Dada Tennis & Other Adventures

From Small Magazine Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1993

Meat Epoch, #11 Spring, 1993; 2pp.; 3055 Decatur Avenue, Apt. 2D, Bronx NY 10467. Price: SASE. DADA TENNIS, #3 Spring, 1993; 16pp.; Box 10, Woodhaven NY 11421. $2. CWM, #1 Summer 1992; 32pp.; 1300 Kicker Rd., Tuscaloosa AL 35404. $3. O!!Zone, #2 February 1993; 16 pp.; 1266 Fountain View Dr., Houston TX 77057. $2.52. Six years or so ago, I coined the word, "experioddica," as a name for the "experimental," "odd" "periodicals" of the arts that I was then writing about for Factsheet Five. This term has not yet made it into TIME, but it has been used in print by more than three people besides myself (usually misspelled), so I've decided to keep it going as my title here. In the future I hope to concentrate on just one or two specimens of experioddica in each column. In this, my very first, however, I have decided to range more widely, and cursorily, to try to rough out the field as a whole. I will thus be discussing four magazines: Meat Epoch #11, Dada Tennis #3, O!!Zone #2 and CWM #1. Of these, Meat Epoch #11 is perhaps the least impressive on the surface for it is just a xeroxed broadside containing five poems and an illustration. Two of the poems are philosophical. One of them, which is by A. L. Nielson, begins with a Wallace Stevens- like "context (which) rose in the eastern window;" the other, which is by Spencer Selby, ends with meaning-in-general, which "gathers in emptiness/ and waits on all things." Two of the others, which are by editor Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, are fragmental and evocative (one of them representing "kairos," or "the favorable moment," as--in part--the sequence "pray/ dance/ sing/ decide," to score neatly off the more likely "research/ think/ calculate/ decide," or somesuch). The fifth is one of my own mathematical oddities. What is most noteworthy about Meat Epoch, however, is that it began about a year ago as a one-man collection of critiques and poetry that St. Thomasino distributed like a letter to other poets and editors he felt he had things in common with. As a result, he is now getting his experimental work published elsewhere, and publishing such well-known figures in the otherstream as John M. Bennett. Meat Epoch thus neatly demonstrates one highly viable way of getting established as a writer, outside the establishment. Dada Tennis #3, though just 8 stapled-together sheets of paper, is fancier than Meat Epoch, for it is full of fascinating & sophisticated computer-generated graphics, and even contains a work in color in which C. L. Champion has played games with the letters of the word "breast." DDT contains many other exploratory, even insane, poems, such as one by editor Bill Paulauskas that bounces from "God's angry balloon" to "A peacock/ dipped in black/ oil/ and beaten with a porkchop" to "tablelamp/ tablelamp/ tablelamp/ tablelamp/ tablelamp/ tablelamp." Paulausakas, by the way, runs some sort of computer bulletin board from which he got a portion of DDT's contents. Lunatics with modems should be sure to write him about it. CWM #1 is the most elegant specimen of the four zines, for it has a stiff cover and is saddle-stitched. On its front is a gorgeous water smudgery in pink, violet and blue by Carlyle Baker and inside its back cover is a pocket containing two books of matches decorated by Bruce Mitchell and a narrow strip of folded cardboard within which G. Huth has rubber-stamped the word, "watearth"--which seems minor until you notice what its central pun is doing. Most of the poems within are only mildly adventurous technically but almost all of them have a lift to them; take, for example, "Lethe," which is by Herb Kauderer: kneel at the banks by the ford and peer into the soft wrinkled brown-green blanket watch it undulate in random patterns calling in a voice that soaks up sound birdcall & leaf flame & wood absorbed & reformed into a gently urging lullaby calling you to sleep An arresting collage by Guy R. Beining, a scrap of fiction, and some reviews complete CWM's wares. Beining is one of the two poets featured in the second issue of O!!Zone, a saddle-stitched paper-covered zine that calls itself "a literary pamphlet." His poems are quite disjunctional, as "1544" demonstrates: "in hatch of abbot/ all manicured/ parlor talk knocks apart/ blossoms & the only pig at market." But at least one of them at one point ripples into traditional lyricism with "solvent edge of moon on/ blush of lake/ green veins of may in/ chalk of birch." The poems of O!!Zone's second poet, Ken Brandon, are more straight-forward, but full of amiable breezes like a description of a mission whose "quiet is of/ swallow gargles and/ twittering women resound/ ding like bells from a/ stone room to the left/ of jesus christ and the/ gladiolus." There. I hope that's enough to suggest what's out there in the world of . . . experioddica. Visit it soon! . OfficeDepot Office Store

Of a New Zine and an Old Web-Site

Small Press Review,
Volume 30, Number 7/8, July/August 1998

diffference engine 1, edited by Christopher Meyers.
Winter 1998; 38 pp.; 9600 Central SW #161,
Albuquerque NM 87121. $5, ppd.

Light & Dust, curated by Karl Young:
http:www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm.

There are other great examples of the infra-verbal here & later in Debrot’s sequence like “legligible” and “cooefficient,” not to mention “geyswerks,” which is defined (or so I take it) as “dogmad greepsing greepsing dusk unto dusk.” Debrot also contributes three pages of mind-whirlingly stimulating, scientifico-nutto grid-charts with drawings. One set of chart- entries has “rotat” in box 1, “screw that ‘that’ evacuates ‘the’ or ‘I’” in box 2, “the equivalent of extremely high ceilinged” in box 3, and “9gg” in the last box. The chart as a whole is labeled, “stiff liver-colored.”

Editor Christopher Meyers does a nice visio-poetic turn on Go/God/Good . . . (but, thankfully, not “dog”) that he’s snuck a zero artfully into, and an even nicer visio-poetic turn on night/light in which the top half of the word, “night,” is shown with the top half of the word, “light,” under it, backwards, like a reflection. Each of the partial letters of “night” are joined to one or more of the partial letters of “light” to suggest some sort of arabesque swirl toward the devotional.

There is other interesting material here including drawings and poetry by Joshua Kil and some poems by Edward Mycue, one or two of which are too overtly political for me, including one about Thatcher and the Falkland Islands–but another of them starts, “I am dreampt by trees.”

Now to jump to the internet where all kinds of great things are continuing to be done for visual poetry at Karl Young’s Light & Dust site. A veritable library of current visual poetry world-wide, often in full color, it includes works by Karl Kempton, Avelino de Araujo, Scott Helmes, Philadelpho Menezes, Kajino Kyuyo, Clemente Padin, Harry Polkinhorn, Christy Sheffield Sanford, Marilyn R. Rosenberg and Karl Young himself. Major under-appreciated figures from the past like Kenneth Patchen, bp Nichol, Doris Cross and d.a. levy are represented here, too. The site is not all visual poetry, either, but showcases such diverse poets as Charles Alexander, Larry Eigner, Paul Dutton, Wanda Coleman, Hugh Steinberg, Jackson Mac Low, Joe Napora, Carl Rakosi, Rochelle Ratner and Michael McClure. It includes criticism, often with reproductions of poems, as well–by such authors as Harry Polkinhorn, Gerald Janecek, Padin and Young. (My own contribution, on minimalist poetry, was even written up– briefly–in the autumn 1997 issue of The Wilson Quarterly; whaddya think of that!?)

