A New Vizlature Anthology

  Small Press Review, Volume 29, Number 2, February 1997

             Visuelle Poesie aus den USA, edited by Hartmut Andryczuk. 67 pp; 1995; Pa; Hartmut Andryczuk, Postlagernd D-12154, Berlin, Germany

Toward the end of 1995 a new anthology of vizlature, or verbo-visual art, came out of Germany. It was edited by Hartmut Andryczuk. I was sent a copy of it because I have a couple of pieces in it, but–alas–I got no details concerning its price.

Among the sixteen participants in Andryczuk’s anthology is Marilyn R. Rosenberg, quietly one of this country’s premiere vizlateurs for some two decades. She is represented by a landscape-sketch close enough to an outline to double as a map, thus exploiting the tension of the literal versus the abstract. Her piece is all in calligraphic lines of various degrees of thickness and delicacy that delineate clouds (or mountains) forming above water foaming into being among juts of a landmass. The latter includes an area that could be either a tilled field or a lined page, but in either case is a locus of creativity. At various points in the composition are a Q, and an A (to suggest question/answer), three X’s, a C and a T–and, right together, a W, an upside-down W (or M), and a sideways W (or E), to put us in a Japanese-serene country where a breeze can tilt West to East, and all hovers mystically just short of nameability.

In dramatically unbreezeful contrast to Rosenberg’s piece is John Byrum’s “Transnon,” which consists, simply, of “TRA/ NS/ NON” in large white conventional letters against a black background. With the two cardinal directions missing in Rosenberg’s composition (north and south) in it, and black & white . . . and a backwards rendering of the word, “art,” this work seems almost monumentally engaged with ultimate dichotomies.

Two more map/drawing/poems are presented by Richard Kostelanetz, from an early work of his using text-blocks of pertinent city impressions (e.g., “Boutiques,/ mostly in/ basements,/ their names/ as striking/ and transient/ as rockgroups:/ ‘Instant Pants’/ ‘Pomegranate’ . . .”) to represent various blocks of New York such as that defined by First and Second Avenues and St. Mark’s Place. Very local-feeling, intimate, accurate.

A similar kind of opposition is at the heart of one of Nico Vassilakis’s contributions to this volume, “foremmett” (“emmett” being famous visual poet, Emmett Williams). It consists of a square with two parallel lines drawn horizontally across it near its middle; just above the upper line is “BL”; just below the lower line is “RED”; in between them is “UR.” In the corners of the upper section of the diagram the word, “blue,” is repeated; the word, “red,” is repeated in the corners of the lower section, while “purple” is printed once at each end of the narrow middle section. Another minimalist, almost overlookable piece that teems with the blur of science and sensuality, or where blue analysis becomes, or arises from, a red mood. . . .

Three poems by Dick Higgins carry on this kind of letterplay in homage to Jean Dupuy, ina blom and wolf vostell. The first, just four lines in length, demonstrates the technique: “JEAN DUPUY/ NUDE JAY UP/ DUNE JAY UP/ PUN JAY DUE.” Then, following a charming mathematico-visual tribute to his daughter Amy, Karl Kempton does a lyrical take on the moon that includes a partial reflection of the moon as “wo u,” to magically suggest a fragment of “would,” or moon-distant wishfulness.

Chuck Welch, active in mail art since 1978 as “the Crackerjack Kid,” contributes a moving swirl of words enacting Gaea’s flow which ends with “this dream truss/ clerestory/ Gaea’s blueprint,” but also a medallion-sort of visual poem that I liked less well: it looks nice but too boiler-platedly condemns white C(IA)olonialism and genocide, for my taste.

A “cubistic” specimen of Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino’s Go series is here, too, with a more clearly visual poem from the same series that evokes a rescue at sea, a flare filling the sky with o’s while the excitement of the situation fills it with oh’s. St. Thomasino, and many of the other artists in the volume, provide readers with a short artist’s statement, by the way, which are quite useful.

Others with first-rate pieces in this volume are M. B. Corbett, Harriet Bart, Harry Burrus, Spencer Selby, Stephen-Paul Martin, John M. Bennett (who does terrific things with near-empty frames of the tackily rubber-stamped kind well-known to those familiar with his work) and Paul Weidenhoff. All in all, Andryczuk’s anthology gives a valuable if rough idea of the terrain of current American vizlature.