Surprise! I’m back already. May be back on vacation tomorrow, though. I’m back today because I somehow managed to produce a new mathemaku yesterday:
Mathemaku in Honor of Andrea Bianco's 1436 Map of the World
Archive for the ‘Visual Poetry Specimen’ Category
Entry 114 — “Mathemaku in Honor of Andrea Bianco’s 1436 Map of the World”
Thursday, February 25th, 2010Entry 62 — An Apple from #728
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
There are a number of current visual poets who do not consider the above poem, one of the most popular visual poems of all-time, highly. So, to continue to be a Prime Annoyer in vispo circles, I’ve taken it upon myself to defend it. On the surface, it is merely a specimen of visual onomatopoeia, or poem whose text says what it looks like–or, if you prefer, poem whose graphic elements show what its text says. I think even those who don’t think much of it would admit that it was clever and effective for its time. I think it may be more.
What I like about it, what I think makes it special, is its worm. I believe its critics fail to appreciate how subtle it is. I doubt a person who has never seen the poem, particularly a person with little or no experience with visual poetry, will find it right off. If he does, it will act as a welcome counter to the boredom generated by all those instances of “apfel.” It will also seem apt. A rather fakey apple has become a real, flawed apple. Or does the poem suddenly concern not an apple but a worm in his home? In any event, it must take on larger symbolic meanings–about decay, the impossibility of perfection, the secretive intrusion of evil, etc. The glossy glibness of the apple makes it possibly a parody of magazine advertising–which is carried out with attractive pictures concealing worms.
Note, too, that the worm does not share the apple’s onomatopoeia–that is, it doesn’t look much like a wiggly thin worm. So it’s breaking with the rest of the poem is all the stronger.
Conclusion: the poem may not be a masterpiece of the first order, but it does not reflect unfavorably on Visual Poetry, as some contend. Indeed, I wish the distance from such a work of most art called “visual poetry” by its makers were considerably less.
Entry 61 — 2 Poems by Geof Huth
Friday, January 1st, 2010They’re from #721:
Entry 53 — Christmas Poem by Ted Warnell
Thursday, December 24th, 2009Received 4 years ago, exactly. Still holding up!
Of course, it’s much better at about twice the size of the above, which would be, I believe, its proper size.
Entry 41 — An Early Final Definition of Visual Poetry
Saturday, December 12th, 2009#681 had this:
The visual poem, “Gloria,” superimposed on my text is by Ladislav Novak. I think my final definition of visual poetry still my best, but would reserve it now for “pure” visual poetry. Note that when the page above was published (in the 1990 edition of my Of Manywhere-at-Once), I thought of visual poetry as the union of textual and visual rather than verbal and visual matter. Otherwise, my definition of visual poetry is about as I have it now.
Entry 39 — 3 by Endwar
Thursday, December 10th, 2009They’re from #674.
Communist Evolution
NoNo
Transgender
#673 had two poems by John Elsbergs from his Runaway Spoon Press book, Broken Poems for Evita. One was this:
RAISING EVA
(Or, the myth of art and politics)
L
EVITA
tio nis
th EPRE
fer
RED al TERN
at ivefor
thosewhona t UR
ALLY S
inK
And that’s it for this entry. (Am I feeling more worn out than ever for no reason? Yes.)
Entry 36 — 2 by Koppany from #672
Monday, December 7th, 2009.
Csend-Sinc
The Ands
Nothing else. I’m hoping to get going again on columns for Small Press Review. A deadline is approaching and I’d like to get ahead. It’d be nice, too, to start getting real work done.
Entry 34 — Yesterday’s Mathemaku Again, and Another
Saturday, December 5th, 2009Here’s the latest version of what I think I’m calling “Frame 17″ of The Long Division of Poetry:
I didn’t like the background blue as dark as it showed here, so I lightened it. For some reason, that made a lot of difference to me. I also changed the quotient of the mathemaku below, another variation on the lead frame of The Long Division of Poetry that I composed in 2007 and have only touched up slightly since, mostly to increase its resolution. I feel it’s about as good as I’m capable of getting as a mathematical poet–although I do feel I’ve done a few mathemaku that are better than it.
The divisor is hard to read on-site, I don’t know why. The image is much darker than it is on the screen of the computer where I do my Paint Shop work, even though I tried to lighten it. Oh, it’s tiff on my computer, jpeg here, which may explain it. Anyway, the divisor reads, “a memory of/ Harbor View, June 27, 1952″
Note: for those of you new to Grumman Studies, “manywhere-at-once,” which is usually capitalized, is where (according to my poetics) metaphors and other figures of speech send one. Two or more places in one’s brain at the same time. So this poem attempts to express the value of equaphoration–my term for any poetic device that in some way equates one thing with another, even irony, which equates the truth with its opposite.
Entry 33 — Yesterday’s Poem
Friday, December 4th, 2009Here’s yesterday’s image again:
It’s one of my mathemaku, of course. I’ve actually been working industriously on it, trying get it right enough to submit to some sort of anthology Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill are putting together. The version above is a recent revision of my first draft of 2007, a variation on “Frame One” of my Long Division of Poetry series.
“Frame One” is similar to the top image except that its divisor is “words.” It had long bothered me because (and make sure to write this down, students, because it’s an excellent example of the way I think about my poems) its claim was that “words” squared (basically–although it’s really distorted words, or words told slant. times regular words) happened to equal an image having to do with summer rain. Why that and not, say, a Pacific sunset? Obviously, the quotient times the divisor could equal anything. That, I didn’t want. Off and on I thought about this, but could think of no way to take care of it. Until a couple of days ago, when I finally concentrated for more than a few minutes on it. I came up with several pretty good solutions, one of them changing everything in the poem but the sub-dividend product (the image).
My final solution (I hope) resulted in the above poem. All I did was add “memories of a long-ago summer day” to the quotient. That assured that the sub-dividend product would have to do with summer–that it would be, that is, a visual poem about summer. And, as a poem, it would be poetry.
No doubt in due course I’ll think of something else I find illogical about it and want to revise it again. For now, though, I’m happy with it.
Oh, I’ve made several changes to the main image in it, too. One was to combat the darkness in the top version (which wasn’t in it until I put it out here). I’m as fussy about getting my graphics looking the way I want them as I am about everything else in a poem–except the choice of font, and things I can’t do anything about with my equipment, like density of resolution.
Entry 32 — A Mathemaku from 2007
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009I continue to be more out of it than not, so have just this for today:
Guess who composed it.