The clever bit was the upside-down m. 

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Not much to say about it except that it is inspired by one of the more famous of Wordsworth’s sonnets, which describes how the ocean, “with his eternal motion make(s)/ a sound like thunder–everlastingly.”

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I was going for accessibility with the top two.  I added the bottom one to show a little of what I was doing with long division and color.  In any case, I’m now down for three more exhibitions, two more this year and one in 2013. 

I got to talk with fellow artists, too.  One of them did abstract-expressionist stuff with the word, “love,” embedded in them–another local visual poet!  I came across another artist who uses some kind of transparent, screenlike fabric in her work: she paints an image on it and hangs it in front of regular fabric with a background painted on it.  I thought it worked really well, and have vague ideas on what I might do with it.  So, quite a good hour or so!

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I have one problem with this: my only version of  it is a low-resolution jpg, which I don’t know how to convert to high-resolution tif, except by simply redoing it.  Any suggestions from anybody out there who knows more than I do about this kind of thing?

I didn’t re-post it only to ask for help, or because of how much I like it, but as an example of how my work as a poet has evolved.  Actually, I want to show that it has evolved.  That’s because Paul Crowley, the nut I most argue with on the Internet about who wrote the works of Shakespeare, seems not to believe that a poet’s style, or way of making art, evolved once he’s past his apprenticeship.  Of course, he will claim I’m not a poet, and that the evidence I’m about to produce to show my evolution indicates only trivial changes, not anything like genuine evolution.  I enjoy talking about my work, and analyzing any poem, so will go ahead with my demonstration, anyway.

First of all, I should state my claim: it is that over the past couple of years, my style as a poet has evolved appreciably, and that this poem illustrates it.

(1) I only began using cursive ten or fewer years ago, and never for more than a word or two.  This poem and two others have all or most of their texts in cursive.  Because the difference in expressiveness between print and cursive is visiopoetically meaningful to those who appreciate visual poetry, this wholesale use of cursive script counts as a significant evolution of style.

(2) My use of cursive is more elegant here than it is in mt other two recent poems making extensive use of cursive.  Note, for instance, the large O, and the increased gracefulness of all the letters compared with the letters in my other two cursive poems.

(3) Twenty years ago, I didn’t bother giving my poems backgrounds.  Since then I have, and have slowly been improving (but have plenty of room for further improvement).  Note the harmony of the background’s shape and colors with the text, especially the O. 

(4) The background has another important value–the connotations it picks up as a result of its being a variation (mostly through color changes) of the background in another poem of mine.  Connecting poems of mine with others’ poems and others of my own poems is another way I’ve evolved as an artist, not doing it until perhaps twenty years ago, then only very slowly doing it to a greater and greater extent.  This poem may be the first to re-use an entire background from another poem.  This is not trivial, for it allows this poem to suggest “dictionary-as-temple,” the main part of the foreburden of the poem its background is from.  It also should make this poem easier to enjoy, the same way the repetition in a new musical work of an old theme is usually pleasant to hear.  I believe the happiness of the colors of this version of the background gains from the reminder of the different, lower-key mood evoked by the other version.

(5) The use of color in tension with greyscale is another trick new to me twenty years ago that I exploit more and more in my present works, as here (though I’ve done more with it elsewhere).

(6) I think my language has evolved over the years, too–from fairly literal to metaphorical and/or surreal.  The “logic” of this piece and most of my recent pieces is not so easy to guess, which may be an unfortunate evolution, but an evolution nonetheless.

(7) You can’t tell from this image, which has been reduced in size to fit the normal computer screen, but the hard copy is larger than anything I did ten or more years ago, which is another result of evolution. 

Here’s my first or second mathemaku, done thirty or more years ago, to make the profound evolution of my style more inescapable. Yet I maintain this piece is at the level of later pieces; it is simply more condensed. For one thing, it is only linguistic and mathematical. Nothing visioaesthetic happens in it. The eye is used only to recognize the symbols it contains, not to enjoy colors or shapes the way my faereality poem compels it to–i.e., not a visual poem (except inthe mindlessnesses of those for whom just about everything is a visual poem). It is short, and printed. Its words are simple to an extreme.

