POETICKS

Guest Editorial

Some Notes on a Relatively New Form of Poetry

Among my many otherstream enthusiasms is a form of poetry I’ve
dubbed “infraverbal” because of its focus on textual elements
smaller than words such as letters, numerals, and even spaces.
Such poetry has been around for quite a while, at least since 1966
when Aram Saroyan’s much-reprinted “lighght” first appeared (and
got a small award from the federal government the memory of
which is still infuriating Philistines).  Perhaps the leading current
master of the genre is Karl Kempton, the author of the following,
which is from a book called To Taste (Laughing Bear Press, 1983):

.                        some roman math, c ion z
.
.                        Listen
.                        l
.                         is
.                            ten
.                        timez
.                        5
.                        iz
.                        the
.                        number
.                        of
.                        chanj
.                        loose
.                        and
.                        klinking
.                        pocket
.                        full
.                        of
.                        pennyz
.
The repetition of the poem’s first word might seem puzzling at first.
But the sentence it yields should become apparent.  That sentence
makes no sense, however–the “one” that Kempton has punned out
of the letter, “l,” can’t equal ten.  Is his stunt only clever, then?  I
say no, for to me it buoyantly shows, even as it asserts, the
multiplicative power of both “listen,” the word and listen, the act: if
only we listen, truly listen–not only to a text (on paper or
elsewhere) but into it, down to its very letters, and the cracks
between them–our world will increase tenfold.

No, wait.  Not tenfold, but fiftyfold!  Or so the poem goes on to
state, whereupon the poetic rightness of Kempton’s claim suddenly
marries the counter-poetic rightness of a Roman numeral l’s equaling
fifty.

Through this rich interplay of the intuitive and the rational, the
poem draws us into the concrete heard of “loose and klinking
chanj” (like the loose and clinking letters in Kempton’s repetition of
“listen”)–and at the same time into the high generality of change, as
a (boy’s) pocketful of pennies becomes its owner’s magico-
economic version of the magico-aesthetic transformation device
that words and letters are in the pockets of poets.  Thus does
Kempton’s trinket deepen dozens of colors beyond mere cleverness
into a full-scale lyrical celebration of boy’s pockets, coins, letters,
Latin, mathematics, English–and the secret of listening things into
High Poetry.

A shorter but equally effective specimen of infraverbal finesse is in a
recent issue of the magazine, Alabama dogshoe Moustache (#11,
just out).  It is by George Swede:

.                                      graveyarduskilldeer

Here three words are spelled together not only to produce the
richly resonant “double-haiku,” graveyard/dusk/killdeer//
graveyard/us/killdeer, but strikingly to suggest the enclosure
(like letters by a word) of two of more people (a couple–or,
perhaps, all of us) by an evening–or some greater darkening.

In a poem called “Birth, Copulation and Death,” that was recently
published as a chapbook (dbqp press, 1991), Jonathan Brannen is
infraverbally concerned with similarly final things.  Take, for
instance, its second section:

.                                          bentrance
.                                                 *
.                                        intereruption
.                                                 *
.                                           nowledge

Most of the copulation-related analogies that Brannen’s spellings
bring to the fore should be fairly clear, but note in particular the
stutter that the extra “e” in “intereruption” adds, and the way the
excised “k” suggests fertilization’s being not only a ledge to Now,
but only a silent letter distant from Knowledge.  It is through such
subtleties that infraverbal poetry most excitingly proves its value.

My final specimen of the genre is another piece by Karl Kempton:

.                                     antique question
.                                           anti question
.                                               a we
.                                               awe

Here it is especially vital to read the poem both as words and
letters, and to watch as well as read it.  In such a reading, and
watching, the poem should make almost tangible the idea of a
question’s congealing into a serenity beyond irritable answer-
seeking.  And the subsequent parallel drawing together of “a we”
into “awe” should have an even more electrically almost-tangible
impact.  Indeed, I don’t know how a poem could better celebrate
that sense of overcoming the we/they-ness that “a we” implies, and
achieving Final Sharedness, than Kempton’s does.  Nor can I
imagine what more I could say to prove the point of this essay: that
infraverbality, especially as used by the poets I’ve been discussing,
is as formidable a technique as any in poetry.

from the April 1992 issue of Small Press Review