Archive for the ‘Marilyn R. Rosenberg’ Category
Entry 1453 — One of My Best SPR Columns
Tuesday, August 19th, 2014
When Marilyn emailed me about the publishworthiness of her bookwork, she mentioned that I had reviewed the page I reproduced here yesterday in an old Small Press Review column. Wondering what I’d said, I looked it up (it’s in this blog’s “Pages” to the right), and like it well enough to post it here.
A New Vizlature AnthologySmall 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. |
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How I wish someone would tell me (in reasonable detail) why in the sixteen years since then, no one in the BigWorld has ever asked me for a piece like it?! Is it that inferior to the poetry-related pieces in magazines like the Atlantic? Or too different? Maybe too clearly politically-incorrect? Or is it that there is absolutely no one on the look-out for fresh talent? I have little to add to what I said in my column about Marilyn’s piece except that my first impression on seeing it again was that it seemed to me strongly Chinese (which I mean as a Large Compliment) and I again felt enlarged by its Q&A, this time by the ocean seeming to query the land . . . which provided, or was the answer. I was influenced a lot about some of Marton Koppany’s Q&A-related pieces that I’ve recently been enjoying and writing about.
Note: I corrected a typo or two in my column but left some of my now-obsolete terminology as is.
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Entry 1542 — A Book Work
Monday, August 18th, 2014
The following is by Marilyn R. Rosenberg, who wanted to know if I thought a version of it worth publishing (of course!):
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Entry 718 — Something by Marilyn
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
The inconcision of the snow’s translation of the day was middling me deeply into wanly incorrect answers to questions about where to drain the line. The sun is always somewhere, angry. Too many misspelled birds, speckling the past.
Hey, here’s something for misspelled eyes and brains: a work by Marilyn Rosenberg at Amanda Earl’s National Poetry Month Site.
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Entry 193 — A Visual Poem by Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Here’s a piece I really like by Marilyn Rosenberg called “Muse We Can’t Return”:
Among the many virtues of Marilyn’s work is what I consider its constantly enhancing verbal and visual inter-referentiality. Note, for instance, what she does with the beige circles.
To see more of her work, click HERE.
endwar 
“My view, as stated, is that no poem that cannot be given a reasonably full and coherent pluraphrase can be effective.”
Bob, can you pick, say, a sonnet by Shakespeare or Petrarch or Hopkins and offer “a reasonably full and coherent pluraphrase” for it? Let’s flesh out this terminology a little bit.
Good idea, Conrad. In fact, a while ago I started a book on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. A book. My goal was something quite a bit more than “a reasonably full and coherent pluraphrase.” For instance, I listed every instance of alliteration, assonance, rhyme, consonance and euphony in it.
A good pluraphrase would be very boring to read. The practical critic basically carries out a good enough substitute for one by clicking off what a poem mainly says, how it says it and what’s good and bad about it.
To give a good example of a pluraphrase, I think I’d do one of a haiku. If I ever do a full essay on it, I guess I’ll have to do one of something standard, probably Sonnet 18. Maybe not, on second thought, because my take on that is non-conformist and would need justification. (I consider it primarily a celebration of summer.) Better that I choose something I can interpret conventionally. I’ll think about it. But remember that I’m very lazy.
I think some of what I said about it that qualifies as pluraphrasial is here at my blog, findable with a search, maybe even using tags. Or it may be at my previous blog. I’ll check.
Sorry, just one entry here, a short one. You’ll have to wait, I guess.
–Bob