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Entry 1093 — Thoughts Regarding Minimalism

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

I suppose the minimalist artwork below is not bad, but seeing it in the latest issue of ARTnews depressed me, reminding me that minimalist painters, even mediocre ones like Hanne Darboven seemed from this one example to be, were continuing to make big bucks forty or more years after the birth of minimalism while someone like me is making the most money of his life after fifty years or so of adulthood because of food stamps. . . .

Note from 1 February 2014 when I was reviewing the past year.  Apparently the computer problem mentioned in my next entry screwed up this entry.  The reproduction of the Darboven visimage got deleted and all my further comments.  No doubt they had to do with the following specimens of much better specimens of minimalism I found by bp Nichol (the top one) and Irving Weiss the other two:

WaterPoem5

 

 

WaterIntoWordX

 

WateryWords

 

I’m sure I had fascinating things to say about them.

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Entry 1092 — More Cursive Writing by Irving Weiss

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

I was going to discuss the minimalist works of the previous entry in this one but had so much trouble simply setting the entry up due to my deranged computer and/or my blogsite’s programming, that I couldn’t continue after losing half my commentary, who knows why.  In desperation, I scanned another piece that was in Irving Weiss’s Number Poems (The Runaway Spoon Press, 1997) and managed to post it here:

AMomentAgo

Nifty visiopoetic portrait of a lady, I think.  I haven’t tried super-hard to read the writing but suspect it consists of various scribbled female names–one is Echo.   Wait, at the top are Scylla and Daphne.  I now suspect these are all nymphs or the like who suffered badly at the hands of various gods and goddesses–hence, if full life only a moment.  And en masse here a barely legible flurry representative of all the feminine magic and mystery of the old religions now long-gone.

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Entry 1091 — Waves

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

I had all kinds of trouble getting the following images into this post, and I’m exhausted, so won’t say much about them until tomorrow.  I will say that I consider the top one an example of what has been wrong with the arts world for the past 40 or more years.

Darboven01x.
WaterPoem5

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WaterIntoWord

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WateryWords

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Entry 940 — Pronouncements & Blither, Part 2

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

A few days ago, I got an e.mail from Irving Weiss.  He made some nice remarks about my Scientific American blog, then said that neither “read” nor “peruse” satisfied him “for the way one sticks to looking at a work of abstract art or abstract expressionism or, for that matter, any visual poem lacking identifiable content and without a title to help the viewer. I muse: if you look long at a Pollock, Moherwell, de Kooning, what do you do with your looking mind? You have to avoid thinking of what the painting “looks like” on the one hand and going into a mystical mood or trance. It’s like, if you practice any kind of meditation you must try to avoid going to sleep. What kind of “looking at” is it you exercise while standing in front of a work of abstraction?”

Here’s my answer, to take care of this blog entry: “Glad you’re continuing to keep track of my blog, Irving! I agree with you about “pleruser,” but I do believe some such word is needed and so far haven’t come up with a better. Most excellent question you pose. I think I do a lot of different “looking ats” in front of something by Pollock, say.  A kind of averbal analysis but a purely sensual absorption, back and forth, but maybe, if it’s possible, both at once? I hope other kinds of perception are going on, too. Sense of rhythms—associative glimpsing probably mostly unconscious to my own life-experiences but to other painters, other visual images. And I don’t go long without trying to think of words I could use to describe what the painting is doing for me, the writer’s gift or defect. I’m maxixperiencing it! I’m a maxixperient. Or “magniceptor,” “Magnicepting?” “a maxcipient?” My first good word for this was “aesthcipient,” but I gave it up because it was too hard to pronounce. Urp, Urp, and Away, Bob.”

Close to philogushy, but with some substance, I think.

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Entry 895 — “Gloss Twombley”

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

Here’s something from Irving Weiss’s collection, Identities, which is published by Xexoxial Editions (www.xexoxial.org).  I’m posting it here so people following the discussion I’m moderating at ART=TEXT=ART, which so far has been almost entirely about Twombly’s “Untitled” of 1971, can come and see it.

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Entry 856 — Another from Irving’s New Collection

Sunday, September 9th, 2012

This one’s quite a bit different from yesterday’s–to show you the range of the work in Irving Weiss’s new Identities:

 

It seems wonderfully to represent the Jewish/Hebrew/Yiddish/Middle-Eastern experience–to Gentile me.  I recognized “Moishe” as a Jewish name, but looked it up on the Internet to check and found out that, as I should have known, it is also a Hebrew (or Yiddish) Variant of “Moses,” which was Egyptian.  But I’d already interpretted the work to be about the Exodus (“Moses” already being written in it)–and about the whole Jewish experience–the quest for a home, the struggle against . . . near-Hell? but certainly the hostility of the desert.  But also, for me, the glorious triumph over, or out of, oppression both by Nature and by tribal enemies.  The magical (note the amount of astrology in the piece) triumph.  Knowing Irving, though, and having had a lot of Jewish friends throughout my life, and been exposed to a great deal of Jewish comedy–the Marx Brothers to Woody Allen (before he sold out to “seriousness”), I find a kind of irony, even farce in it–from its title, which suggests both an imploration of the Heroic Leader to get the tribe through its perils but also –well, calling a Jewish kid to dinner.  But I also take “Moishe” as a pun for “Mercy!” which would make the piece essentially about a final escape into a promised land not yet attained.

