Archive for the ‘Richard Kostelanetz’ Category
Entry 1678 — A Specimen of My Poetry Criticism
Wednesday, December 31st, 2014
I’m trying to catch up with my collection of Small Press Review columns in this blog’s “Pages” and am about to post the one that follows. I liked it so well (after making some small improvements to it), that I’m taking care of this entry with it:
EXPERIODDICA
September/October 2014
Richard Kostelanetz’s Latest Infra-Verbal Adventure
Ouroboros
Richard Kostelanetz
NYQ Books, Box 2015, Old Chelsea Station,
New York NY 10113. $16.95. 2014. Pa; 188 pp.
An ouroboros is a mythological serpent swallowing its tail, so an excellent title for Richard Kostelanetz’s collection of 188 words swallowing their tails, most of the time adding at least one interesting word to what they’re saying, as “ouroboros” itself does on the cover (when its s joins its “our”). Those that do not use their first letter as their last to finish a word: “extrapolat,” for example, has only one e but spells “extrapolate” when made into a circle. It’s fun to find smaller words inside them in Kostelanetz’s collection: “tea” and “eat,” for example, in “appetite,” which not knowing at first where the word begins forces one to discover rather than automatically read without thinking about it. But can such objects be considered poems—rather than “curiosities?” To use the term my Internet friend Chris Lott thought might be more appropriate for works like them than “poems”–and which turned out to be a term I’ve needed for my over-all taxonomy of verbal expression for a long time but never thought of!
The term seems right for some of Kostelanetz’s words, but only some of them–like “ouroboros.” The addition to it of “sour” is amusing but, for me, not poetically enlarging enough to be a poem rather than a verbal curiosity—which I now define for use in my Official Taxonomy of Verbal Expression as “a text that states an amusing or interesting fact.” That makes it (write this down!) “informrature” (i.e., texts primarily intended to inform) rather than one of the other two kinds of verbal expression in my taxonomy, “advocature” (i.e., texts whose primary intent is to persuade, or verbal propaganda) and “literature” (i.e., verbal art, or texts intended primarily to give aesthetic pleasure). In effect, “ouroboros” as a circular word that “disconceals” the word “sour” states the fact that its letters can be used to spell “sour” following a certain rule, that being to connect the word’s end to its beginning by means of a circular spelling.
Not that such a word doesn’t veer near poetry (which can be succinctly if roughly defined as not-prose) due to its visual difference from conventional prose, its making a reader go slow (a major aim of poetry) and delivering more connotations than prose generally does. But, for me, it is visually-enhanced the way calligraphy is, and infraverbally-enhanced the way “ouroboros” spelled “ouROBoros” to reveal one of its inner words, would be. Yes, it looks good on the page, and makes us think about it more than it would conventionally printed, but it leaves us primarily with only the fact that “sour” can be produced by it (and “our” and “rob” are in it.
Take on the other hand, “appetite,” which swallows its tail to deliver not only “tea,” and “eat” but leads us into and around to “pet” and “petite” to go along with “appetite” itself, to present a little tea party, with a strong suggestion of little girls. Then put “incandescent” swallowing its tail on the page opposite it to form “tin” while making us also aware of its “descent” and “scent”—due to its compelling us to read it letter by letter. “Scent” is particularly significant because of the metaphoric jolt of the3 suggestion of something incandescent as a material scent, or of a scent as something immaterially incandescent. The contrast of “tin” notwithstanding, the result is a fascinating scene occurring somewhere down Alice’s rabbit hole which, for me, makes the word a poem.
At this point I must contradict myself. I now believe all of Richard’s circular words are poems. I say this because I now feel that they do enlarge a reader’s experience of them significantly more than prose does, although some, like “ouroboros” do so to much less of an extent than others. More importantly, this collection as a whole, I’ve come to perceive, is a single poem, whose ssspinning wheelsss free connotations whose interaction with each other disconceal sometimes fairly complex image complexes—as I’ve shown “appetite” and “incandescent” do. The result is a loose collection of themes and counter-themes, occasionally next to each other, as with “appetite” and “incandescent,” but sometimes far apart—like “state, which amusingly becomes “estate,” where the tea party will take place, many pages from “incandescent.”