There’s way too much going on at Light & Dust for me to more than touch on it here, but I do want particularly to call attention to one of the newer attractions, Klaus Peter Dencker’s Worte Koepfe. Part of the Kaldron subdivision of Light & Dust overseen by Kempton, Polkinhorn and Young, Worte Koepfe comes with an introduction by Young that I’m going to quote liberally from because it says more than I’d be able to: “. . . (t)he graphic elements in his poems recapitulate the range of techniques used by artists and designers of all sorts. One of the great satisfactions for me in his work comes from the interplay of techniques collaged together. A simple aspect of this appears in different types of shading in the images, ranging from the cross-hatching, layering, and feathering of woodcuts and stone lithographs, to the gradations produced by photographic techniques for offset and rotogravure printing, to the gradations introduced by airbrushes and now by computer programs. This wonderful confluence of icons and graphic techniques finds a match in Dencker’s approach to letters. A page of Dencker’s poetry will probably include at least half a dozen type faces, and it seems an interesting bit of serendipity that living in Germany provides Dencker with Fractur type faces as well as Roman and sans serif faces. Just as important is Dencker’s hand lettering, which adds a great deal to the interplay of letter forms in his poems.” To this I might add that Dencker makes often ravishingly good use of color.

The Winter 1998 pages feature work by Russian Dmitry Bulatov, Australian Peter Sullivan, Italian Vittore Baroni and Russian Serge Segay working together, Americans Carol Stetser and Amy Franceschini, and Brazilian Claudio Daniel. My favorite piece from this section is one by Sullivan that looks like a granite slab into which the word, “HISTORY,” was once chiseled in several spots, but which, due to the onslaught of time, has become a delirium of textuality that seems first to shout “STOP” but then, like an optical illusion, flips through various semi-words before hovering–almost–on something that looks like “HISTORY”–for a moment. But there are all kinds of other first-rate works here and elsewhere at Light & Dust. If you have access to the internet, you’ve got to visit it!

I haven’t been exposed to a new otherstream poetry zine for a while. I’m not sure whether this is because I’ve fallen severely out of the loop or because not many new otherstream zines are appearing. In any case, the first issue of a fine, stapled-on- the-side zine has recently come into my hands: diffference engine. It starts with a Joycean tour-de-force by Jacques Debrot that, on the first of its three pages, moves pornfully from “the veins Stood =out, grinned the girl” down, elegantly, to some Latin, and one German word, turning to English: “cur quicquid ubi quando quibis dichter culpo de Dido blossomly emblushing.” This seems lyric-lovely to me, and although I can’t remember my high school Latin well enough to make out to much of its Latin, the latter fixes the poem beautifully in an anti-quotidian, Virgileanly mythical Long-Ago. Note in particular the infra-verbal combination of “emblem” and “blushing” to produce a tension between artifact and abstration (an emblem being a symbol) and between constructedness and lastingness.

The State of North American Vizpo, Part Four

Small Press Review,
Volume 41, Numbers 11/12, November/December 2009

      October is Dada Month
      Edited by Marshall Hryciuk
      2008; 94 pp; Pa; Nietzsche’s Brolly,
      30 Laws St., Toronto ON
      M6P 2Y7 Canada. $100.

October is Dada Month is particularly helpful in revealing what’s been going on with visio-textual art for the past fifteen years or so, for it consists of a series of numbered broadsides (most of them in full color) which began to be issued by Nietzsche’s Brolly in April 1990 with a piece by jwcurry called, “BGyHUJkKkPsDrfFFuffli joboten forti raken maserid. Martil, marl,” and ended with my own “Mathemaku for Persephone.” The term “dada” in its title certainly comes closer than any other term I can think of to pinning down what’s in the anthology. It may be the best term to sum up the main thrust of contemporary visio-textual art, too. As a critical term, it suffers from nebulousness, but if we take it as a blanket term for various mixtures of collage, surrealism, extremely divergent thinking and a disinclination, possibly even a disdain, for saying anything with words, it works well enough to describe most of what’s in October is Dada Month, and the other collections I’ve been discussing, or will discuss, in this survey of mine.

curry’s piece is a collage, one portion of which consists of a text each line of which begins with many letters crowded together, then shifts to what seem to be nonsense words–as in its title, “BGyHUJkKkPsDrfFFuffli joboten forti raken maserid. Martil, marl,” which is also its first line. Jutting sideways out of this text is a window, Its panes are painted light yellow upon which lines of what seem some kind of hieroglyphics are printed.

Textuality but no linguistic meaning that I can make out. Surrealism, collage and minimal attempt to converge on some unifying principle.

Much of dada is merely puritanical anti-art: work intended to be pointless and generally what most people would term decadent. Its aim is to shock and/or annoy those of us who take art seriously. While I do think some of the works in October is Dada Month partly do this, I think most, and possibly all, of them strive mostly to give those willing seriously to consider them genuine aesthetic pleasure–however much some may be out to annoy the uniniated. Not incoherences but mysteries they are, but solvable, or–at least–half-solvable-mysteries.

For me, the curry work is a half-solvable mystery. It seems to be saying something about communicability: one of its two sides seems to be supplying the other side with letters the latter is trying incompetently to make into words. A view of a mind trying to speak, or beginning the process of shared understanding? The universe, clumsily trying to utter itself into something comprehensible? With science plunging a window of viewing device into the thick of things in an attempt to discover what is going on back to the beginnings of written language. . . ?

My piece, “Mathemaku for Persephone,” is as undada as a piece could be, but might well be taken as dada by the ignorant. It’s one of my long division poems–mystery divided into June yielding Persephone, with a remainder of Erato (the muse of poetry). Simple on the surface but with all kinds of subtle details that (I hope) distance it sufficiently from the slushiness my description of it might suggest. One point of interest: Geof Huth accepted it for his Poetry gallery but it was vetoed by higher-ups, costing me my last chance at fame.

To be serious, a more important point of interest is that the page just before the page my poem is on is transparent, with a black&white grid printed on it the title of which is “Frame.” It’s by carlyle baker. Nine rows of nine squares, each; five of the rows with five alternating texts or additions or who knows what consisting of four lines of mostly what seem to me to be Chinese characters, with occasional English letters and other matter overlaying them. Some kind of calendar? Weak eyesight as well as week critical acumen

prevent me from guessing better. But baker’s piece makes me want to continue to guess, so I can’t call it anti-art. Moreover, it works beautifully as a both graphically-enhancing and mentally-provocative layer on top on my poem–as well as on top of the poem on the preceding page.

This anthology needs more than a column’s worth of critical analysis, so I plan to come back to it in my next column. For now, I will just recite the names of the artists with work in it, besides curry, baker and I: Peggy lefler, Brian David Johnston, Melody Wessel, Marshall Hryciuk, Susan Parker, Guy R. Beining, Daniel f. Bradley, Ken Lewis, Richard Beland, Steven Hartman, Lucile Barker, John Vieira, damian lopes, Richard Tipping, John Barlow, Jennifer Books, Gerard J. Klauder, DEC Books, Gustave Morin, Kevin Angelo Hehir, Rob Read, Thom Olsen, Karen Sohne, Karl E. Jirgens, Mark Laliberte, Derek beaulieu, Greg Evason. curry and Beining each has ten pieces in it, Bradley eight, and theirs seem to me among the most interesting in the collection.

Breaking into Micro-Zine Publishing

Small Magazine Review, Volume 1, Number 3, August 1993

       stained paper archive, #1 April, 1993; 8pp.; 1792 Byng         Road, Windsor, Ontario N8W 3C8 Canada. $1.            Found Street, #2 Spring, 1993; 16pp.; 14492 Ontario Cir.         Westminster CA 92683. $2.