I could go on into a sociological analysis of Jewishness, which I do think I have a good idea of because they don’t seem to me that much different from me, if different at all (one reason I got quite involved in geneology was the hope that I’d find out that at least one of my ancestors was Jewish; the closest were all the Protestants who were the heretics of their time).  No time for that.  I’ll just repeat that this piece seems to me a powerful, far-ranging expression of Judaism.  And a wonderfully moving piece of verbo-visual art whatever it is taken to mean!

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Entry 855 — An Appropriately Titled “Untitled”

Saturday, September 8th, 2012

The following infraverbal masterpiece is the world’s first artwork given the title, “Untitled,” appropriately. It’s just one of the 78 pieces in Identities, a collection of work by Irving Weiss just out from Xexoxial Editions.  It’s something to wonder through many more times than once, with a fantastic skitter through the arts, from low to high, 100% verbal to 100% visual, the comic to the largest ultimates (as well as a combination of both). I hope to say more about it here and elsewhere.

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Entry 119 — Defining Visual Poetry Again « POETICKS

Entry 119 — Defining Visual Poetry Again

In a month or so, John Bennett’s and my selection for a gallery of visual poems in The Pedestal should be appearing.  John and I each will be providing a preface for it, as I understand it.  In any case, I started thinking about mine last night.  Once again I returned to my obsession with defining “visual poetry.”  This time, though, I wasn’t concerned with my main definitional obsession, the requirement of visual poetry to contain words, but with a lesser obsession, the requirement that a visual poem be more than an illustrated poem, or poetically captioned illustration–because of an excellent submission I got consisting of several arresting visual images, each with a haiku running across its bottom.

Dogma#1: a visual poem must consist of a significant graphic element significantly interacting with a significant verbal element.  Dogma #2: a reader of the poem must experience the poem’s graphic and verbal elements simultaneously.  There will come a day when neurophysiologists will be able to detect this simultaneous experience.  Thereupon we will have an objective way of determining whether a not a given work is a visual poem–for a given person.

This simultaneous experience seems to me the whole point of visual poetry, difficult though it be to provide it.   My “Nocturne” demonstrates how it is done, so that’s the poem I’ll be using as my “Editor’s Poem” for the gallery.  It’s based on the simple idea of dotting all the letters in “night” to suggest stars, then doing the same with “voice” to indicate a voice with stars in it.  Very sentimental, but a favorite of mine.  For some reason, though, I can’t find it in my computer files, so apparently have not yet saved it digitally.

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Entry 12 — Line Breaks « POETICKS

Entry 12 — Line Breaks

I may know as much as anyone in the world about the nature and function of lines breaks.  That’s not a major boast: there isn’t much to know about them, and understanding them doesn’t take research or study, just a little commonsensical thought.  I’m making them the subject of this entry because of a thread at New-Poetry I got involved with.  A few of the contributors to the thread seemed to me to be having trouble fully understanding the device.  Anyway, I’ve decided to write  a minor primer about it, bringing back my recent Poem poem to illustrate its simplest functions:

.                                  Another Failure

.                                  For half the night
.                                  Poem struggled mightily
.                                  to sing himself a sleep
.                                  that melted understandings into him
.                                  as intricately deepening as April rain
.                                  dislodging a woodland’s smallest wisdoms;
.                                  but nowhere in it did
.                                  anything extend beyond
.                                  its decimal point.

I will now repeat it, with a comment in purple under each of its lines:

.                                  Another Failure

.                                  For half the night

The poem’s first line-break notifies the reader that he’s in a poem, as does every poem’s first line-break; slows his read to force him to pay at least a little more attention to what’s going on in the language of the poem and what its expressing, particularly its imagery, as do all line-breaks; with the corroboration of the poem’s other lines, if the reader glances at them, informs him of the poem’s pace, in this case comparatively quick; gives his mind a resting place from the possibly difficult material of the poem (again, like all line-breaks); presents a hint (possibly misleading) of the kind of poem the will follow as to style, subject matter, rhythmic nature, technique, point-of-view, and the like, in this particular case, mainly suggesting quotidianness via a commonplace diction, and the representation of a highly standard image; and, finally, setting up a rhyme by leaving “night” in an emphazied location of the poem.

.                                  Poem struggled mightily

The poem’s second line-break does most of the things its first one did but also pretty much establishes the poem as free-verse, and puts “might” near its end to rhyme with the final word of the previous line.

.                                  to sing himself a sleep

The next line-break does little new, but the extra time it gives the reader may help prevent his reading “a sleep,” a key contributor to whatever value the poem has, too hurriedly.