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This is a pwoermd I stole from Geof Huth’s blog–because it has become too sophisticated to accept comments from dial-ups like my computer, and I wanted to comment on it.  It’s by Jonathan Jones, lately of Brussels, but a citizen himself of the United Kingdom.  What I like most about it is that it’s lyrical–as too many pwoermds are not.  It wouldn’t be a visual poem for me, but an illustrated poem, except that I subjectively feel “apri’ll” is producing the wonderful colors of spring it is slanted into a portion of (through sheer will-power).  Hence, in my taxonomy it is an infra-verbal visual poem.

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 Below is my improved version.  Certainly not yet a great work but better than the original.  If you can’t see why, I’m afraid you aren’t too perceptive about the art.  If you can’t see how the basic idea could be used in a far better piece, you probably aren’t an effective visual poet, or are tired.

Diary Entry

Monday, 2 January 2012, Noon.  I got up late because I stayed up late last night watching my Giants fall apart, but win anyway because Dallas fell apart just in time to keep from winning.  I don’t think the Giants have much hope of going far in the play-offs, but I’ll be rooting for them.  And the other teams are pretty inconsistent, too, except for San Francisco and Green Bay.

I began the day by forcing myself to run.  Actually, I slowly ran, then ran fast albeit not really fast, then walked.  Rrrrrruuuuunnnnnn, rruunn, walk over and over until I’d gone around the middle school field four times (two miles).  My stamina is still amazingly poor, but I actually genuinely sprinted when I went all out.  Which is to say, I was able to pump my legs all the way up and stretch out, the way one does when sprinting.  I didn’t do it fast enough to really sprint, but I did it.  I was worried that I no longer could.  Now it’s just a matter, I think, of getting enough stamina to push myself harder, and for longer periods.  My “sprints” were only for around twenty yards or so–but maybe a whole forty once or twice.  Since getting back, I posted my blog entry for today, which was easy because already done.  I corrected my latest Page, “How to Appreciate a Mathemaku,” after getting a list or errors I very much appreciated from John Jeffrey.  I have a lot more chores to do, but I’m already worn out.  Maybe after lunch and a nap I’ll be able to get more done.

5 P.M.  One more chore out of the way: filling in the size and price of my works on the exhibition contract and tags.  I’m asking $200 for most of them.  Highest price is $600.  Two I’ll accept $100 for.  I don’t expect to sell anything.

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Thanks, John. I use “definitions” as a shorthand for conversational or descriptive purposes. As far as trying to work, I avoid the “prescriptions” suggested by definitions because they impose limits on my thinking and interfere with my working at my best. Without the work, nobody would have fodder for all the differing definitions. I’m flashing back to Wittgenstein and trying to define “game.” 

ME: Sorry, Vernon, but I’m (obviously) not a Wittgenstein fan.  Just because a few words are hard to define, at least for someone like Wittgenstein, doesn’t make the eternal struggle to define words (in order fully to understand what they denote) futile. As for the “prescriptiveness” of definitions, they are only prescriptive about how an artist can responsibly label his works, not—if he has a functioning brain—about how he can make them.  I am annoyingly repetitious about stating this, because it seems to me the main misunderstanding artists have about criticism.  (Which is dependent on what artists produce—but that is dependent on what prior artists have produced and, I believe, on what critics have said about it.  A work of art ultimately is not merely what it is by itself, but that and what others have said about it.   –Mr. Cantshuddup

Bobbi Lurie again:

wittgenstein fan or not–

what is this?

is this vispo or not?

http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2011/10/bobbi-lurie-ludwig-wittgenstein.html

ME: I like your image a lot, Bobbi, but I have to be sarcastic in answering your question: it’s a musical automobile, so a branch of chempo, not of vispo.

Nico was less sarcastic:

I wouldn’t tag it as such, no.