    
    Recently two new zines have come out that nicely demonstrate a  favorite theme of mine: the ease with which someone without  official credentials can become an active participant in the world of  experioddica.  Indeed, the editor of one, Gustave Morin, is only  twenty, and first learned of poetries beyond the merely textual just a  year-and-a-half ago.  Now, having made a dozen or so contacts  through the mail, as well as a few in person, he has published his  first issue of stained paper archive, and with it brought himself  up to the level of-- well, Me!     The word, "stained," with its suggestions of both taintedness and  stained-glass windows, nicely fits Morin's zine, which is both  inexpensively thrown-together and chapel-serious in its devotion  to Art--if you can conceive of a chapel with a sense of humor.  Production-wise it is interesting, as it is made of sheets folded  in half and stapled together--not, as expected, along their folded,  but along their open, edges.  The resulting pages are thus doubly-  thick, which gives them not only extra opaqueness, but a feel of  substance, of archive-level durability.  At the same time, the staples,  the use of xeroxing for printing, the size and lack of exact  uniformity of the pages, and their being open at the top and bottom,  adds an appealing content-before-packaging vigor to the zine.     One of the issue's three pieces by Morin, a few lines of nearprose  about a "man/ with hair/ in the palm/ of his hand" that the  protagonist "cannot pull (his) eyes away from," is somewhat weak,  but saved, I think, by its title: "two freaks" (my italics).  His  other two contributions are collages.  In one a man is shown using a  pole to try to put some kind of indecipherably-inscribed plaque into  an enormous mouse-trap where cheese would ordinarily go.  The other,  whose title is "virus," depicts a number of a's crossing a gap  from one enlarged cross-section of skin tissue (or the like) into  another.  Language as means of snaring the monstrously unknown  (God, say), and as ultimate, infectious utterance of human cells. . . .  So run my first thoughts toward "solutions."     The issue's other pieces are, like Morin's, deceptively simple-  seeming.  One, by Greg Evason, features the image of a fork  without its handle--but, isolated (and black), it takes on eerie  tooth-resonances (sharp black teeth going up, blunt white ones  descending), and hints of archaeology, with its emphasis on bone-  fragments.  It also suggests something of the power of Motherwell's  imagery.  Sharing the page with the fork is the near-word, "nife."     Evason is also represented by a full-page text rendered nearly  illegible by over-printing--except at the bottom where the words,  "gonna die," fall free to indicate the only unobscurable certainty any  life can contain.  A fascinating Klee-like "Y bird" by Daniel f.  Bradley and an amusing if slight poem by jwcurry about light bulb  shards complete the issue's contents.     Tomoyasu, an LA visual artist who's been involved in experioddica  for only two years or so, began publishing broadsides, and his full-  scale zine, Found Street, last year.  This hasn't gotten him fame,  but it is a form, however marginal, of cultural exposure, and  that is something no serious would-be artist can afford to disdain.     One thing I particularly like about Tomoyasu's second issue of  Found Street is that it contains work by people I'm unfamiliar with.  One such, the minimalist Brooks Roddan, is represented by two pieces.  One consists of the bar code, price and other commercial data dot-  matrixed onto the record jacket of a recording of a Bach standard  ("the Goldberg Variations") by Glenn Gould.  Its title says it all:  "The Genius of Glenn Gould."  Roddan's other piece is even  simpler; indeed, it could not be more simple, for it is just an  upright black rectangle.  But, from its title, "Rebellion," we know  that the rectangle is also an I, isolated from the many but squarely,  resolutely, and broad-shoulderedly committed to itscause.     Tomoyasu himself contributes a fine full-color cover drawing called  "End Art," in which a Shahnesque man is shown running out of a  mixture of music-score and verbal text with a grandfather-  clock/coffin under one arm.  Elsewhere in the issue is a typical  Tomoyasu illuscriptation consisting of the words "Jesus Door" and  the image of an upside-down headless doll.  There are many other  intriguing works in this issue of Found Street, including a droll  pair of cartoon faces (or awkward mittens, or cow udders, or who-  knows-what) by well-known mail artist, Ray Johnson; the two faces  or whatever are identical except that one is labeled, "Ray Johnson,"  the other "Jasper Johns."     I would consider Found Street state-of-the-art experioddica,  and stained paper archive inferior to it only in quantity of  contributors.  Neither required much money to publish; both  accomplished things of cultural value outside the interests of  pricier magazines.  Both make me proud to be a part of the  nearly penniless but thriving and open world of experioddica.

Mentions of Shakespeare as a writer from Greene to Rowe from Shakespeare and his Critics, by F. E. Halliday, 1958

ROBERT GREENE Groats-worth of Wit. Sept., 1592. (The reference is to 3 Henry 171, and Greene parodies the line in that play, “Oh Tiger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide.”)

There is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.

HENRY CHETTLE Epistle to Kind-Harts Dreams, Dec. 1592. (Chettle apologises, apparently to Shakespeare, for the part he had taken in preparing Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit for the press.),

I am as sory as if the origin all fault had beene my fault, because my selfe haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill than he, exelent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, diuers of worship haue reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooues his Art.

FRANCIS MERES Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury. Sept. 1598. (Meres was a Cambridge man; he was in London 1597-8, and later rector and schoolmaster at Wing, Rutland.)

As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to liue in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Quid liues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, &c.

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue labors lost, his Loue labours woonne, his Midsummers night dreams, & his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King Iohn, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Iuliet.

As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English.

RICHARD BARNFIELD Poems in Diver! Humors. 1598 ..

And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing Vaine,
(Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtaine.
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweete, and chaste)
Thy Name in fames immortall Booke haue plac’t.
Liue euer you, at least in Fame liue euer:
Well may the Bodye dye, but Fame dies neuer.

JOHN WEEVER Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion. 1599.

Honie-tong’d Shakespeare when I saw thine issue
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features cloth’d in tissue,
Some heauen born goddesse said to be their mother:
Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to loue her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,
Prowd lust-stung Tar’luine seeking stilI to proue her:
Romea Richard;more whose names I know not,
Their sugred tongues, and power attractiue beuty
Say they are Saints althogh that Sts they shew not
For thousands vowes to them subiectiue dutie:
They burn in loue thy children Shakespear het them,
Go, wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them.

ANON Parnassus, (A series of three plays performed at Cambridge, probably at Christmas 1598, 1599, 1601. a. from 2 Parnassus ; b. from 3.)

a. Gull. Not in a vaine veine (prettie, i’ faith!): make mee them in two or three divers vayns, in Chaucer’s, Gower’s and Spencer’s and Mr. Shakspeare’s. Marry, I thinke I shall entertaine those verses which run like these;

Even as the sunn with purple coloured face
Had tane his last leave on the weeping moarne, &c.

O sweet Mr. Shakspeare! I’le have his picture in my study at the courte. . . .

Let this duncified worlde esteem of Spencer and Chaucer, I’le worshipp sweet Mr. Shakspeare, and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillowe, as we reade of one … slept with Homer under his bed’s heade.

b. Kempe. Few of the vniuersity men pen plaies weIl, they smell too much of that writer Duid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talke too much of Proserpine & Iuppiter. Why heres our feIlow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I and Ben Ionson too. O that Ben Ionson is a pestilent fellow, he, brought vp Horace giuing the Poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a purge that made him beray his credit:
Burbage. Its a shrewd fellow indeed.