.                                  that melted understandings into him

Coming a little late compared to the other line-breaks, this one is responsible for giving its line a feel of magnitude, importance; I believe it will be welcomed for the pause it provides the reader to think about just what its line and the preceding one mean

.                                  as intricately deepening as April rain

The next line-break lets its line extend even more.

.                                  dislodging a woodland’s smallest wisdoms;

Then a line-break halting its line somewhat sooner than the previous line-breaks halted theirs–perhaps indicating the we’ve reached the poem’s peak and are now quieting.

.                                  but nowhere in it did

Another short line, now, stopped before it says anything–stopped also on a word a more standard line-break would not have, to “merely’ keep the reader from being completely on balance.

.                                  anything extend beyond

The penultimate line-break does little more than prevent the reader from too quickly learning where the sentence he’s reading is going.

.                                  its decimal point.

The poem’s final line-break provides it with a sharp short clear end.

Any questions?

Additional comments: when I wrote this poem, I paid little attention to the line-breaks I was making–they came pretty much naturally.  I’m sure that’s the way it wis with most composers of free verse.  The “did” I thought about before going with, though, and I think I came back to one pair of lines that sounded wrong, and change the line-break between them.

A reader, too, if experienced, ought not pay much conscious attention to the lineation of a work of free verse–but, if effective, it will have a great deal of influence on his understanding of the poem.

One last comment: in the right hands–those of E. E. Cummings, for example–line breaks can be employed to do much more of value in a poem than they do in “Another Failure.”

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Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again « POETICKS

Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again

In a comment to the entry Geof Huth made to his blog about my taxonomy, Kaz Maslanka said, “I like what I understand to be Karl Kempton and Karl Young’s definition of: ‘Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen.’ This is such a simple yet powerful definition that seems to me to be true in every case of vizpo that I have seen.”

My definition is not so simple–because while the double-Karl definition probably does cover every case of visual poetry, it fails to distinguish certain works that I do not consider visual poetry: illustrated poems and captioned or labeled visimages; ordinary poems whose visual appearance has been improved by calligraphy or special graphic touches like ornate capitals at the beginning of stanzas–poetry, in other words that has been graphically decorated enough to make it more pleasing but not enough to significantly increase its aesthetic effect; certain infraverbal texts like Joyce’s “cropse,” which must be seen to be appreciated but are not visual, if by “visual” we mean “of any special interest to the eye.”  Of course, the definition works for those for whom just about any combination of textual and graphic material is visual poetry–but then we would still need a special term for artworks in which the interrelation of words and graphics causes has a significant aesthetic effect (or is intended to).  For that, the double-Karl definition won’t work, and that more than any of the other combinations of text and graphics is what requires definition.  Because, in my view, only that will jolt an engagent in both the reading section and the seeing section of his brain simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously.

This latter, by the way, is only one example of the way that my taxonomy of poetry is, like a proper theory of science, falsifiable.   Eventually superior forms of cat-scans will be able to determine where in the brain different forms of poetry are appreciated.  I claim each of the main kinds I classify will have a unique brainprint.  Moreover, that brainprint will prove close to exactly what one would expect it to be: visual poems, by my definition, will have a visioverbal brainprint (which will be different from textual designs’ visiotextual brainprint); linguexclusive poems will have a purely verbal brainprint–initially, for most of them will give rise to visual imagery; avisual mathematical poems will have a purely verbomathematical brainprint, but visiomathematical poems will have a visioverbomathematical brainprint.   The brainprints of more specialized poems–particular kinds of visual poems should–if my taxonomy is valid and my theory of psychology right–each have its own unique visioverbal brainprint.

One brainprint that especially intrigues is the one a cryptographic poem would have.  It’d have to be verbal, of course, but also something caused by a conceptual part of the brain I haven’t worked out yet.  Okay, crazy maybe, but don’t be too sure about that until it’s tested.

9 Responses to “Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again”

  1. karl kempton says:

    the word ‘poetry’ within the two word term ‘visual poetry’ frames the discussion. we are not saying visual calligraphy nor graphics poetry, nor comix poetry etc.

    as long as you focus on your self centered lexicon rather than seek an universal point of viewing, all this is perhaps a talking passed each other.

    to continue: because of the steady decline since its peak in the early 1990′s, and because the term visual poetry was coined circa 1965 to break away from the limits of what became concrete poetry, i now prefer the use of sound illumination or illuminated language/s to cover all the visual (must see to fully grasp) use of language that can be composed. the best visual poetry is but a small subset as a result of what took place in the 1990’s. the following is a very abridged outline as to my shift.

    just as concrete became cliché, what has become american vizpo/vispo (a term i used since the late 1970′s onward in my correspondence as an abbreviation for visual poetry), much american vispo, since the mid 1990’s attempted take over by a certain click of the language poets, has become neo/retro concrete. many american visual poets aloud themselves to be hypnotized (or consciously gave themselves over) by a perceived center of power of the moment to serve in order to gain recognition and or power, rather than serve the eternal muse of poetry.

    vispo is now a cliché. it is no wonder the title of a forthcoming anthology is called the last vispo anthology. the editors themselves not only unconsciously have announced its death but also date its birth as 1950’s concrete movement (: “The Last Vispo Anthology extends the dialectic between art and literature that began with the concrete poetry movement fifty years ago.”) they themselves and those within this particular group consciousness admit they work in a temporal moment without homage to the eternal muse.

    visual poetry roots are many thousands of years deep. illuminated language and its ancestral pictorial pictographic petroglyphic images even deeper. those not knowing history are condemned to repeat it. that is obviously true for those cutting history of this form off at 1950.