Kostelanetz’s sequence begins with “insurgent,” and as we go along, the presence of an insurgent, mainly, it comes to seem to me, a language insurgent miswriting words into circular revolts against monosemy establishes one of the sequence’s major themes (with the little girls’ tea party in feminine contrast to it). For example, “Esperanto,” representing a language in revolt against the Tower of Babylon our world has become, supports this “linguicentric” reading. Its disconcealment of “rant” backs up the tone of insurgence (in spite of “toes”—although that suggests “toe to toe,” for one really caught up with the sequence). On the page facing “esperanto” we have “astonish,” which is indicative, I think, of what artistic insurgence’s aim in this story will turn out to be. That the font Kostelanetz has chosen for his words, the highly dramatic “Wide Latin,” which is jabbingly pointed at all extremities, underscores this.
The book’s fourth word underscores this: “another,” or something other than. But then the narrative runs into “hesitant,” which contains “Sita,” the name of the central female character, a sort of Virgin Mary, in the Hindu epic, Ramayana, and the narrative goes strange among “the,” “he” “sit”, “it,” “tan,” “an,” “ant.” After the turn caused by “hesitant,” comes “entomb,” with its “bent” against something. By the “men” of the later “enthusiasm?” The first peak of this insurgent flow is reached with “outlawing,” which causes “gout,” making the act of outlawing things unhealthy, and the insurgence begins to have the feel of anarchism.
I agree with you if you’re thinking one must have quite an accommodating mind to make the kind of connections I’ve so far made—but a main function of poetry is to relax one into doing just that. I have to admit a lot of my interpretations are influenced by my knowledge of Kostelanetz as a long-time personal friend consumed (like me) with innovative insurgency in the arts and anarchistic distaste for political laws.
To get back to his sequence, it’s no surprise that “esoteric” forms the next spinning wheel with its esoteric lawless confusion of “ice,” “rice,” “sot.” Some kind of drunken wedding? Where are we going? The point is that we are going somewhere, or more than one where. And word-lovers who join us will be sure to enjoy the trip!
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Entry 1538 — Curiosities?
Thursday, August 14th, 2014
I’m really cheating today: I’m using part of a review or column for Small Press Review that I’ve been working here. The work I’m reviewing is Richard Kostelanetz’s Ouroboros (see Entry 1535):
An ouroboros is a mythological serpent swallowing its tale, so an excellent title for this collection of 188 words like, well, “ouroboros,” swallowing their tails, each time adding at least one interesting word to what they’re saying, “sour,” in the case of “ouroboros.” They are set in a highly appropriate, highly dramatic font called “Wide Latin”—very bold and jabbingly pointed at all extremities. It’s definitely fun to find smaller words inside Kostelanetz’s specimens of “circular writing,” as he terms it: “tea,” “pet,” and “petite,” for example, in “appetite,” as well as “appetite” itself, which one discovers rather than automatically sees, or “tin,” “descent,” and, most important,” “scent” in “incandescent” (because of the poetic jolt light as an immaterial scent, or a scent as immaterial light suggest to those sensitive to connotation). But can such objects be considered poems—rather than “curiosities” .
I told Chris Lott that I would explain why I thought certain arrangements of numbers Richard had made were more than curiosities, and that I’d soon explain why I thought that. Here, quickly, using Richard’s circular words, I’ll give the gist of my reasoning that some of them are, the ones that: accentuate connotative value, a virtue of poems although not necessarily a defining quality, and in the process create an image complex of aesthetic value, the way I think “appetite” turns eating into a very feminine tea party, and “incandescent” makes “scent” and “incandescence” plausible metaphors for each other; that they also sslow the reading of them, as any effective poem must (although I do not consider that a defining characteristic, either, but the result of defining characteristics, like the flow-breaks line-breaks serve as in free verse, and the extreme flow-break of a word being spelled into a circle); and, least important, but still important, they are decontextualized from prose, both by simply being called poems and by not being visually rose.
Richard’s number poems are somewhat different. I hope to discuss them, too, before long.
One further note. Many of Richard’s circular words combine into interesting narratives full of “heightened cross connotativeness,” by which I mean, one word’s mundane connotation turning vividly into a related connotation due to a similiarly mundane connotation in an adjacent circular word. For more on that, you’ll have to wait for my column, as I now see this text will become. You will be able to do that by subscribing to Small Press Review, which I wish a few of you would do; or by waiting for me to post the column in my Pages here a few months after it is published.
Note #2: I do not consider circular words to be visual poems; for me, they are visually-enhanced infra-verbal poems–the poetic value lies almost entirely on what goes on inside them verbally. Although you might say their visual sspin flicks connotations into view . . .