GABRIEL HARVEY Marginalia. 1601?
The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, hau it in them, to please the wiser sort.

ANTHONY SCOLOKER Epistle to Daiphantus. 1604.

It should be like the Neuer-too-well read Arcadia, where the Prose and Verse (Matter and Words) are like his Mistresses eyes, one still c lIin another and without Coriuall: or to come home to the vulgars Element, like Friendly Shakespeare’s Tragedies, where the Commedian rides, when the Tragedian stands on Tip-toe: Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet.

JOHN WEBSTER Epistle to The White Devil. 1612.
And lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light: Protesting, that, in the strength of mine owne iudgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martiall,

Non norunt; Haec monument» mori,

THOMAS FREEMAN Runne and a Great Cast. 1614-.

Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury thy braine,
Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleepe,
So fit, for all thou fashionest thy vaine,
At th’ horse-foote fountaine thou hast drunk full deepe,
Vertues or vices theame to thee all one is:
Who loues chaste life, there’s Lucrece for a Teacher:
Who list read lust there’s Venus and Adonis,
True modell of a most lasciuious leatcher.
Besides in plaies thy wit windes like Meander:
Whence needy new-composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Menander.
But to praise thee aright I want thy store:
Then let thine owne works thine owne worth upraise,
And help t’ adorne thee with deserued Baies.

WILLIAM BASSE C. 1620.

On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare
he dyed in Aprill 1616.

Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye
A little neerer Spenser to make roome
For Shakespeare in your threefold fowerfold Tombe.
To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift
Vntill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slayne
For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.
If your precedency in death doth barre
A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,
Vnder this carued marble of thine owne
Sleepe rare Tragcedian Shakespeare, sleep alone,
Thy vnmolested peace, vnshared Caue,
Possesse as Lord not Tenant of thy Graue,
That vnto us and others it may be
Honor hereafter to be layde by thee.

BEN JONSON

a. From Conversations with William Drummond. 1618-19. (These are notes by Drummond on his talks with Jonson, who set out to see him at Hawthornden in the summer of 1618.)

b. Verses on the fifth preliminary leaf to F 1, 1623. Jonson is one of the ‘Friends and guides’ referred to by Heminge and Condell.

c. From Timber: or Discoveries. Probably written after 1630 when Jonson was ‘prest by extremities’, and struggling with want and disease ‘for breath’.

a.His Censure of the English Poets was this . . .

That Shaksperr wanted Arte.

b. To the memory of my beloued, The Avthor
Mr. William Shakespeare:  And what he hath left vs.

To draw no enuy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
   Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame:
While I confesse thy writings to be such,
   As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.
‘Tis true, and all mens suffrage. But these ways
   Were not the paths I meant onto thy praise:
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
   Which, when it sounds at best, but echo’s right;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne’re advance
   The truth, but gropes, and vrgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
   And thinke to ruine, where it seem’d to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or Whore,
   Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proofe against them, and indeed
   Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore will begin. Soule of the Age!
   The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; 1 will not lodge thee by
      Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
   Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art aliue still, while thy Booke doth liue,
   And we haue wits to read, and praise to giue,
That I not mixe thee so, ny braine excuses;
   I meane with great, but disproportion’d Muses:
For, if 1 thought my iudgement were of yeeres,
   I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine,
   Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latine, and less Greeke,
   From thence to honour thee, 1 would not seeke
For names,’ but call forth thund’ring £schilus,
   Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuuius, Accius, him of Cordoua dead,
   To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,
And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,
   Leaue thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome
   Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
   To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
   And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
   Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme!
Nature her seife was proud of his designes,
   And ioy’d to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and taouen so fit,
   As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.
The merry Greeke, tart Aristophanes,
   Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated, and deserted lye
   As they were not of Natures family.
Yet must I not giue Nature all: Thy Art,
   My gentle Shakespeare, must enioy a part.
For though the Poets matter, Nature be,
   His Art doth glue the fashion. And, that he,
Who casts to write a liuing line, must sweat,
   (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses anuile: turne the same,
   (And himselfe with it) that he thinkes to frame;
Or for the lawrell, he may gaine a scorne,
   For a good Poet’s made, as well as borne.
And such wert thou. Looke how the fathers face
   Liues in his issue, euen so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shine
   In his well torned, and true-filed line:
In each of which, he seemes to shake a Lance,
   As brandish’t at the eyes of Ignorance,
Sweet Swan of Auon! what a sight it were
   To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights vpon the bankes of Thames,
   That so did take Eliza and our lames!
But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere
   Aduanc’d, and made a Constellation there!
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,
   Or infiuence, chide, or cheer» the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy jlight from hence, hath mourn’d like night,
   And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.

c.
I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that .in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine own candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee f1ow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufllaminandus erat : as Augustus said of Haterius, His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Cesar, one speaking to him: Ceesar thou dost me wrong, He replyed: Ceesar did never wrong, but with just cause and such like: which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.

JOHN HEMINGE AND HENRY CONDELL (The editors of the First Folio, 1623.)
To the great Variety of Readers

It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue been wished, that the Author himselfe had liu’d to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings; But since it hath bin ordain’d otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected & publish’d them; and so to haue publish’d them, as where (before) you were abus’d with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors that expos’d them: euen those, are now offer’d to your view cur’d, and perfect of their limbes , and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarce receiued from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our prouince, who onely gather his works, and giue them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him . .And there we hope, to your diuers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit can no more lie hid, then it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And if then you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to vnderstand him. And so we leaue you to other of his Friends, whom if you need, can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade your selues, and others. And such Readers we wish him.

HUGH HOLLAND From sixth preliminary leaf to Fr, 1623.

Vpon the Lines and Life of the Famous
Scenicke Poet, Master William Shakespeare.

Those hands, which you so clapt, go now, and wring
You Britaines braue , for done are Shakespeares dayes:
His dayes are done, that made the dainty Playes,
Which made the Globe of heau’n and earth to ring.
Dry’de is that veine, dry’d is the Thespian Spring,
Turn’d all to teares, and Phcebus clouds his rayes:
That corp’s, that coffin now besticke those bayes,
Which crown’d him Poet first, then Poets King,”
If Tragedies might any Prologue haue,
All those he made, would scarse make one to this:
Where Fame, now that he gone is to the graue
(Deaths publique tyring-house) the Nuncias is.
For though his line of life went soone about,
The life yet of his lines shall neuer out.

LEONARD DIGGES From eighth preliminary leaf to Fr, r623.

To the Memorie of the deceased Author Maister W. Shakespeare.

Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes giue
The world thy Workes: thy Workes, by which, out-liue
Thy Tombe, thy name must: when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolues thy Stratford Moniment,
Here we aliue shall view thee still. This Booke,
When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke
Fresh to all Ages: when Posteritie

Shall loath what’s new, thinke all is prodegie
That is not Shake-speares; eu’ry Line, each Verse,
Here shall reuiue, redeeme thee from thy Herse.
Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Nasa said,

Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once inuade.
Nor shall I e’re beleeue, or thinke thee dead
(Though mist) untill our bankrout Stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain t’ out-do
Passions of luliet, and her Romeo;
Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,
Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake,
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,
Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst neuer dye,
But crown’d with Lawrell, liue eternally.

MICHAEL DRAYTON From Elegy to Henry Reynolds. 1627.

JOHN MILTON Published in prefatory matter to the Second Folio, 1632.
(This was the first of Milton’s poems to be published.)