  2. Bob Grumman says:

    Interesting entirely unself-centered take on the history of visual poetry, Karl. But, as I point out, your definition of visual poetry is too general. If you disagree with that, you need to present an argument against it. You need to show, for instance, either that poems like “cropse” are visual poems, or why such poems need not be considered visual poems by your definition.

    I would add that naming things for political reasons the way you say visual poetry was, retards the search for truth. But “visual poetry” is a good term. It is a good term because it specifies a kind of poetry that is specifically verbal and visual, and not, like concrete poetry, concrete in some other way, such as tactilely. That is why it is in my taxonomy. I would add that almost all concrete poetry is also visual poetry.

  3. serkan isin says:

    ‘Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen.’ can be taken as a definition maybe. But lots of problems here, first of all, written poetry can be seen also. There is a form there and it is not always the same, especially after the free verse. Second, we have to ask maybe where a poem happens? This answer has to be relative. If it is in the paper, well, but what if it is in readers mind, relation to these signs (word, punctuation, structure etc)? If we can define where a poem happens, then we can talk about the eye and visual? But usually a poem happens between reader and the paper, reader “completes” the work as Duchamp mentioned.

  4. Bob Grumman says:

    Your problem with the definition can be taken care of easily by amending it to “Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen for full appreciation of its main aesthetic cargo.” The way a conventional poem looks on the page is not part of its main aesthetic cargo. Nor would the calligraphication of its letters be. The problems with it that I point out remain: it would cover too much that is not visual poetry, such as the pwoermd, “cropse,” and illustrated poems (which many artists who make them consider visual poems. A definition should always be as simple as possible, but simplicity rarely works.

    As for where a poem happens, it seems clear to me that it happens in the mind. But rationally to define poetry, one needs to consider only what a poem is materially, which is generally word-shaped ink on a page, but which can include visual and other kinds of elements. And, of course, can be in the air as word-shaped sounds.

  5. serkan isin says:

    @Grumman; “The way a conventional poem looks on the page is not part of its main aesthetic cargo” How about thinking Mayakovski and other Russian Formalists and Futurists poems? I know these are not “conventional” but in a certain way they are modern now. How about haiku? and how about arabic or persian poetry for ages that has lot to do with the typography or calligraphy, ideograms etc where language or the sign is not just a carrier for meaning, it has the meaning only by itself. In western thinking these are not may be considered or not taken as main-frame but visual poetry has lots of roots with the “graphic-writing” history of the writing. If you are a verbal poet or as Ong say “verbomotor poet” these has minor importance but other way, every structural element has critical importance i guess. And how can we be sure that cargo, can be carried easily by any means and chance of the Language? Is poetry that good at that kind of information (communication)?

  6. Bob Grumman says:

    I think it’s a matter of a case by case decision whether a given poem’s aesthetic cargo is visual enough to make the poem a visual poem. I simply subjectively do not feel calligraphy (in most cases) does so. It’s decorative only. Spacing in poems isn’t enough, either, in my subjective view. I don’t see how haiku are visual. Chinese ideagrams may seem very visual to westerners but are essentially composed of symbols that are read, not seen.

    As for language’s ability to carry an aesthetic cargo, I assume without the help of its visual arrangement and decoration, I simply subjectively believe that words can carry huge amounts of meaning and that in a good poem that meaning makes things like calligraphy minor.

    One has to make subjective decisions like that or give up defining things. It seems to me that you are basically calling for a definition of visual poetry too broad to be useful. What isn’t visual poetry if haiku are or, apparently, any hand-written poem is?

  7. nico says:

    i would have to say, the use of the phrase ‘eternal muse of poetry’ seems ridiculous here. taking wide sloppy swings at people you do nothing but miss and waste our time.

  8. huseyin kaya says:

    karl kempton sevişelim mi?

  9. Concrete poem represents deep feeling

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Entry 30 — Discussion of a Short Poem « POETICKS

Entry 30 — Discussion of a Short Poem

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.                                                JOE

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.                                                JOE

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The poem above is by Robert Grenier. I quoted it in #661, with some words of Ron Silliman’s about it. Then in #662, I weighed in about it with much the same discussion that follows.   During that discussion, I mentioned a weak parody of it by David Graham that charmed the other stasguards at New-Poetry, none of whom has much sensitivity to minimalistic poetry.

