They’re from #674.
Communist Evolution
NoNo
Transgender
#673 had two poems by John Elsbergs from his Runaway Spoon Press book, Broken Poems for Evita. One was this:
RAISING EVA (Or, the myth of art and politics) L EVITA tio nis th EPRE fer RED al TERN at ivefor thosewhona t UR ALLY S inK
And that’s it for this entry. (Am I feeling more worn out than ever for no reason? Yes.)
Sunday, April 24th, 2011
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
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When I visited Clark’s installation, I somehow failed to notice that he had three texts, not just one, in water-filled jars in the three-part lobby showcase–because, I guess, two were in colored water. In one respect, I was lucky: at the time, the one I saw, the central one, may have been at its best state of decomposition, for I found it enchantingly like a jut-filled, twisty opening in a secret caves. Here, according to Clark, is a more accurate description of the trio of showcases:
The showcases were divided into three sections, mirroring the stairway (and, of course, something or other outside the library)—water, trees, sky—with each section filled with books selected because that key word happened to be in its title. The selection of books was, as a result, wildly eclectic, linked only by that one word. The water section had, immersed within it, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; the trees section had The Selected Writings of Paul Cézanne; and the sky section had André Breton’s surrealist classic Nadja.
Of the three, Cézanne’s writings degraded the most dramatically over the four weeks of their immersion and, by the final week, had taken on something of the geologic look of Cézanne much-painted mountain, Mt. Ste. Victoire. The quality of paper, etc. must have contributed to that.
For the most part, I left the books alone to degrade at their own pace (I’d added color-appropriate water colors to each jar), but a couple of times I got into the jars and shook them up a bit, accelerating the decay (and the variety of pages visible). By the end, the books were, in fact, stinking to high heaven; removing the jars was a disgusting experience, especially the Cézanne; it smelled like a rotting carcass!
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Friday, April 22nd, 2011
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Go here to see a slide show about it, which will give you a much better idea of the adventure it was–the evolving adventure–than my entries on it.
Sunday, April 17th, 2011
Finally I’m returning to Clark Lunberry’s installation. Ironically, I already had the words I’m posting written–they’re all from the diary entry I made when I got home from Jacksonville, although somewhat revised:
So, we spent time at a Farmers’ Market–part of it very very pleasantly, under a freeway underpass on a bank of the river through Jacksonville, the name of which I now forget. We had lunch there, while listening to a girl singer accompanied by guitar–in the folk vein, I guess, and nice. Then quite a distance to the college Clark teaches at to see his installation (as well as an excellent exhibition of some of Marton’s pieces) . I wasn’t prepared for the outdoor part of the installation, “SENSATION” making an X with “THINKING” floating in the center of a small pond with geese swimming in it in front of where we parked. An evolving installation: later Clark rowed out to the X in a kayak and changed “THINKING” to “INKING.” It seemed okay to me. The words are from a quotation from Cezanne he’s done many variations on at other installations of this particular (4-year) installation.
The installation continued in the library building next to the pond. First, the long glassed-in exhibition space in the library’s lobby I had a picture of a few entries ago. In it were a huge number of books on water, trees and sky, plus an intriguing mush of torn pages of text in the jar that summed up the adventure into a secret cave that all the books contained. Then three visual poems, each taking up one portion of the stairway window, or glass wall, that faced the pond. The first featured repetitions of the word, “WATER,” the second “TREES, the third “SKY.” These are in many of the other versions of the installation’s . . . “frames.” Several other texts in much smaller letters, some of them sentences, crossed the windows. I was enthralled with the way one could see through these texts into the pond, and the trees beyond, and–finally–into the sky (wonderfully cloud-clumped when we were there) . (Sound effects were included although only the ones for “WATER” were working at this time.)
I immediately thought of Bob Lax (a favorite p0et of Clark’s too, I learned). Clark is a big fan of Samuel Beckett’s (whom he’s been teaching many for five or more years), who is also an obvious influence. But he’s also absorbed and created out of many other influences, many of them non-literary.
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Below is a small portion of a long display case to the right as you enter the college library. It is filled with books about water, trees and sky, the main subjects Clark’s installation is intended to cause engagents to experience sensations of, as we shall see in my entry tomorrow. (I hope.)
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When I visited the Installation, I was my usual out-of-it self, so took no notes, and let it all wash into me rather than analyze it, so I can’t remember what the pages mushed into the jar are from–although they may be writings of Cezanne, or about him, including something Clark quotes of his regarding the superiority for the artist of sensation to thinking. That is the set-up line for this installation and previous ones in the sequence this installation is only the latest work in.
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
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I may have it wrong, but I believe the college pond part of Clark’s installation began with the top image, then changed to “INKING/SENSATION” which, in turn, became the second image, finally becoming “SENSATION” by itself, then the bottom image, thereafter losing verbal meaning gradually until wholly gone. When I visited it, I saw the middle image. My memory is lousy but I remember it as the green of the bottom image. In any case, it was colored.
I will leave it here for now as an object of meditation as you might have happened on it walking to a class or the library of the college Clark teaches at. More tomorrow.