On Shakes pear, 1630.

What needs my Shakes pear for his honour’d Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst toth’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from ‘the leaves of thy unvalu’d Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher’d in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

THOMAS HEYWOOD From The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels. 1635.

Our moderne Poets to that passe are driuen,
Those names are curtal’d which they first had giuen;
And, as we wisht to haue their memories drown’d,
We scarcely can afford them halfe their sound ….
Mellifluous Shake-speare, whose inchanting Quill
Commanded Mirth or Passion, was but Will.

LEONARD DIGGES From John Benson’s edition of Shakespeare’s Poems, 1640.

Poets are borne not made, when I would prove
This truth, the glad rememberance I must love
Of never dying Shakespeare, who alone,
Is argument enough to make that one.
First, that he was a Poet none would doubt,
That heard th’applause of what he sees set out
Imprinted; where thou hast (I will not say)
Reader his Workes (for to contrive a Play
To him twas none) the patterne of all wit,
Art without Art unparaleld as yet.
Next Nature onely helpt him, for Iooke thorow
This whole Booke, thou shalt find he doth not borrow,
One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines imitate,
Nor once from vulgar Languages Translate,
Nor Plagiari-like from others gleane,
Nor begs he from each witty friend a Scene
To peece his Acts with, all that he doth write,
Is pure his owne, plot, language exquisite,
But oh! what praise more powerfull can we give
The dead, than that by him the Kings men live, ‘
His Players, which should they but have shar’d the Fate,
All else expir’d within the short Termes date;
How could the Globe have prospered, since through want
Of change, the Plaies and Poems had growne scant.
But happy Verse thou shalt be sung and heard,
When hungry quills shall be such honour bard.
Then vanish upstart Writers to each Stage,
You needy Poetasters of this Age”
Where Shakespeare liv’d or spake, Vermine forbeare,
Least with your froth you spot them, come not neere;
But if you needs must write, if poverty
So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die,
On Gods name may the Bull or Cockpit have
Your lame blancke Verse, to keepe you from the grave:
Or let new Fortunes younger brethren see,
What they can picke from your leane industry.
I doe not wonder when you offer at
Blacke-Friers, that you suffer: tis the fate
Of richer veines, prime judgments that have far’d
The worse, with this deceased man compar’d.
So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare,
And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were,
Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience,
Were ravish’d, with what wonder they went thence,
When some new day they would not brooke a line,
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline;
Sejanus too was irkesome, they priz’de more
Honest Iago, or the jealous Moore.
And though the Fox and subtill Alchimist,
Long intermitted could not quite be mist,
Though these have sham’d all the Ancients, and might raise,
Their Authors merit with a crowne of Bayes.
Yet these sometimes, even at a friend’s desire
Acted, have scarce defraid the Seacoale fire
And doore-keepers: when let but Falstaffe come,
Hall, Poines, the rest you scarce shall have a roome
All is so pester’d: let but Beatrice
And Benedicke be seene, loe in a trice
The Cockpit Galleries, Boxes, all are full
To heare Maluoglio that crosse garter’d Gull. .
Briefe, there is nothing in his wit fraught Booke,
Whose sound we would not heare, on whose worth looke
Like old coynd gold, whose lines in every page,
Shall pass true currant to succeeding age.
But why doe I dead Sheakspeares praise recite,
Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;
For me tis needlesse, since an host of men,
Will pay to clap his praise, to free my Pen.

THOMAS FULLER From Worthies, Warwickshire. 1662.
(Fuller [1608-1661] began collecting materials for his Worthies, possibly as early as 1643.)

William Shakespeare was born at Stratford on Avon in this County, in whom three eminent Poets may seem in some sort to be compounded. I. Martial in the Warlike sound of his Sur-name (whence some may conjecture him of a Military extraction), Hasti-oibrans, or Shake-~peare.

2. Ovid, the most naturall and witty of all Poets, and hence It was that Queen Elizabeth, coming into a Grammar-School, made this extemporary verse,

‘Persius a Crab-staffs, Bawdy Martial,
Ovid a fine Wag.’

3· Plautus, who was an exact Comedian, yet never any Scholar, as our Shake-speare (if alive) would confess himself. Adde to all these, that though his genius generally was jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could (when so disposed) be solemn and serious, as appears by his Tragedies, so that Heraclitus himself (I mean if secret and unseen) might afford to smile at his Comedies, they were so merry, and Democritus scarce forbear to sigh at his Tragedies they were so mournfull.

He was an eminent instance of the truth of that Rule, Poeta non fit, sednascitur, one is not made, but born a Poet. Indeed his Learning was very little, so that as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any Lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the Earth, so nature it self was all the art which was used upon him.

Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Johnson, which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion and an English man of War; Master Johnson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention.

MARGARET CAVENDISH, Duchess of Newcastle Letter. CXXIII, 1664. MADAM,

I Wonder how that Person you mention in your Letter, could either have the Conscience, or Confidence to Dispraise Shakespear’s Playes, as to say they were made up onely with Clowns, Fools, Watchmen, and the like; . . .

Shakespear did not want Wit, to Express to the Life all Sorts of Persons, of what Quality, Profession, Degree, Breeding, or Birth soever; nor did he want Wit to Express the Divers, and Different Humours; or Natures, or Several Passions in Mankind; and so Well he hath Express’d in his Playes all Sorts of Persons, as one would think he had been Transformed into every one of those Persons he hath Described; and as sometimes one would think he was really himself the Clown or Jester he Feigns, so one would think, he was also the King, and l(ivy Counsellor: also as one would think he were Really the Coward he Feigns, so one would think he were the most Valiant, and Experienced Souldier; Who would’ not think he had been such a man as his Sir John Falstaff? and who would not think he, had been Harry the Fifth? & certainly Julius Cesar, Augustus Ceesar, and Antonius, did never Really Act their parts Better, if so Well, as he hath Described them, and I believe that Antonius and Brutus did not Speak Better to the People, than he hath Feign’d them; nay, one would think that he had been Metamorphosed from a Man to .a Woman, for who could Describe Cleopatra Better than he hath done, and many other Females of his own Creating, as Nan Page, Mrs. Page, Mrs. Ford, the Doctors Maid, Bettrice, Mrs. Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, and others, too many to Relate? and in his Tragick Vein, he Presents Passions so Naturally, and Misfortunes so Probably; as he Peirces the Souls of his Readers with such a true Sense and Feeling thereof, that it Forces Tears through their Eyes, and almost Perswades them, they are Really Actors, or at least Present at those Tragedies. Who would not Swear he had been a Noble Lover, that could Woo so well? and there is not any person he hath Described in his Book, but his Readers might think they were Well acquainted with them; indeed Shakespear had a Clear Judgment, a Quick Wit, a Spreading Fancy, a Subtil Observation, a Deep Apprehension, and a most Eloquent Elocution; truly, he was a Natural Orator,as well as a Natural Poet, and he was not an Orator to Speak Well only on some Subjects, as Lawyers, who can make Eloquent Orations at the Bar, and Plead Subtilly and Wittily in Law-Cases, or Divines, that can Preach Eloquent Sermons, or Dispute Subtilly and Wittily in Theology, but take them from that, and put them to other Subjects, and they will be to seek; but Shakespear’s Wit and Eloquence was General, for, and upon all Subjects, he rather wanted Subjects for his Wit and Eloquence to Work on, for which he was Forced to take some of his Plots out of History, where he only took the Bare Designs, the Wit and Language being all his Own; and so much he had above others, that those, who Writ after him, were Forced to Borrow of him, or rather to Steal from him.