To write an effective parody, you have to understand the text, or kind of text, you are parodying, and Graham understood only the surface of this one–the fact that it consists of two words.  His parody of the poem consisted of the single letter, O. It is a parody within a parody of Silliman’s text, though. This is somewhat better because he pretty much just repeats what Silliman said about “JOE,” but applied to “O.” He got one minor thing right: by raving about the O as also a zero, he indicated that he’s somehow learned that one frequently employed technique of minimalist poems is visual punning, or a text whose visual appearance can be interpreted as two different words, or the equivalent, that do not sound the same.  But he didn’t demonstrate he really knew anything about minimalist poetry or about “JOE.”

Here’s what Silliman said about it: “One could hardly find, or even imagine, a simpler text, yet it undermines everything people know or, worse, have learned, about titles, repetition, rhyme, naming, immanence. If we read it as challenging the status of the title, then on a second level it is the most completely rhymed poem conceivable.  & vice versa.

As language, this is actually quite beautiful in a plainspoken manner, the two words hovering without ever resolving into a static balance, never fully title & text, nor call & response, neither the hierarchy of naming nor parataxis of rhyme.”

I have a confession to make: I said in #661 that “It sounds like Grenier’s work . . . which surely is a point in its favor–that is, despite being minimalist, and–in the view of stasguards–worthless, there’s something about it that makes it recognizable as a particular poet’s.” It is by Robert Grenier, but my recognition of it as his wasn’t as close to being a point in its favor as I said.  I not only had seen it before, but recently more or less studied it, for it was among the poems from Grenier’s Sentences that Silliman had in In the American Treethat I carefully read over and quoted parts of in an essay I’d been working on. I probably had read about it in Silliman’s blog, too. As well as read it years ago when I first got Silliman’s anthology.

I still claim my recognition of who composed the poem is evidence that there’s something to it, something identifiably unique to its author, which a poem of no value at all would not likely have. Otherwise, I probably  wouldn’t have connected it to any particular poet.

I must confess, too, that I now remember not thinking much of “JOE” when I first saw it. Indeed, my reaction to it wasn’t much different from that of the stasguards. However, annoyed by their ignorant dismissal of it, I reflected on it more. It hasn’t become a super favorite of mine, but I now perceive its virtues.

Silliman’s comments helped me, although I also thought little of them, too, at first–I thought he liked the poem for the wrong reasons. I still have major differences with what Silliman says, but no longer feel he’s so much wrong as simply not coming at the poem from the slant I am.

My main problem with what he said was that I didn’t see the first “Joe” as a title. According to the look of the poem in the Silliman anthology, though, it would seem to be a title. There, it is among a sequence of poems excerpted from Sentences with a little row of asterisks between each poem. Most of the poems start with a short line of word without caps, but every once in a while one of them has an all-capital word above the rest of its text that seems to be a title. While I would never agree that the poem therefore “undermines everything people know or, worse, have learned, about titles,” I agree that the first “JOE” is a title–and maybe the second is, too. Grenier treats his title more interestingly than most poets treat theirs, but where does he under- mine the notion that a poem’s title tells you what it’s about, or anything much else about titles? Silliman ought to have spelled out just what he thinks titles are, and how Grenier undermines everything people know about them.

I reject Silliman’s assertion that Grenier’s text “undermines everything people know or, worse, have learned, about . . . repetition, rhyme, naming, immanence.” That it rhymes is nonsense. If it did, then substituting “Gwendolyn” for “Joe” would result in a much greater rhyme than Joe/Joe is.)   That it repeats, and that that is the source of its effect is clear, but I can’t see that it is undermining any view of repetition I, for one, have ever had. What it does is make more poetic use of repetition than a poem by anyone I know of since Stein told us what a rose is. Grenier names like anyone else, too. No undermining there. Immanence may be a different story. Silliman uses the word a lot, but I haven’t read him enough sufficiently to know what he means by it as a critic nor do I have time now to find out, so I’ll ignore it, for now.

Silliman is a revolutionary whereas I’m an aesthete. So he sees under- mining that he’d probably term political where I see poetic creativity. He finds this poem to “challeng(e) the status of the title”; I don’t. I suppose you could say, as he does, that the poem sounds good–”Joe” contains the euphonious long o, and j-words apparently are feel good to say for the English-speaking. It’s not hard to pronounce but it allows one to use a lot of one’s pronouncing equipment. Hints of “joy” may accompany “Joe,” too, particularly when unexpectedly repeated, with nothing after it, to give a mind lots of space to find such things as “joy” near it. I wouldn’t term it especially beautiful, though. Finally, to finish comparing my thoughts on the poem to what Silliman said about it, I wouldn’t describe the two instances of “Joe” as hoveringly avoiding “a static balance” between the opposites he names, but that’s probably only a vocabulary difference between us.

Now, because the stasguards at New-Poetry mocked minimalist poetry in general as well as Grenier’s poem, I feel I ought to say some words in defense of minimalism. Minimalism in art has to do with focusing on details that are generally lost in larger complexities in both art and existence but which produce aesthetic pleasure once properly attended to. A painting that’s nothing but two colors, for example, will minimalistically force a viewer not superior to such things into the purity of color against color–and out of whatever the colors involved are secondary qualities of. A painting in one color only will make the viewer attend to the brushstrokes and or the texture of the canvas or its equivalent. Which may be a bore, but may also be startling interesting.

