Column104 — March/April 2011
Internet Samplings
Small Press Review,
Volume 43, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2011
dbqp:visualizing poetics
Blogger: Geof Huth
http://dbqp.blogspot.com
Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry
Webmaster: Karl Young
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/TextBackHome/Volume5.htm
Mathematical Poetry
Blogger: Kaz Maslanka
http://mathematicalpoetry.blogspot.com
A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry
Bob Grumman. 20p; 2010; Pa;
The Runaway Spoon Press, 1708 Hayworth Road,
Port Charlotte FL 33952. $5 ppd.
Tip of the Knife
Webmaster:: Bill Di Michele
http://tipoftheknife.blogspot.com
Word-Dreamer: Poetics
Blogger: Conrad Didiodato
http://didiodatoc.blogspot.com
Thinking it was time for another column on Internet sites having to do with experriodica, I clicked my way to Firefox, which is the service I use to connect to the Internet. Three sites were already on stand-by waiting for me. One, of course, was my own Poeticks.com, the blog I try to post an entry a day to, mainly to force myself to keep writing. Probably half my entries are lame, but recently I’ve been discussing my latest self-publication, A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry, with those few of my colleagues interested in such stuff: Geof Huth, who did a 1500-word review of it on 11 January at dbqp:visualizing poetics, his incredibly far-exploring blog (which was the second of the sites on stand-by, which it always is); endwar, the most crisply objective poet I know; Kaz Maslanka, who runs Mathematical Poetry, the central blog for mathematical poetry; and Karl Kempton, champion of the historical approach to understanding poetry, especially visual poetry.
Naturally, I disagree in part with all of them. Don’t worry, that’s all I’ll say about it–except to note that I’ve made changes in my taxonomy because of our discussion, so don’t believe anyone who tells you I’m ridiculously strongly set in my ways. Although I’ll never stop believing that anything called “visual poetry” should have words (or word-fragments) contributing significantly to its aesthetic meaning.
Conrad Didiodato also contributed a post to the discussion. I especially don’t want to overlook him because I’ve had interesting discussions of poetics with him over the past year or two, and when I clicked to his blog to find something to say about it here, I found a recent entry (11 January 2011) containing this poem by one of my favoritest contemporary poets, John Martone:
lighting
a candle
& blowing
it out
lighting
a candle
& blowing
it out
lighting
a candle
& blowing
it out
trying
to
under
stand
(thinking of robert lax)
As far as I’m concerned, this one poem is worth this whole column–nay, all of my columns to this point and beyond! It seems such a perfect summary and accumulatingly vivid image of just how magically rich in mystery existence is. Human breath, or life, in and out. Fire, ultimately the destructive force, on and off. Wind. Light. The human action of igniting a candle, the simple action of lighting a simple candle. All in a near-perfect homage to Robert Lax, whom I consider first among poets of minimalist repetition, though still not getting the academic attention he ought to.
But the entry has other poems by Martone, along with commentary by Didiodato, who is always invigoratingly insightful, even when I disagree with him. Another of his entries, the one for 14 January, he comments at length on Karl Kempton’s essay, “Visual Poetry: A Brief History of Ancestral Roots and Modern Traditions,” an essay that deserves attention (and, needless to say, doesn’t seem to be getting it from the academy).
The third site on stand-by where I use Firefox to explore the Internet was Bill DiMichele’s new Tip of the Knife, an Internet magazine now up to its third issue. It has four poems in homage to E. E. Cummings by ME, which–needless to say–was why it was on stand-by. But not why I’m plugging it here, honest! I think my poems, which are visual, mathematical and cryptographic, are pretty brilliant, but there is also stunning work by Crag Hill, Karl Kempton, Dale Jensen, Bill himself, Peter Ciccariello, Luc Fierens, Harry Polkinhorn, Christine Tarantino, Iker Spozio and Gary Barwin. And one can link from it to the second issue of Tip of the Knife which features (outstanding) visio-textual work–by Guy R. Beining, Andrew Topel, Nico Vassilakis, Geof Huth, John M Bennett, Richard Kostelanetz (the only one among the contributors whose work is wholly verbal visual poetry–which is to say, employing nothing but words graphically presented) and Leon 5 (someone previously unknown to me whose work is particularly impressive).
Karl Young’s Light & Dust was not on stand-by but should have been, for its huge collection of poetry runs the gamut from Wilshberia (i.e., the Wilbur to Ashbery portion of the contemporary American poetry continuum, which all but a few academics believe to be the whole of the continuum) to, well, my mathemaku and what’s in Karl Kempton’s Kaldron, which is from the last century but still cutting edge. Also there is Young’s absorbing, major in-progress essay on his poetry and life in poetry, Some Volumes of Poetry: A Retrospective of Publication Work, which also includes the works he discusses, Cried and Measured, and Should Sun Forever Shine, which are also major, for content, and for what at the time of their composition was path-breakingly exploitation of what might be called “reading-direction,” for the printing of lines tfel ot thgir or up or down a letter at a time, or the like, for poetic effect, a poetic effect John Martone has used for many years, as well.
I wish I had space for several examples, but the following, from Should Sun Forever Shine, will have to do:
SAD?
PATREFROTRT
LNTESOPSEIY
TEEG&AHUA
ATLHDWERI
KHITRTCTN
EVENING STAR
A combination of wisdom, mood, imagery drawing you slowly (to give your deepenings time to grow) and idiosyncratically by requiring you twice to read up and down instead of right to left (to help you out of inhibiting habituality) out one’s sad self in steps to the eternity of an evening star.
Young’s motive for adding autobiographical background and critical commentary to the reprinting of his poems so fully parallels thoughts of mine often expressed, I quoted a paragraph he wrote about it in his latest section, “Bringing the Text Back Home,” at my blog:
“How best to provide the (engagent of unfamiliar, relatively new forms of art) with adequate context and background,” he begins, “I don’t know. I do know that the lack of it has crippled visual poetry, as it has other arts, and trying to find an answer to the problem is one of the reasons for writing essays like this one. Whatever the case, in the global world of information overload, the concept that ‘the work speaks for itself’ can be no more than nostalgia for a simpler time with a unified and unchanging cultural background. In the broadest context, what has now become the superstition that avant-garde work can be appreciated without context denies and blocks the possibilities of cooperative construction and understanding in an environment that no individual has the ability to completely comprehend, but which requires cooperation to appreciate.”
My columns here have been one attempt to provide just what Young asks for, however inadequately.