Friday, April 8th, 2011
Clark Lunberry, who took the picture, too (at the college Clark teaches at, the name of which I’ve forgotten, on Saturday, 2 April 2011):
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I’m the taller one. Marton is trying in vain to convince me of some idiotic idea of his that certain kinds of semantically meaningless texts that somehow act like language are a form of visual poetry. Actually, we came close to agreeing, I assigning such poems tentatively to the borblur between visual poetry and textual visimagery–until I can see examples of what Marton was talking about, and bounced their author’s name off my head, without any a trace of it getting inside. I think his over-all position on the definition of visual poetry is fairly close to mine. Anyway, we’re still friends!
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Note: I guess I should add for the sake of those uninitiated into the way my sense of humor works, that the “idiotic” above is a joke on myself. I automatically react with hostility to any idea I disagree with (as, I believe everyone else does), so over the years I’ve developed a habit in person of displaying a violent rage at having to deal with an idea I don’t like that’s is so excessive, it can only be taken as a joke. I’m conveying, I hope, the fact that I do disagree but don’t take myself or my disagreement seriously. Meanwhile, I’m letting off steam. Because I do take everything seriously–and completely unseriously. The “idiotic” is the print version of that.
Surely, more poets have revisited Basho’s old pond than any other place in poetry. Here my friend Guy Beining has, although obliquely as–it seems to me–the allusion to Basho’s pond is secondary.
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This work arrived in yesterday’s mail with two others. Great timing, as I’d run out of frames from my sequence of textual designs to post, and I’m still too out of it to work up a decent entry from scratch. I’m too out of it to comment on the above except to say I like it a good deal, and hope to say more about it eventually.
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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Note to anyone dedicatedly trying to understand my essay, you probably should reread yesterday’s segment, for I’ve revised it. Okay, now back to:
The Nature of Visual Poetry
As a visual poem, Biloid’s “Parrots” is eventually processed in two significantly different major awarenesses, the protoceptual and the reducticeptual. In the protoceptual awareness, the processing occurs in the Visioceptual Awareness, to which it directly proceeds. In the reducticeptual awareness, it first goes to the Linguiceptual Awareness, which is divided into five lesser sub-awarenesses, the Lexiceptual, Texticeptual, Dicticeptual, Vocaceptual, Rhythmiceptual and Metriceptual. The first is in charge of the written word, the second of the spoken word, the third of vocalization, the fourth of the rhythm of speech and the fifth of the meter of speech. Of these, the linguiceptual awareness passes “Parrots” on only to the first, the lexiceptual awareness, because “Parrots” is written, not spoken. Since the single word that comprises its text will be recognized as a word there, it will reach its final cerebral destination, the Verbiceptual Awareness.
The engagent of “Parrots” will thus experience it as both a visioceptual and a verbiceptual knowlecule, or unit of knowledge–at about the same time. Visually and verbally, the first because it is visual, the second because it is a poem and thus necessarily verbal. Clearly, it is substantially more than a conventional poem, which would be processed entirely by its engagent’s verboceptual awareness.
Okay, this essay, only about a thousand words in length so far, is already a mess. Yes, way too many terms. And I keep needing to revise it for clarity. Or, at least, to reduce its obscurity. I have trouble following it myself. My compositional purpose right now, though, is to get everything down. Later, I’ll simplify, if I can.
The image above is from the catalogue of a show I co-curated in Cleveland that Michael Rothenberg was kind enough to give space to in Big Bridge #12–with two special short gatherings of pieces from the show, with commentary by me. I have it here to provide relief from my verosophizing (note: “verosophy” is my word for serious truth-seeking–mainly in science, philosophy, and history). It’s also a filler, for I’ve had too tough a day (doctor visits, marketing, phoning people about bills) to do much of an entry.
It’s not a digression, though–I will come back to it, as a near-perfect example of a pure visual poem.
Now, briefly, to avoid Total Vocational Irresponsibility, back to:
the Nature of Visual Poetry
The pre-awareness is a sort of confederacy of primary pre-aware- nesses, one for each of the senses. Each primary pre-awareness is in turn a confederacy of specialized secondary pre-awarenesses such as the visiolinguistic pre-awareness in the visual pre-awareness and the audiolinguistic pre-awareness in the auditory pre-awareness. Each incoming perceptual cluster (or “pre-knowlecule,” or “knowlecule-in-progress,” by which I mean cluster of percepts, or “atoms of perception,” which have the potential to form full-scale pieces of knowledge such as the visual appearance of a robin, that I call “knowlecules”) enters one of the primary pre-awarenesses, from which it is sent to all the many secondary pre-awarenesses within that primary pre-awareness.
The secondary pre-awarenesses, in turn, screen the pre-knowlecules entering them, accepting for further processing those they are designed to, rejecting all others. The visiolinguistic pre-awareness thus accepts percepts that pass its tests for textuality, and reject all others; the audiolinguistic pre-awareness tests for speech; and so on. More on this tomorrow, I hope.