A minimalist work is nearly always more than it seems. That is, it nearly always includes its usually ignored context–as a painting or poem.  A minimalist painting needs its frame or its location on a wall or in a book or the like for it to be questioned, then recognized, as an artwork; a minimalist poem needs its page and, perhaps, its book. I know I’m expressing myself sloppily, and I’m tiring, so I’ll go to “Joe,” which should make what I’m saying clearer.

The poem is just two words without its being in a book of poetry.  Located there, however, the reader has to ask what it is, and assume it’s intended to be a poem. It’s about someone named Joe, presumably, but the only information about him it provides is . . . his name, repeated. Since it’s a poem, the repeated name must be saying something poetic about Joe.  A background in poetry should readily provide a clue–once the reader softens enough to accept that the poem is telling him something, is saying that the text, “Joe,” is a poem about Joe. And that it is also admitting that that is all it can say about him. A reader with a background in poetry should soon remember the theme much-used in poetry of something’s being beyond the power of words to express. Joe? What can I say about him? He’s just . . . Joe. (Joe is a Joe is a Joe.)

A poem all of the text but one word of which is invisible.

To this the unconventionality of the poem should add under-images like the word, “joy,” I mentioned earlier. The reader can’t flow unreflectingly into amplification; he is arrested in the full semantic value, whatever it is, of “JOE.” The caps add “titledness” to the image of Joe–he is thus a kind of poem. The caps also underscore his being too large for words.

Among the poem’s other minimalistically realized (mostly visceral) meanings is how hugely, and finally, significant names can be. It might be said that, among much else, the poem is a tribute to titling.  But it is finally most massively about the magnitude of a simple human being, something that two O’s as a poem ignore (as such a poem ignores the difference in expectedness–in a poem–between a repeated O and a repeated name–of a person already named).  Which, to get back to the attempt at a parody I began my discussion, is why Graham’s is close to worthless–for anyone with the ability and background to appreciate minimalism.

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5 Responses to “Entry 30 — Discussion of a Short Poem”

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  2. Bob Grumman says:

    Mark, your version doesn’t work, at all. The main point is the introduction of Joe, then the inability to do more to describe him than repeat his name. A take on the theme of words being incapable of describing a particular unique human being.

    Brian, I don’t know what kind of links you’re after, and you’ve probably found them on your own by this time, I’m so late in replying to your post, which I didn’t know about till now. If you still need help, bring up a search engine, or type search in the box that indicates wthe URL you want to go to, and in the search put down some subject you want to link to.

    –Bob

  3. Mark Granier says:

    Bob, you seem to have misunderstood. My JOE/DOE is not intended as a ‘version’, but merely a response, a very simple joke. That’s all folks.

  4. Bob Grumman says:

    Sorry, Mark, but I can’t see how it can be taken as anything other than an attempt to satirize (as a joke) the Grenier poem. As such a joke, it doesn’t work, for me. And it is obviously a version of that poem, whether intended as such or not. Just as JOE/JOUGH would be–although I think the latter a little more interesting. It is also a version of your version–inspired by it, in fact, when DOE made me think of DOUGH.

    –Bob

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Entry 33 — Yesterday’s Poem « POETICKS

Entry 33 — Yesterday’s Poem

Here’s yesterday’s image again:

17Aug07B

It’s one of my mathemaku, of course.    I’ve actually been working industriously  on it, trying get it right enough to submit to some sort of  anthology Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill are putting together.   The version above is a recent revision of my first draft of 2007, a variation on “Frame One” of my Long Division of Poetry series.

17Aug07D-light

“Frame One” is similar to the top image except that its divisor is “words.”  It had long bothered me because (and make sure to write this down, students, because it’s an excellent example of the way I think about my poems) its claim was that “words” squared (basically–although it’s really distorted words, or words told slant. times regular words) happened to equal an image having to do with summer rain.  Why that and not, say, a Pacific sunset?   Obviously, the quotient times the divisor could equal anything.  That, I didn’t want.  Off and on I thought about this, but could think of no way to take care of it.  Until a couple of days ago, when I finally concentrated for more than a few minutes on it.  I came up with several pretty good solutions, one of them changing everything in the poem but the sub-dividend product (the image).

My final solution (I hope) resulted in the above poem.  All I did was add “memories of a long-ago summer day” to the quotient.  That assured that the sub-dividend product would have to do with summer–that it would be, that is, a visual poem about summer.  And, as a poem, it would be poetry.

No doubt in due course I’ll think of something else I find illogical about it and want to revise it again.  For now, though, I’m happy with it.

Oh, I’ve made several changes to the main image in it, too.  One was to combat the darkness in the top version (which wasn’t in it until I put it out here).  I’m as fussy about getting my graphics looking the way I want them as I am about everything else in a poem–except the choice of font, and things I can’t do anything about with my equipment, like density of resolution.