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Entry 1535 — 3 from Ouroboros
Monday, August 11th, 2014
The following three specimens of Richard Kostelanetz’s “circular writing,”as he calls it, are from Richard’s recent collection, Ouroboros:
I’ve had another tough day–I think my recent accident took more out of me than I thought it did. Anyway, I’m not up to commenting on these pieces yet, except to say that I was seriously thinking of classifying them as “curiousities” after reading a note from Chris Lott referring to a couple of arrangements of numerals by Richard by that term (albeit intriguing ones) and wondering why I thought them poems instead. More tomorrow on the topic, I fervently hope.
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Entry 1417 — Azoom Again, But Evilly Now
Tuesday, April 8th, 2014
A thoughtMix to Richard Kostelanetz, 6 April 2014, energy (& confooselry supplied by my second caffeine pill of that day):
I much enjoyed your piece on prize-winning poets, Kosti–and getting your responses to their questionnaire. I went along with almost all you had to say except (1) I don’t much like Stein’s writings but think I could have been great friends with her like Willie James seems to have sorta been (as long as I was tactful about her writing, and some of it I do like well enough) and (2) while I, too, wish Lincoln had not kept the states together, my reason is the opposite of yours–it would have meant the possibility of one English-speaking country in the world that genuinely believed in freedom, and escaped the cultural imprisonment your city (NY, which I consider the US’s center of anti-individualism) and my group of states (New England) are condemning the country to (with the prizes you wrote of, for one thing). My more serious belief is that it would have been wonderful to have two countries now to compare with one another: the north with its oppressive central government and and unruly confed-eration of southern states, Texas, for one, almost surely with a bill of right that meant what it said. The one good thing about this would be that lessons could be learned that at least one or two of the southern states would be free to be influenced by, due to the weak central government; northern states could not be, because of the too-strong central government’s opposition to free enterprise, etc.
I have to admit, that I suspect the North would be where the best art came about–until the seventies. But maybe not. Too complex to know what would happen. Just one possibility: that the South never gave women the vote. I can’t believe that would have hurt it, women being much more anti-freedom and risk than men. I think if I were thirty, with my present “knowledge,” I could write two books about this, one showing the USA vastly superior to all other nations and the CSA like 1950’s South Africa; or the USA like the Soviet Union and the South like a large version of an Athens that was able to defeat Sparta. One problem for the first is that Texas oil and a free economy could well have made the South economically superior to the North. Hey, I ain’t ashamed to say I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m sure I’m making at least as much sense as any editorial-page pundit would on my subjects.
Note: apologies for the underlined words in blue: some spammer did that and I don’t know how to get rid of them. I tried misspelling the words involved, but the spam mechanism just used other words.
What Richard said, by the way, is worth flairfully worth quoting: “I despise Abe Lincoln, who should have dumped the Confederate states, whose leaders were independentistas wanting to secede. Instead, Lincoln initiated a war that took many lives and, with “victory,” burdened the North with backward provincials to this day.” Later thought typing what he said lit: as a war-lover, I wonder if the war between the states was a main reason the US defeated Germany twice. Richard and I are quite close politically but his libertarianism includes warfear, mine understands war to be unavoidable–and ultimately biologically necessary. Ultimately, war is just another name for death, and irrationally overrated as an Evil: compare the world population in 1900 with the world population in 2000, and the average life span and standard of living of the two dates. Remember that the twentieth century is supposed to have been the most horrifyingly war-plagued century ever–and proof the hoomins izzint civilized.
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Entry 1392 — Library Holdings
Friday, March 14th, 2014
Yesterday I came across a website new to me I thought interesting. It’s here, where there’s a box you can type any author’s name into. It lists a huge number of authors all the way down to my low level of visibility and indicates, as you will see, how many copies of the authors are in all the libraries belong to the organization running the site. Mostly university libraries, I suspect, since I doubt that aside from them more than the Library at Charlotte High, where I subbed for fourteen years and was good friends with the head librarian, has anything of mine, assuming even the Charlotte High library does.
My pal Richard Kostelanetz has almost as many pages there as I have individual entries. No surprise. I mention it for three reasons–(1) to gain status with the claim that he’s a pal of mine (because I’m a real statooznik, as everyone knows); (2) because his most widely-held publication (in over a thousand libraries) is Dictionary of the Avant Gardes that I’m in, too (!), which encourages me to believe posterity may come across me even fifty years from now; and (3) to put the “Audience Level” of my works in perspective by noting that it’s around 90 on a scale of 100, his around 50, so I can pretend my stuff is vastly more intelligent than his (although I recognize that my work is just much less clear than his–and mainly experimental poetry versus well-written non-academic prose).