DRYDEN a. An Essay of Dramatick: Poesie, 1668. b. Essay on the Dramatique Poetry of the Last Age, 1672. c. Preface to Troilus and Cressida, or Truth found too late, 1679.

a. To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta soient inter viburna cupressi,

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eaton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated of in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem: and in the last King’s court, when Ben’s reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him ….

If I would compare Jonson with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.

b. But, malice and partiality set apart, let any man, who understands English, read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he. will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense; and yet these men are reverenced, when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity: witness the lameness of their plots; many of which, especially those which they writ first (for even that age refined itself in some measure), were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name Pericles, Prince oj Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakespeare: besides many of the rest, as the Winter’s Tale, Love’s Labour Lost, Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your con-cernment ….

Shakespeare, who many times has written better than any poet, in any language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writer of ours, or any precedent age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.

c. If Shakespeare be allowed, as I think he must, to have made his characters distinct, it will easily be inferred that he understood the nature of the passions: because it has been proved already that confused passions make undistinguishable characters: yet I cannot deny that he’ has his failings; but they are not so much in the passions themselves, as in his manner of expression: he often obscures his meaning by his words, and sometimes makes it unintelligible. I will not say of so great a poet, that he distinguished not the blown puffy style from true sublimity; but I may venture to maintain, that the fury of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either in coining of new words and phrases, or racking words which were in use, into the violence of a catachresis. It is not that I would explode the use of metaphors from passions, for Longinus thinks ‘em necessary to raise it: but to use ‘em at every word, to say nothing without a metaphor, a simile, an image, or description, is, I doubt, to smell a little too strongly of the buskin. I must be forced to give an example of expressing passion figuratively; but that I may do it with respect to Shakespeare, it shall not be taken from anything of his: ’tis an exclamation against Fortune, quoted in his Hamlet but written by some other poet2—

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! all you gods,
In general synod, take away her power; Break all the spokes and felleys from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of Heav’n,
As low as’ to the fiends.

And immediately after, speaking of Hecuba, when Priam was killed before her eyes–

The mobbled queen
Threatening the flame, ran up and down
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood; and for a robe,
About her lank and all o’er-teemeds loins,
A blanket in th’al~m of fear caught up.
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d
Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced.
But if the gods themselves did see her then,
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
The instant burst of damour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.

What a pudder is here kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts! Would not a man have thought that the poet had been bound prentice to a wheelwright, for his first rant? and had followed a ragman, for the clout and blanket in the second? Fortune is painted on a wheel, and therefore the writer, in a rage, will have poetical justice done upon every member of that engine: after this execution, he bowls the nave down-hill, from Heaven, to the fiends (an unreasonable long mark, a man would think); ’tis well there are no solid orbs to stop it in the way, or no element of fire to consume it: but when it came to the earth, it must be monstrous heavy, to break ground as, low as the centre. His making milch the burning eyes of heaven was a pretty tolerable flight too: and I think no man ever drew milk out of eyes before him: yet, to make the wonder greater, these eyes were burning. Such a sight indeed were enough to have raised passion in the gods; but to excuse the effects of it, he tells you, perhaps they did not see it. Wise men would be gladto find a little sense couched under all these pompous words; for bombast is commonly the delight of that audience which loves Poetry, but understands it not; and .as commonly has been the practice of those writers, who, not being able to infuse a natural passion into the mind, have made it their business to ply the ears, and to stun their judges by the noise.

But Shakespeare does not often thus; for the passions in his scene between Brutus and Cassius are extremely natural, the thoughtsare such as arise from the matter, the expression of ‘ern not viciously figurative. I cannot leave this subject, before I do justice to that divine poet, by giving you one of his passionate descriptions: ’tis of Richard the Second when he was deposed, and led in triumph through the streets of London by Henry of Bullingbrook: the painting of it is so lively, and the words so moving, that I have scarce read anything comparable to it ‘in any other language. Suppose you have seen already the fortunate usurper passing through the crowd, and followed by the shouts and acclamations of the people; and now behold King Richard entering upon the scene: consider the wretchedness of his condition, and his carriage in it; and refrain from pity if you can-

As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious:
Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes
Did scowl on Richard: no man cried, God save him:
No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home.
But dust was thrown upon his sacred head,
Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,
His face still combating with tears and smiles
(The badges of his grief and patience),
That had not God (for some strong purpose) steel’d
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,
And barbarism itself have pitied him.

To speak justly of this whole matter: ’tis neither height of thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor  any nobleness of expression in its proper place; but ’tis a false measure of all these, something which is like them; ’tis the Bristol-stone, which appears like a diamond, ’tis an extravagant thought, instead of a su blime one; ’tis roaring madness, instead of vehemence; and a sound of words instead of sense. If Shakespeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions, and dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining, if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot: but I fear (at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is not so much as a dwarf within our giant’s clothes. Therefore, let not Shakespeare suffer for our sakes; ’tis our fault, who succeed him in an age which is more refined, if we imitate him so ill, that we copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings which in him was an imperfection.

For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said, in the more manly passions; Fletcher’s in the softer: Shakespeare writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman: consequently, the one described friendship better; the other love: yet Shakespeare taught Fletcher to write love: and Juliet and Desdemona are originals. ‘Tis true, the scholar had the softer soul; but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is a passion only in its nature, and is not a virtue but by accident: good nature makes friendship’; but effeminacy love. Shakespeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all, he was a limb of Shakespeare.

EDWARD PHILLIPS Theatrum Poetarum, 1675. (Phillips was Milton’s nephew.)

Shakespear,in s pite of all his unfiled expressions, his rambling and in digested Fancys, the laughter of the Critical, yet must be confess’t a Poet above many that go beyond him in Literature some degrees …. William Shakespear, the Glory of the English Stage; whose nativity at Stratford upon Avon, is the highest honour that Town can boast of: from an Actor of Tragedies and Comedies, he became a Maker; and such a Maker, that though some others may perhaps pretend to a more exact Decorum and eeconomie, especially in Tragedy, never any express’t a more lofty and Tragic heighth; never any represented nature more purely to the life, and where the polishments of Art are most ‘wanting, as probably his Learning was not extraordinary, he plea seth with a certain wild and native Elegance; and in all his Writings hath an unvulgar style, as well in his Yenus and Adonis, his Rape of Lucrece and other various Poems, as in his Dramatics.

THOMAS RYMER A Short Fieeo of Tragedy. 1693.

What Reformation may not we expect now, that in France they see the necessity of a Chorus to their Tragedies? Boyer, and Racine, both of the Royal Academy, have led the Dance; they have tried the success in the last Plays that were Presented by them.

The Chorus was the root and original, and is certainly always the most necessary part of Tragedy.

The Spectators thereby are secured, that their Poet shall not juggle, or put upon them in the matter of Place, and Time, other than is just and reasonable for the representation. .

And the Poet has this benefit; the Chorus is a goodly Show, so that he need not ramble from his Subject out of his Wits for some foreign Toy or Hobby-horse, to humor the multitude ….

Gorboduck is a fable, doubtless, better turn’d for Tragedy, than any on this side the Alps in his time; and might have been a better direction to Shakespear and Ben. Johnson than any guide they have had the luck to follow.