There are these websites you find when doing a search of visual poetry that pertain to photography, wedding shots, naturescapes, etc. They use visual poetry as a descriptive for hallmark type sentiment.

Your drawing of Ludwig is very much reminiscent of egon’s stuff,

ME: Same response here.

which I like quite a bit. It’s not vispo tho. My own filter for such things usually entails the existence of a focus on alphabet. That’s primary to me, but not all on this list. I giggle at your use of
Sophistication. I think we’re still in the process of hammering it down – the ongoing sixty year process. The inability to pluck a satisfying set of terms by now – one that’d satisfy most practitioners just spotlights the fact that this practice is separate to separate people. That means nothing gets answered or gets answered in myriad ways.

ME: At one point I spent some time trying to determine how I thought works concerned with the alphabet should fit into my taxonomy.  I think I concluded that the alphabet is verbal—a peculiar sort of word meaning “these are the letters, in order.”  However, with the works you’re speaking of, Nico, letters are the subject, not the alphabet, so for me they are textual designage.

NICO: Anyway, I did apologize for bringing this up.

ME: As opposed to leaving Spidertangle as a no-discussion zone?

Bobbi replied:

Thank you, Nico. 

As I wrote to David, I really needed this description.

Yes. Sophistication meaning “I don’t know what these people are talking about. What is the secret?”

The fact that you’ve been struggling with terms….may I suggest you just say: “the alphabet must be included–this is in relationship to written language–the representation of something via language vs. via image” (clumsy this, i know, but that would have helped me in the several year search i’ve been on, asking vispo artists this question)

ME: Too bad you somehow missed me, your fellow Bobbi/Bobby, Bobbi.  I’ve been cranking out the dogma that poetry has to have significant words for years, and that it’s silly to consider “visual poetry” not to be a form of poetry. Very few in the visiotextual field (but probably everyone in conventional poetry) agree with me, even though I have a fairly broad idea of what “words” are—I accept word-fragments, punctuation marks, any typographical symbol (like @), mathematical symbols and even the alphabet or some section of it long enough to identify it as an alphabet, as “words”—and don’t dispute that at the border between the verbal and the visual there are activities going on of value that may also qualify as visual poetry (since no definition can have a sharp border—unless it’s of something not in the real world like odd numbers).  Seems to me an art should be defined first of all by what materials it explicitly uses in general (words or visual images, say), then by how it uses them, again in general (by pronouncing them or recording their sound, in one case; in the other, by recording their shape and color); a sub-art, like visual poetry, should be defined by what specific materials it uses and how, specifically, it uses them—words and visual images together by recording their sound, shapes and color.  And so forth, finally to capture even the subbest of arts like Shakespearean sonnets or visiopoetic maple solitextual (i.e., solely textual) sculptures . . . 

BOBBI to Nico: please do not apologize. i am so happy to read this–i didn’t know if i could legitimately send my art work to anyone other than Mark Young of Otoliths, who is tolerant with my experiments / does not define his journal in terms of vispo, unlike others here.

i will have to check closely on this, but from your definition, i’d say a lot of editors are letting a lot of things pass for vispo which isn’t vispo.

thank you, Nico.

ME: We need editors like Mark Young who publish art they like regardless of what it is, but it’d be nice if they could let what they want be known in precise language.  Almost everyone in the otherstream publishes anything.  Anyone who wants material of a specific kind has to carefully say so because “visual poetry” tends to mean anything.  Not just works that are visual but not verbal, but works that are verbal and not visual.  My press doesn’t get submissions anymore, but when it did, people would send me poetry about sunsets—hey, sunsets are visual!—and complain when I rejected it as not visual poetry, which my press was primarily looking to publish.

David Baratier was next up:

People who solely practice visual art or vispo
are verbose and vague
either due to lack of words in their art
or to leave open a potential name shift
to make themselves popular again.

Miro was before vispo, so he is a precursor.