I’m a little bothered that Velocity had a lower rating than Of Manywhere-at-Once, which I tried my best to be at the level of the average reader. I find it pretty funny that apparently A StrayngeBook is at a higher level than Richard’s work. But, ho, one of Richard’s works got a hundred! None of mine did. I should do something about that . . .
Works: 46 works in 50 publications in 1 language and 226 library holdings
Most widely held works by Bob Grumman
Visual poetry in the Avant Writing Collection by Ohio State University ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2008 in English and held by 78 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Writing to be seen : an anthology of later 20th century visio-textual art ( Book ) 2 editions published in 2001 in English and held by 25 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Writing to be seen : an anthology of later 20th century visio-textual art ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2001 in English and held by 22 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Of manywhere – at – once by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 2 editions published between 1991 and 1998 in English and held by 9 WorldCat member libraries worldwide Early in 1983 … [the] severely middle-aged poet/critic [author] began writing a 14-line poem (a sonnet, in fact). this … book tells the story of his 5-year struggle to get that poem right. More than that, however, it is a full-scale investigation of poetics, with numerous side-musings into poems by such masters as Shakespeare, Keats, Cummings, Pound, Yeats, Roethke and Stevens–as well as such contemporaries as Karl Kempton, G. Huth, Crag Hill, Bob Grenier and John M. Bennett. It is, in fact … [a] large-scale discussion of poetry to cover all extant varieties of it, including current visual poetry, alphaconceptual poetry and “language poetry.” Anyone interested in what words, or even mere letters, can say and be at their best, should find this book of … value …-Back cover
Just feet by John M Bennett ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1994 in English and held by 9 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Swelling by John M Bennett ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1988 in English and held by 7 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A straynge book by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1987 in English and held by 6 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
SpringPoem No. 3,719,242 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1990 in English and held by 5 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Vispo auf deutsch : an anthology of verbo-visual art in German ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1995 in English and held by 5 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
An April poem by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1989 in English and held by 4 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Greatest hits , 1966-2005 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2006 in English and held by 4 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Ghostlight by G Huth ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1990 in English and held by 4 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Of manywhers-at-once : ruminations from the site of a poem’s construction by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1990 in English and held by 3 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A straynge catalogue by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1989 in English and held by 3 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Velocity ( ) in English and held by 3 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Shakespeare & the rigidniks : a study of cerebral dysfunction by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 2 editions published in 2006 in English and held by 3 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Dirges by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2002 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A selection of visual poems by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 2 editions published between 1999 and 2005 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Between : sequence 1 by J. W Curry ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1989 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
This is visual poetry : chapbook by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2010 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Audience Level Kids General Special Audience level: 0.93 (from 0.47 for Velocity … to 1.00 for Swelling / …) (Note: Swelling is by John Bennett, but I probably wrote an intro for it; it’s one of my press’s publications. So it doesn’t mean I have anything with a 100 audience level rating.)
Second Page
11 works in 11 publications in 1 language and 16 library holdings
Roles: Editor
Most widely held works by Bob Grumman
Cryptographiku 1-5 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2003 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Poemns [sic] by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1997 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Poem, demerging by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2010 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Mathemaku, 6-12 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1994 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
April to the power of the quantity Pythagoras times now : a selection of mathemaku by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 2008 in English and held by 2 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Mathemaku, 1-5 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1992 in English and held by 1 WorldCat member library worldwide
Pnd by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1987 in English and held by 1 WorldCat member library worldwide
Vispo auf deutsch : an anthology of verbo-visual art in German ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1995 in Undetermined and held by 1 WorldCat member library worldwide
Mathemaku 13-19 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1996 in English and held by 1 WorldCat member library worldwide
Mathemaku no. 2 by Bob Grumman ( Book ) 1 edition published in 1988 in English and held by 1 WorldCat member library worldwide
Audience Level 1 Kids General Special Audience level: 0.87 (from 0.00 for Writing to … to 1.00 for Poem, deme …) (Ah, good, I do have a book with a top audience level rating! It will be interesting to find out its audience level rating in fifty years. Much lower, I’m sure.)
WorldCat IdentitiesRelated Identities • Bennett, John M. plus • Ohio State University Libraries Avant Writing Collection plus • Sackner, Marvin A. 1932- plus • Ohio State University Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Library plus • Hill, Crag plus • Stetser, Carol plus • American Visual Poets’ Cooperative plus • Runaway Spoon Press Publisher plus • Berry, Jake plus • Ackerman, Al
Later Note: I found out you can click an individual title and find some but not all the libraries with copies of it. As expected, in my case, it’s just university libraries wanting to have complete collections of ephemera–just in case.