It is objected by our Neighbours against the English, that we delight in bloody spectacles. Our Poets who have not imitated Gorboduck in the regularity and roundness of the design, have not failed on the Theatre to give us the atrocite and blood enough in all Conscience. From this time Dramatick Poetry began to thrive with us, and flourish wonderfully. The French confess they had nothing in this kind considerable till 1635, that the Academy Royal was founded. Long before which time we had from Shakespear, Fletcher, and Ben. Johnson whole Volumes; at this day in possession of the Stage, and acted with greater applause than ever. Yet after all, I fear what Quintilian pronounced concerning the Roman Comedy, may as justly be said of English Tragedy: . In Tragedy we come short extreamly; hardly have we a slender shadow of it ….

Shakespears genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his Element; his Brains are turn’d, he raves and rambles, without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to controul him, or set bounds to his phrenzy. His imagination was still running after his Masters, the Coblers, and Parish Clerks, and Old Testament Stroulers, So he might make bold with Portia, as they had done with the Virgin Mary. Who, in a Church Acting their Play call’d The Incarnation, had usually the Ave Mary mumbl’d over to a stradling wench (for the blessed Virgin) straw-hatted, blew-apron’d, big-bellied, with her immaculate Conception up to her chin.

NICHOLAS ROWE Preface to his edition of Shakespeare. 1709.

His plays are properly to be distinguished only into Comedies and Tragedies. Those which are called Histories, and even some of his Comedies, are really Tragedies, with a run or Mixture of Comedy amongst ‘em. The way of Tragi-Comedy was the common mistake of that age, and is indeed become so agreeable to the English taste, that tho’ the severer critics among us cannot bear it, yet the generality of our audiences seem to be better pleased with it than with an exact Tragedy ….

The style of his Comedy is, in general, natural to the characters, and easy in itself; and the wit most commonly sprightly and pleasing, except in those places where he runs into dog rel rhymes, as in the Comedy of Errors, and a passage or two in some other plays. As for his jingling sometimes, and playing upon words, it was the common vice of the age he lived in: and if we find it in the pulpit, perhaps it may not be thought too light for the stage.

But certainly the greatness of this author’s Genius does no where so much appear, as where he gives his imagination an entire loose, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind and the limits of the visible world. Such are his attempts in The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and Hamlet .…

If one undertook to examine the greatest part of these (the Tragedies) by those rules which are established by Aristotle, and taken from the model of the Grecian stage, it would be no very hard task to, find a great many faults: but as Shakespeare lived under a kind of mere Light of Nature, and had never been made acquainted with the regularity of those written precepts, so it would be hard to judge him by a law he knew nothing of. We are to consider him as a man that lived in a state of almost universal license and ignorance: there was no established judge, but everyone took the liberty to write according to the dictates of his own fancy. When one considers, that there is not one play before him of a reputation good enough to entitle it to an appearance on the present stage, it cannot but be a matter of great wonder that he should advance dramatic poetry as far as he did.

The State of North American Vizpo, Part Three

Small Press Review,
Volume 41, Numbers 9/10, September/October 2009

      Anthology Spidertangle.
      Edited by mIEKAL aND.
      2009; 107 pp; Pa; Xexoxial Editions,
      10375 Cty Hway A, LaFarge WI 54639. $10.

      October is Dada Month.
      Edited by Marshall Hryciuk.
      2008; 94 pp; Pa; Nietzsche’s Brolly,
      30 Laws St., Toronto ON
      M6P 2Y7 Canada. $100.

      Poetry, Volume 193, Issue 2, November 2008
      Edited by Christian Wiman
      100 pp; 444 N. Michigan Ave., Ste.1850,
      Chicago IL 60611. $5.50 ppd./copy.

      Visio-Textual Selectricity
      Edited by Bob Grumman
      2008; 44 pp; Pa; The Runaway Spoon Press,
      1708 Hayworth Road,
      Port Charlotte FL 33952. $50 ppd.

From the evidence of the four collections of visio-textual art that my current series of columns deal with, one would have to say that many of those creating it are at war with verbality. With what words mean, that is. While none of the thirteen pieces in the Poetry gallery completely eschews text, three are wholly without semantic content (so far as I can tell–although one consists of the letters of a written work, scattered purposefully into meaninglessness); the words in seven others exist only (again, so far as I can tell) to provide sound effects, furnish a title or represent language or a social milieu or the like (except for Scott Helmes’s “haiku #62,” which does aesthetically exploit the verbal meaning of a bit of its few whole words); two of the remaining three play minimalist conceptual word-games; Only Joel Lipman’s piece does what poetry traditionally does: use words to lyric out some kind of image-and-idea complex, employing the arresting and suggestive graphics of the piece as an equal rather than dominant partner in the process.

Am I condemning these works? Most contemporary visio-textual artists seem to consider such a viewpoint hostile. But I am merely pointing out what seems to me the direction the field is headed in (often with brilliant success)–while reminding my brethren that there are still wonderful things to be achieved in visio-textual art as literature. I would hate to see no one use averbal text in visual art; but worse would be no one’s using words semantically) in visio-textual art. Not that I perceive any real danger of that happening, just that I’d like to see more genuine visual poetry, work that consists of both visual art and poetry, interrelatedly.

There are 112 works in Anthology Spidertangle–give or take 2 (since my count may be wrong and/or I may have mistakenly counted a single split work as two works, or two side-by-side works as one work). Of these, 26 have no verbal content that I could make out (including one of my two), and two among them have no text (except a stray O or
two. 19 of them seem visual art only except for their titles, which are embedded in them. There’s also one that seems to me a piece of captioned visual art rather than a poem. Another 37 have plenty of words but I would call them “dadaguistic” because they are not semantically coherent (or seem not to be to me); that is, their scraps of text seem in the dada tradition of jarring against each other, and whatever graphics they are with, rather than relating to each other and to the graphics. That leaves 29 pieces which contain verbal and graphic elements that interrelate to good aesthetic effect. In short, a quarter of the works are not visual poems, and almost half are only tenuously visiopoetic. Anthology Spidertangle thus supports my contention that the flow of the times in visio-textual art is away from the verbal.

Perhaps the most entertaining pieces in Anthology Spidertangle are two by Richard Kostelanetz called “Intricate Infinities.” Each is an endless sentence on a drawing of a long strip of paper that twists and turns and weaves its way into a maze that returns to its beginning. The better of the two says, “words whose sequence loops back into itself to suggest infinities should be my epithet for,” then continues with “words whose,” etc.

Not enough space to do more than hint at all the other excellent work that’s here: two pieces from Joel Lipman’s Origins of Poetry that carry on the provocative interplay science/education and poetry/magic were carrying out in Lipman’s piece in the Poetry gallery I covered two columns ago (but in black and white, as all in this gathering is); Jukka-Pekka Kervinen’s arrangements of gorgeously soft-edged letters; Karl Young’s remarkable meditation (I would call it) on final creation/destruction patterns which includes a photograph of a burning house with a somehow super-calming round photograph of a stairway into light superimposed on it, and a prose caption rippling away into something vast; and some wonderful conceptual visual poems by Irving Weiss, endwar and Marton Koppany, one of the latter a three-frame.