From outside the gates it looks like the best known vizpoets
call themselves artists because vispo is an unknown term to them, or
a fringe term (as Karl pointed out, coming into being as an antithesis
to the concrete poetry movement rather than an art term). Vispo
also has movement qualities rather than just a name.
Ruscha, Jenny Holtzer, Robert Indiana and so on are artists.
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ME: Ruscha, Holzer and Indiana are all, in some of their works, visual poets, regardless of how they see themselves.  I haven’t seen anything by Miro that seems a visual poem to me, but a few paintings by Klee seem close to being visual poems.  Stuart Davis made some, and so did Magritte.  Picasso may have, too.  I’ve shown these at my blog where I’ve also shown images from ARTnews,, which has something I consider a visual poem in almost every issue.  Visual artists added typography naturally to their subject matter just as they added everything else previous visual artists disregarded, and the world was already set up to accommodate their work as visual art in galleries and museums, so they had no need to call it anything special.  Poets becoming visual did, because their visual poetry was much more radical (because generally a good deal more verbal) than that of artists like Ruscha—and the venues for conventional poetry had, and are still having, trouble with it. 

VERNON: I think the discussions—and Wittgenstein’s increased presence in them in more than one capacity—demonstrate what I was trying to get at. Nobody agrees on what vispo is, even when they look at the same work. If you worry too much about the definition, you won’t concentrate properly on what you’re doing. Some people say I’m a visual poet, some say I’m not. And I’m certainly not one all the time. But I might be one some of the time, depending on who’s forming the opinion.  What I gather from today’s debate about definitions is: do the work and let the definitions fall where they may. 

ME:  As I’ve already said, poets shouldn’t care.  For critics or people trying to work out a reasonable poetics, it’s a different story.  Unfortunately, too many in these two cultures see those in the one they aren’t in as enemies or fools.

No doubt there will be more. 

Diary Entry

Tuesday, 27 December 2011, 5 P.M.  I only played tennis for about an hour this morning, but got tired.  Went to Mcdonald’s for a sausage and egg sandwich.  Got a little marketing done at the Winn Dixie near the McDonald’s, then got a nap of maybe fifteen minutes in.  After that, I spent a lot of time in the Internet discussion I made the subject of the day’s blog entry, which I just made the last corrections to, at least for now.  I guess I contributed over a thousand words to it, some of them insightful and/or interesting.   So I can’t consider myself totally out of it.  I feel the discussion itself will interest, or should interest, scholars later in the century, if only for what it reveals of one group of creative artists yakking with/at each other.  I’ve done no Work of Consequence, though.  I am now going to work up a hand-out for my exhibition, then probably take the rest of the day off.

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 I liked this when I first saw it although I didn’t find it saying anything verbally.  When I finally realized it said, “fifty,” I thought it accidental because I couldn’t see why it would say that.  My slow mind eventually remember that Geof is now fifty-years-old, which makes this image a particularly effective representation of his present strange combination of freedom and awkward incompleteness . . . straining, yearning for something.  With his ego (“I,” as Karl Kempton would be sure to notice) lost or transcended.

Diary Entry

Sunday 18 December 2011, 6 P.M.  Another unproductive day.  Tennis in the morning, a fine meal at Linda’s in the afternoon.  A blog entry for today just taken care of a little while ago.  A little work done on my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” to count as “work on preparation for the A&H exhibition.”  And now I’d like to go to bed, but will probably read instead.

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Diary Entry

Saturday, 17 December 2011, Noon.  Wow, since getting back at eleven from tennis and a McDonald’s snack, I’ve already gotten the day’s blog entry posted, which was easy because it was already done, and made a finished copy of  the new version of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” at Paint Shop.  It’s not the official copy: it’s too small, and the official version will include the original cut-out fragments of magazine ads.  There will also be the A&H framed version which will be in between the one I just made and the official version in size. 

8 P.M.  Since noon I haven’t done much.  I printed out two copies of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” and scribbled annotations explaining the terms I will put on one that will be on display atthe exhibition.  Otherwise, I continued reading started yesterday of the magazines and books I will be reviewing for Small Press Review. 

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