Archive for the ‘Ali Znaidi’ Category
Entry 1480 — Just a Few More Beach Thoughts
Tuesday, June 10th, 2014
Apologies, but once again I forgot to make this public until now, 2 days late.
I don’t have much more to say about the Beach (!!, !!). Just that it makes me think of American Indians–the big M’s might be tepees, and the symbols Indian hierglyphics, although I have to say I know close to absolutely nothing about Indian writing, even if they had any. But there are also puffs of smoke language in the work.The main thing I get from the work is how strongly it signifies . . . something, but something difficult to pin down. The change from the stack of three instances of “OlM” (as I reduce it) to the swirl I found SMIW or SWIIM in seem especially meaningful–but why? From print to cursive? From solidity to a kind of organic. lazy, confused bolt of lightning?
Then there are the four domino 6’s. The way they slightly slant toward the right, the leftmost one, the most, suggests to me some kind of footprints across flat land meeting a horizon where a sign triply announcing the beach rises. The exclamation signs join in the perspective the 6’s are suggesting. Since a beach is shore, this also suggests a higher adventure than a day of sandcastle fun–a place to leave for discoveries!
The work’s aesthetic value is almost entirely visual, but its text and near-text make it more than a scene–a scene within an attempt to translate it into words–i.e., a scene and something trying to be said about the scene that locates it, according to my long-held central view of poetry’s main goal, in a Manywhere-at-Once consisting of places in both the visual and linguistic parts of an observer’s brain causing a tension the resolution the challenge of which is what gives the work its main zing. Possibly no two persons coming to it will get the same details from it, but everyone experiencing a superior appreciation of it will end in the same Manywhere-at-Once.
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Entry 1479 — Back to the Beach
Monday, June 9th, 2014
Here’s the comment I made about the above at Tip of the Knife yesterday: “Another great issue, Bill. I was taken with Ali’s “Stop! It’s the beach. An Asemic Writing,” too. In fact, I stole it for re-use at my blog. I like your take on it: mine so far is very nebulous, but I also see the same theme there as you. I think of Klee–especially the way a merely nice picture takes off because of its title!”
I have even more to say about it today because shortly after I wrote yesterday’s blog entry, and categorized this work as a “textual design,” I saw the word, “swim,” could be made of the lettersstacked to the right, which have extra M’s to their left. There are one or two extra S’s, too. So we have the very appropriate, “swimmmms” . . . So it’s a visual poem.
I almost see it as a mathematical poem, too–because of how much it looks like an addition example. All it needs is a plus sign.
I’m pacing myself in this analysis. Don’t want to tire myself out. So I’ll return for more Masterful Insights tomorrow.
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Entry 1478 — The Beach!!
Sunday, June 8th, 2014
The latest issue of Bill DiMichele’s always excellent netzine, Tip of the Knife, is out. Among my many favorites in it was this, by Ali Znaidi (who is new to me):
Stop! It’s the beach. An Asemic Writing
It swept Bill into “a seascape with shiny pebbles and beach umbrellas. There are sand castles rising from the shore, aiming for that Sunday blue sky above us all, for those playful children enjoying cotton candy and drawing pictures with driftwood.” Bill goes on the speak of loving “the soul Ali empties into the depths of the ocean, the swimmers riding peaceful currents, doing a high dive, dallying with mermaids among their coral language homes,” and I know just what he means, although the details of my interpretation of this multi-interpretable work differ from his. The work is clearly an inspired celebration of the beach as, well: “!!”
I hope to return to this tomorrow with a few better words for what I get from it than I have right now.
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