it each day, and do whatever needs to be done with it–i.e., print it, find or buy a frame for it and frame it.  But I also need to list other jobs I need to get done, such as a hand-out for visitors.  Make that, “hand-outs.“  One a list of my publications, exhibitions if my works, and the like; another of how to go about gaining an appreciation of my work. . . .  Maybe copies of a few of my works.

That’s all for today.  I had tennis this morning (I was terrible), and a dinner honoring a tennis friend who recently died later today.  Tomorrow I’ll begin in earnest.

 
Cooking.com Online

I’ve got so absolutely nothing for this entry–about poetry, my blog’s alleged subject matter–that I’m going to stick the following two paragraphs into it.  They’re at the beginning of the chapter for the third edition of Shakespeare and the Rigidniks I finally started work again on yesterday after procrastinating for several days, which followed the week or more away from it due to other things, mainly my recent surgical procedure.

When I began this chapter early in 2011, I had hopes I would be able to work out a model of something I call a “conspiraplex,” a system of brain-cells and their connections that would account for the delusional belief of conspiranoids not only in the conspiracy to conceal the identity of The True Author of Shakespeare’s works, but the 9/11 conspiracy the truthers believe in, and the one those who believe aliens landed at Roswell sixty-five or so years ago, and the one von Daniken pushed about who really built the pyramids, and so on.  Well, I wasn’t able to.  Too many variables–the usual problem.  Along with the fact that my over-all theory of psychology, which my conspiraplex is based on, is far from complete, and no doubt suffers from lack of data (not just mine but the field’s as a whole).

 Nonetheless, I am going ahead with my model of the conspiraplex.  Even in the crude form that follows, it should prove helpful in providing a notion of what goes on in a conspiranoid’s head.  I start with my simple notion of the “knowleplex.”  That’s the system of brain-cells and their inter-connections responsible for a person’s understanding of some more or less unified, fairly large field, like baseball, or biology–although it can be of a sub-field like the art of pitching a baseball or the biology of fish, or some certain species of fish, depending on how involved in it a person is.  It can be larger, too–sports or the study of the universe from quarks to human societies.  (The largest knowleplex, one’s understanding of existence, I call one’s “existeplex”–but that won’t come up again in this book.)

What may be of interest to other writers about it is how it got me out of a writer’s block.  To wit: its being a confession of diminished ambitions suddenly freed me of my need to that point to be devastating brilliant, and provide a Total Explanation of what makes certain people believe in loony conspiracy theories.  I could relax.  So I got 1600 words done.  Today, not so good.  No words yet.  But I played tennis in the morning, and then had to go to the dentist about my latest chipped tooth.  $200 later, I’m fine, but really really tired.  But not too tired to spend a few hours playing Civilization.  I’m winning, though–so that’s good for me!

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Kelty Backpack

Two bits of news about me to report.  One is that I saw the surgeon who recently carried out a urological procedure on me.  All went well, according to him, and I am now pretty much back to what is normal for me now.  I expect to play tennis Saturday.  The other bit of news I’m trying not to get excited about: it’s that I’ve going to have another one-man show!  To give it its most flatterinng description.  Well, it will be a one-man show, and it will take of two walls, enough for all the framed work I have now, although I hope to have more before the show, which won’t happen until January.  It will be at the local arts and humanities council offices.  They’re in a building the chamber of commerce also has offices in, so it should get a little walk-by attention.  The best thing about it is that it will last two months.  During that time and before, I hope to generate some publicity.  Still ever-hopeful for The Big Break, I dream that will draw some influential gallery-owner or the like to it who will make me.  Or a request for a presentation at a school of arts group. 

It came about when I stopped by the arts and humanities council concerning an annual arts and crafts show that’s two days from now.  I’d been asked, as a member, if I’d be willing to help out at it.  I happened to be in the neighborhood, so dropped in to discuss it, wanting to do my bit, but not sure I was up to because of the somewhat weak way I’d been feeling after my surgical procedure.  Well, I got chatting with Judy, the executive secretary, about my poems, which she was familiar with, and she suddenly asked me if I like to show my work in their building.  Sure.  Today I decided I’d be at the arts and crafts show, helping out, too, after seeing my surgeon. 

One other hope of mine is that my show will create enough interest for me possibly to get the same space for a group show of works by visiotextual artist friends.  Hey, a boy can dream, can’t he?

Note: Port Charlotte, where I live, is not sophisticated, although it does have a quite active writers’ center and a visual arts center, both of which I’m a member of–and the area is very affluent because of the number of wealthy retirees that live here.  And it’s less than an hour away from Sarasota, which has quite a few big-city-level visual art galleries. 

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Nutri System

As far as I’m concerned, the refs controlled who won–even though it was my team, the New York Giants.  I think a defender should be able to interfere with a receiver any way he wants to.  The superior receiver will find a way to get free long enough to catch a pass.  Also: if defenders get too tied up with receivers, it’ll backfire, because runs will become much more successful.

The main reason I mention the game is that I spent the afternoon watching it, which is one of my two reasons for getting very little done.  The other was that I played tennis in the morning. 

Click HERE to see the one thing I got done. It’s an addition to a page I wrote for the students who made math poems after seeing some of mine. I doubt that it will make much sense to any of them, or to any adult who reads it. I felt the need to put it out there, though.

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