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Entry 1348 — “Nymphomania”
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
All I have to say about yesterday’s entry is that the work at the top of the uppermost page is by Harry Polkinhorn. It’s a frame from Summary Dissolutions, a sequence of his my Runaway Spoon Press published sometime in the eighties. I also wanted to note that the very rough taxonomy presented hasn’t changed except that I now call “illumagery,” by another name: “visimagery.” For this entry I just have something more from Of Manywhere-at-Once:
Note: the text above directly follows my comments on Jonathan Brannen’s poem.
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Entry 1309 — A Little Quartet
Tuesday, December 24th, 2013
With thanks to Mark Sonnenfeld in whose whose latest Marymark Press broadside it appears:
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Entry 1138 — Kostelanetz Fiction & My Rip-Off
Monday, July 1st, 2013
The first is one of the works on exhibit in my latest Scientific American blog:
I couldn’t resist the temptation of rip it off–but kept the rip-off out of my blog entry:
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Entry 740 — The Special Value of Solitextual Visual Poems
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
In my taxonomy a solitextual visual poem is a poem consisting solely of textual elements that are significantly visioaesthetic–that is, what their text is visually is necessary to the poem’s central aesthetic effect. A famous example is this, by Eugen Gomringer:
I’m posting it again to illustrate two points. One is that is has always been considered a “concrete poem,” because it consists of nothing but words, yet has a visual component absolutely necessary for it to have any appreciable aesthetic value–the visual appearance of the absence of text in one part of it. That, of course, is what makes the poem a classic by depicting a silence greater than the silence of printed words–by, that is, surprising one encountering the poem (with the ability to appreciate it) with a sudden poetic understanding of something central to existence.
My other point occurred to me when recently reading something by Richard Kostelanetz in which he speaks of finding “that with words alone (he) can make the most powerful images available to (him).” In context, he seems to be suggesting that these images are more powerful than those others get with works combining verbal and graphic elements. I can’t go along with that. However, on reflection, I saw how solitextual visual poems like Gomringer’s and Kostelanetz’s can be said to have a unique aesthetic punch compared to poems mixing graphics with text. That’s because of the increase in the unexpectedness of whatever it is a solitextual visual poem does visioaesthetically compared to what the other kind of visual poem does. I claim that both kinds of poems will, if successful, put an engagent in Manywhere-at-Once, or a part of the brain neither a conventional poem or conventional visimage (graphic image) is likely to put one, but the engagent will already be partway into that location upon first encountering a poem combining the visual and the verbal whereas he will only be in the verbal part of his brain until the pay-off in a purely solitextual poem, so the pay-off will come more forcefully, and probably be more intense. The mixture of graphics and text, however, will be able to make up for the reduced intensification by increased richness–by going to a larger Manywhere-at-Once or inter-connected Manywhere-at-Onces. Equal but different.
Entry 88 — MATO2, Chapter 1.10
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
During the next two days I got a copy in the mail of the introductory essay Richard Kostelanetz wanted me to critique, the manuscript of a poetry collection John Bennett my press was going to publish, and letters from Jake Berry and Jack Foley. Richard’s essay was is fairly good but I saw a number of things I counted wrong with it;. As for John’s manuscript, it seemed fine–one poem in particular, whose main image was a car wash, I especially liked. I wrote a short letter of full acceptance to John and a card acknowledging receipt, and suggesting he delete much of one section of his essay, to Richard.
Jack’s letter was friendly but he quickly.got on me for under-representing females and blacks (and Asiatics) in of Manywhere. In my reply I tried to skirt the issue. I didn’t pugnaciously tell him that my purpose was accuracy, not making the world better for members of victim-groups. Hence, I wrote about the four canonical poets, all male, whom I admired enough to put explicitly into the sonnet my book was partly about, and the fifth, also male, to whom the sonnet strongly alluded. Except for a few short passages about Shakespeare and a mention or two of contemporary linguexpressive poets like Wilbur, my book is about an area of literature few women have done anything of importance in, and no blacks that I knew of at the time I wrote it. The late Bill Keith is still the only significant black American in visual poetry I know about, Larry Tomoyasu the only Asian American. I don’t know whether I knew him when I wrote the first volume of my series. I don’t believe I mentioned him in it.
The ever-amiable Jake was fully positive about my book.