Column092 — March/April 2009
Infra-Verbal Playtime
Small Press Review,
Volume 41, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2009
The Protext Primer, Fourth Edition
By Will Napoli
2008; 68 pp; Pa; Protext Press,
http://www.ProtextPoetry.com. $15.
not quite write,
ultra mate ‘em and
insightful wry utter
By paloin biloid
2008; 16, 12 and 12 pp; Pa; Protext Press,
http://www.ProtextPoetry.com. $3, each.
Texistence
By Geof Huth & mIEKAL aND
2008; 300 pp; Pa; Xerox Sutra Editions,
10375 Cty Hway Alphabet, LaFarge WI54639.
http://www.xexoxial.org. $15 plus shipping and handling.
I was eager to write up the fourth edition of Will Napoli’s The Protext Primer, which is basically a dictionary of terms having to do with what Napoli calls “experimental minimalist poetry,” before I even read it and found out it includes some terms of mine. That’s because I’d seen earlier editions of the Primer, and had long been acquainted with Napoli’s outstanding work in the field as poet and critic. Still, I have to admit that I appreciated his inclusion of such of my words as “infra-verbal poetry,” and “alphaconceptual poetry.” I’m not sure he got the definition of the latter right, though–assuming my own definition of it was right. When I checked it, I wasn’t sure, so I made what I think is a better definition of it, which I went on to explain in detail. In other words, Napoli’s book quickly inspired . . . advanced scholarship.
Result? A definition of alphaconceptual poetry as poetry in which the units of the alphabet (taken to include numerals, punctuation marks, mathematical symbols and the like, as well as letters) are of central aesthetic significance because of what they are conceptually as opposed to what they are verbally, visually or auditorially. For instance, the second “gh” in Aram Saroyan’s “lighght” is centrally significant aesthetically not because it helps a reader to the verbal meaning of a word, or for how it looks or sounds, but because it is a conceptualization of a linguistic state of there/not-there, or visual presence/auditory non-presence. Similarly, that the “xyz” in Ed Conti’s pwoermd, “galaxyz,” is conceptually the end of the alphabet is what makes it aesthetically effective. For one last example, consider my making “boy on a s.wing” the conclusion of a poem of mine. The period is conceptually “something that brings a sentence to a close,” which makes “wing” conceptually “something that disobeys a law of grammar”–the way the boy on the swing transcends the law of gravity.
I checked Napoli’s primer to see if it has a word for poetry using a period for poetic effect, as I did. No. This surprised me, for it seems to have a word for just about every kind of word-play poetry. Like “punctuapery,” which is a class of protext in which punctuation marks replace letters–as in “contract’rs.” “Protext” is defined as “concrete and visual poetry that employs gadgets of experimental poetics useful in defining classes and types of it.” Napoli’s recent synonym for it, also in the primer, is “exploetry,” a term I like a good deal. Most protext seems to me to be infra-verbal poetry, which is poetry depending on what happens inside words for its aesthetic charge. In any case, a central value of The Protext Primer is its some two hundred names for different kinds of minimalist poems; another is its many entertaining specimens of such poems–for instance, the “myspelling” of “testimony” as “testimoney”; or “!nverse,” which is in the entry for “exclamates,” and can be read as both “inverse” and “n verse,” to represent, perhaps, a kind of poetry, or a reference to one of the n possible universes, according to some physicists. Conclusion: it’s a great resource for academics, but lots of fun for browsers, as well.
Protext Press, publisher of the primer, has also recently published three little chapbooks of “paloin biloid’s” protext. One of them, insightful wry utter, is “”(for Bob Grumman),” so my praise of such pieces of protext as “me@ball” can be utterly ignored. My favorite is mathematical:
five
iv
iii
ii
i
biloid’s ultra mate ‘em, dedicated to Chris Franke, consists of thirteen clever word-games matching an “est” word punningly to a regular word. So there’s “slum = divest” and “double agent = molest.” A dive is a slum, a double agent a mole, got it? My favorite of these is “infinity = nest.” Just a hint for that: remember than “n” in mathematics can stand for “a constant integer.” The othe chap, not quite write, is a collection of variations on minimalist poems by Aram Saroyan, to whom it is dedicated. One is “tongh.” The only one with a title, “A Poem Recognizing Something in a Poem,” plays artfully with three letters and a question mark: “owh?/ ow?h/ o?wh/ ?owh/ who?/ wh?o/ w?ho/ ?who/ how? ho?w/ h?ow/ ?how.”
To finish this installment of my column, I have another infra-verbal work to discuss, Texistence, a beautifully packaged collection of 300 Joycean powermds (or one-word poems, as my readers should know) that Geof Huth and mIEKAL aND composed in two days last June. Go to http://xexoxial.org/is/texistence/by/geof_huth_and_mIEKAL_aND for an entertaining short discussion of what they did by Huth–and find out about the many other intriguing wares at Xexoxial Editions, the publisher of Texistence. My favorite word in Texistence is “subpremely.” But there are a slew of good ones in it, such as “slodslip,” “llyllylly,” “opulsed,” “vrititure” (which sounds like one of my taxonomical terms), “fossilitate” . . . Enjoyable these are, at least for infra-verbal nuts like me and Will Napoli. But 300 of them? I dunno. They made me wonder if I could make 300 pwoermds in two days, all of them based on “bob.” -“Boboon.” “Bobloon.” “Doubobloon.” “Bobloom.” “Boblusky.” “Bobaric.” “Boblong.” ‘Bobbit.” “Bobbunny.” “Bobth.” “Bodby.” I think I could but I think I won’t try to.