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Michael Bartholomew-Biggs « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Michael Bartholomew-Biggs’ Category

Entry 1264 — A Quasi-Haiku

Saturday, November 9th, 2013

The very first poem in the Bridges 2013 Poetry Anthology (Tesselations Publishing, Phoenix, 2013), Michael Bartholemew-Biggs’s, “Taylor’s Theorem,” which I’ve been invited to review, bothered me because I thought he was calling it a haiku.  Here it is:

If we knew it all
for just a single moment
we’d hold the future

I was going make my standard point about 5/7/5 not being required for a haiku, and not being enough to make a text a haiku when I reread Bartholomew-Biggs’s title for the sequence of which “Taylor’s Theorem” was just one of seven poems and saw he was calling those poems “quasi-haiku.”  In any event, I liked it and the rest of his sequence, particularly a sort of quasi-haiku diptych, “Ill Conditioning”:

Catastophists say
one butterfly’s wingbeats can
switch drought to monsoon.
Catastrophe spreads
through some computations from
one decimal’s doubt.

I’m quoting these partly because I like them, but also because they and many of the other poems in the anthology strike me as what I’m calling “idea-poems” as opposed to “image-poems,” which I consider an interesting division to ponder, and will, with results to show you eventually, I hope.

 

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Entry 469 — A Personal Problem « POETICKS

Entry 469 — A Personal Problem

 

My standard arguments against the application of the term, “visual poetry,” to works without words, or without words that contribute significantly to their central aesthetic meaning have long been: (1) expanding the coverage of the term to just about any conceivable somebody or other wants to call a visual poem–which, of course, renders it worthless as a tool of description; and (2) it breaks with the practice of several thousand years of considering poetry a literary art, and therefore requiring words; why change a meaning so drastically that’s worked so well for so long?  With regard to (2) let me add that, yes, the meaning of “poetry” was expanded to included free verse, and just about all such terms need to be at least a little flexible, but free verse poems continued to use the majority of devices that metrical verse did, and remained a literary art (and as such, I claim, continued to achieve its most important effects in the verbal area of the human brain, not elsewhere in the brain, and certainly not elsewhere in the brain and not in the verbal area of the brain).

I have a third problem with what I consider the misuse of the term, though–a personal one.  It is that as people encounter works like many of those in the new (excellent) collection at Illuminated Script: 30 Years of Visual Poetry & Intermedia that are called “visual poems” although they are without aesthetically significant words or even textual elements and are thus conditioned not to expect anything called a visual poem to be verbally meaningful. Ergo, unless I call my combinations of words and graphics “visual poems containing significant words,” those encountering them will take them as perhaps pleasant designs but not trouble to work out what they much more importantly are due to their words. In short, my own works will suffer because of the way others mislabel theirs.

True, few will care about my works even after alerted to the fact that the words in them are not just graphically-designed into them.  Still . . .

6 Responses to “Entry 469 — A Personal Problem”

  1. karl kempton says:

    note term in title– intermedia

  2. Ed Baker says:

    SHE
    walking down Houston
    in a wet-dress clinging
    to that image with-in
    & with-out
    in a single word:

    pure-poetry-in-motion

    not a single need/want to cut-&-paste

  3. Bob Grumman says:

    I admit I was thinking of your show as a collection of visual poetry, Karl. I fear most people will mistake it as such. But my problem is not with it but with the extremely wide-spread notion, which I fear your introduction to your show does little to address, that an artwork need not have words or even textual elements to be a visual poem.

    Ed: a poem can be a metaphor for a woman but it can’t be a woman.

  4. Ed Baker says:

    yeah & thank Gawd
    (whoever she may be)

    for the difference

    or

    in the immortal words of

    (what’s her name) :
    “I never saw a poem as lovely as a tree”

    the last time I kissed “her” I got a mouth-full of wet oil-based paint
    of
    a Blood-Red persuasion

    so

    I called her bluff and named her DIOTIMA

    525 pages later she turned from ink into stone …

    full moon
    I think I’m in love
    with a rock

  5. karl kempton says:

    bob,

    given the wide spectrum of modern and post modern art, your demands are older than 100 years in the rear view mirror. look at art and music on the experimental frontiers: single colored canvases over 50 years ago, music scores of one note hours long over 50 years ago. films of a building days long . . .

    u forget poetic gesture (jest), accent, etc not being words but very poetic. u r being very literal and o so very non visual. can not fractured sounds of speech be made visual with broken letters not words . . .

    also y i am now using “sound illumination” to get away from nit pickers.

    is not the actual heading of the entire collection “illuminated script”? it is a door wide open to possibilities to illuminate mind(s).

  6. Bob Grumman says:

    Just saw this post of your today, Karl. Not sure what you’re talking about. You have a bad habit of avoiding specifics.

    Of course “fractured sounds of speech” can “be made visual.” So what? If they do nothing semantic, they are not poetry, by everyone’s definition of poetry for thousands of years. Sure, gestures can be “poetic.” So can kangaroos. Which means any word can be used metaphorically. But in verosophy the purpose is to define things objectively, unmetaphorically. Only then can words be used to communicate knowledge.

    I continue not to see what “sound illumination” or “illuminated script” mean–without definitions attached.

    –Bob

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Marton Koppany « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Marton Koppany’ Category

Entry 182 — “Dash No. 1,” by Koppany

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

This is one of the three pieces Marton Koppany sent me recently.   I’m posting it now (1) to take care of another entry with minimum effort, (2) because I like it a lot, and (3) to allow me to babble a bit more on my favorite topic, What Visual Poetry Is.

As those who know my work as a critic, I contend that a text cannot be a poem unless it has words that are of significant importance to what the text does aesthetically.  This piece contains no words, as most people understand the term.  Nonetheless, I’m prepared to claim it to be a poem.  Clearly, this piece is on what I call the borblur–the borderline between conceptual visimagery and visual poetry.  I call it the later because I believe all punctuation marks (and similar symbols such as those used in chemistry or mathematics) can act as words in certain unusual situations.

Specifically, when a punctuation mark in a work is sufficiently emphasized to make it difficult for someone “reading” the work to treat it as nothing more than a punctuation mark, it will become a word.  That is, it will not be skimmed through with little or no conscious notice–actually, with no vaonscous verbal notice, as with the dash I just used–but pondered consciously, possibly even indentified consciously as what it is, it will become a word.  It will denote as well as, or even perhap instead of, acting purely punctuationally.  In the case of the work above, I claim most people–at least most people familiar with the territory–will read the dash in it (even without the title of the piece), as “dash, short-cut,” then realize sensorily how it is making something rather large disappear, or realize how it works.  A simple but unexpected metaphor visualized.

The pun in English of “dash” as a verb meaning to go in a hurry is a very nice extra, entirely verbal extra.

Note: my only problem with the piece is its title, which I think too overt.  I’d prefer something more like “Punctuation Poem No. 63, or the like.  “Mountain subjected to Punctuation?”  No, but something like that, but more intelligent. . . .

Entry 36 — 2 by Koppany from #672

Monday, December 7th, 2009

.

Csend-Sinc

Csend-Sinc

TheAnds

The Ands

Nothing else.  I’m hoping to get going again on columns for Small Press Review. A deadline is approaching and I’d like to get ahead.  It’d be nice, too, to start getting real work done.

Entry 31 — Old Blog Entries 663 through 670

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

In #663, I presented my Odysseus Suite–but the reproduction is too crude for me to re-post it here.   My next entry featured this, by Endwar:

TenByTenAs I announced when I first posted this, I am hoping to publish an anthology of mathematical poems, like this one, so if you have one or know of one, send me a copy of it, or tell me about it.

#665 had this by Marton Koppany, which I have to post here because it was dedicated to ME:

Odysseus

Hey, it’s mathematical, too.  The next entry, whose number I fear to state, concerned this:

Bielski-Haiku-BW

This is from Typewriter Poems, an anthology published by Something Else Press and Second Aeon back in 1972. It’s by Alison Bielski, An English woman born in 1925 whose work I’m unfamiliar with. I find this specimen a charmer . . . but am not sure what to make of it. Three lines, as in the classic haiku. The middle one is some sort of filter. Is “n” the “n” in so much mathematics? If so, what’s the poem saying? And where does the night and stars Hard for me not to assume come in? Pure mathematics below, a sort of practical mathematics above? That idea would work better for me if the n’s were in the lower group rather than in the other. Rather reluctantly, I have to conclude the poem is just a texteme design. I hope someone more clever sets me right, though. (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen later visio-textual works using the same filter idea–or whatever the the combination of +’s. =’s and n’s is, but can’t remember any details.)

It was back to my lifelong search for a word meaning “partaker of artwork” in #667–but I now believe “aesthimbiber,” which I thought of in a post earlier than #667, I believe, but dropped, may be the winner of my search.

Next entry topic was about what visual poets might do to capture a bigger audience.  I said nothing worth reposting on a topic going nowhere because visual poets, in general, are downright inimical to doing anything as base as trying to increase their audience.   One suggestion I had was to post canonical poems along with visual poems inspired by them, which I mention because in my next entry, I did just that, posting a Wordsworth sonnet and a visual poem I did based on and quoting part of it–and don’t re-post here because of space limitations.  I wrote about the two in the final entry in this set of ten old blog entries.

 

Entry 309 — Necropetry « POETICKS

Entry 309 — Necropetry

Reading a post about some scholarly literary project, I came up with “necropetry” (neh CRAH peh tree) as the poetry that academia spends ninety percent of the time it devotes to poetry.  Poetry by the dead.  It spends nine point nine percent of that time on “Neonecropetry” (poetry by clones of the dead) and point one percent of it on contemporary columbetry.  I do think academia should spend more time of necropetry than on contemporary columbetry.  I merely think the gap between the two should be less.  And I see no point in its devoting more than one percent of its time, if that, on neonecropetry.  (NEE oh neh CRAH peh tree–nice word, actually, in spite of how bad it looks on the page.)

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