Also: two great textscapes by Reed Altemus, one of them a famous one depicting a man and tree in a letter-full windstorm; two others by Cecil Touchon, who specializes in rectangular cut-outs of letters rectilinearly collaged into arrangements that remind me of both Mondrian and Kline; David Baptiste Chirot’s four electric frames from a series of his on the word (and concept) “Spidertangle”; Liaizon Wakest’s wry continuation of the Bern Porter collage tradition, one of this two pieces (about living on the farm) ending with, “the third conclusion cannot be related”; William James Austin’s stunningly darksome evocation of a “cast out world”; another goofy/brilliant visual poem by Marilyn R. Rosenberg with enough charming wordplay in it for five conventional poems, and enough dazzling victories of design for seven conventional visual artworks, plus one of her fetching works-with-mouse; Matthew Stoltes’s fascinating graphic extension of the word, “soil,” above a similar graphic extension of “skill” which sets up all sorts of intriguing connections between them; and–all kinds of other fine pieces I haven’t space to mention, plus short comments in the back by the artists, and a small circle at the right-hand page-top of the work of each with the artist’s photograph in it. Fun to see what people look like with whom I’ve corresponded but never met in person.

In short, another publication anyone interested in current visual poetry should be sure to have.

The Contents of a Mailbox

Small Press Review,
Volume 43, Numbers 1/2, January/February 2011

      The New Criterion
      Volume 29, Number 3, November 2010.
      Edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball
      Monthly, 80 pp; The foundation for Cultural Review, Inc.,
      900 Broadway, New York NY 10003. $7.75/copy.

      ZYX
      Issue 55, February 2011.
      Edited by Arnold Skemer
      3 times yearly; 10 pp; ZYX, 58-09 205th Street,
      Bayside NY 11364. write for a copy.

The other day two very different magazines arrived in the mail, The New Criterion and ZYX. I’ve long subscribed to The New Criterion, a review of the arts and society that is basically an organ for neo-conservatism, not too much of which I go along with. I enjoy its opposition to political correctness, though. But the main reason I subscribe to it, is that it is about as far as can be from the experioddica I write about here. And a number of fairly good, entertaining writers write about the middle of mainstream culture when not discussing seldom-undiscussed dead art eminences. Hence, The New Criterion helps me keep up with the exhibits of painting, concerts, and dance and theatrical productions going on in New York City and our country’s other centers of provincialism.

Its main critics of poetry, John Simon and William Logan, are near-worthlessly devoted to books published by BigCity and University publishers, although Logan can be instructively hostile about some of the larger names in the field. The two cover everything of interest to the American Poetry Establishment, however, which is useful.

Its critic of music, Jay Nordlinger, writes gush about performers (generally of standards like Beethoven’s Fifth). He rarely discusses music beyond telling us what its name is and who wrote it, and maybe some gossp about the latter. He sometimes mentions music by someone living, but only if a name performer has deigned to perform it., Karen Wilkin, the magazine’s main visimagery critic, is excellent–although limited to mainstream visimagery. The magazine contains occasional attacks (hardly ever by Wilkin) on exhibitions of contemporary work, but I enjoy them, because the contemporary stuff on exhibit at the Whitney and such museums in the Big Apple that The New Criterion discusses, are almost always crap. Criticism of the other arts seems okay to me, although–again–rarely about anything innovative. I find Laura Jacobs’s pieces on the dance quite helpful, as it’s the art I know least about, and–unlike Nordlinger–she tells one about the art she treats as well as those involved with it.

Almost the antithesis of The New Criterion is the other publication I got a copy of, SPR reviewer Arnold Skemer’s ZYX. I’ve been getting it ever since Arnold started it 15 years or so ago, and have reviewed it once or twice here. Devoted almost entirely to the literary arts, it’s worth consideration because of its openness to the full range of contemporary poetry, which Arnold not only publishes but intelligently reviews. He also covers the literary life, generally with highly entertaining belligerance against the Establishment.

He doesn’t often publish his own poems in ZYX but has three in this issue. They’re in the Jack Saunders school of poetry: clear, incisive and contemptuous of the Philistines mindlessly thwarting any poet daring to be adventurously unmediocre–although one is about hope in general, as something you have to believe in even though it’s a fantasy. Arnold is not what you’d call buoyantly positive about life. His front-page essay, “Reacting to Contempt” carries on his campaign against “people who choose to degrade you because you are a lowly poet.” I feel he overdoes it a bit–I’ve met a few people who seem to have believed I wasted my life by devoting so much of it to poetry, but most people are polite about my vocation, and some seem in awe, sincere awe, that I would have been brave enough to follow it (which horrifies me!). But Arnold has a different persona from mine, which is that of the amiable screwball–the strange but harmless Lewis Carrollian uncle so many British families have.

Among the poets whose works Arnold crowds into his zine (48 poems, altogether, some of them much more than sonnet-length) are Britisher Cardinal Cox, if what look to me like prose pieces are indeed poems, Guy Beining, John Jacob, Luis Cusuhtemoc Berriozabail (in very tiny print, so I may have misspelled his name), Vernon Frazer, J. J. Campbell, B. Z. Niditch, and Alan Carlin, the latter two frequent contributors.

Beining is represented by an intriguing poem called, “Spheres of Clouds and Skulls,” which alone puts the zine at the forefront of experioddica. Here’s a passage to give the flavor of his “Sphere of Clouds and Skulls: “Prior to heat there is worship.// barely audible one hears- who is the guest of/ the dead bird? Who holds a hanger as grail/ upside down in water?/ the corpse in all of us moves out/ a bit & on spigot we watch a form rotate/ spawn clouds between legs and along tongue.// Direction is a hazard that makes us move.// beyond cloud cover there is the public dance.”

What is most wondrous-fine to me about the poem is what Beining does in it with clouds (particularly “cloud cover”), constantly, weirdfully, working out under-deepening variations of them and ending the poem with a moon’s view of them.

At the other end of the clarity continuum are Carlin’s vivid contributions such as “The Chess Masters Last Match:/ Marcel Duchamp Plays Samuel Beckett Like a Cranial Harp,” which is as zappingly colorful as a thirties gangster novel, but fizzingly nails Dada and Absurdism. Here it is: “An overturned ash/ can is the table// base and an iron/ grate the top// a chess board is/ laid out on:// the artist sits black/ and the poet sits white// in damp unheated/ room meager light// provided by a single/ bare light bulb suspended// from a ceiling swaying/ in perpetual motion// in slow syncopation/ like a metronome or// a minute hand of/ an unseen clock”

Just about every issue of ZYX has an equal assortment of goods–that no one but I seems ever to mention anywhere. . . .

Adventures on the Internet

Small Press Review,
Volume 29, Number 8/9, August/September 1997

The Grist On-Line Home Page:
http://www.thing.net/~grist

The Light & Dust Home Page:
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm

Hyperotics, by Harry Polkinhorn:
http://www.thing.net/~grist/golpub/polk/gpolkina.htm

The Electronic Poetics Center Home Page:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc

The ubuweb:
http://www.ubuweb.com/vp

The hot news from here is that after a year of big bucks from substitute teaching, I was able this March to buy a sophisticated enough computer system to get on the Internet. The system cost around two thousand. I think it’ll turn out to have been worth it–and the $25 a month I have to pay for the Internet link.

Experioddicologically, the Internet’s major plus so far has been Karl Young’s Light & Dust Website. The number of its poetry collections approaches three figures and includes over twenty complete books. There seem as many free-versers as burst-norm poets represented: Wanda Coleman and Toby Olson (the latter new to me but worth investigating) as well as Experioddica stand-bys like Mike Basinski and Karl Kempton (and Scott Helmes, who also does mathematical poetry!) The Light & Dust site has several essays, too–including, yes, one by me. Most of them are on visual or related kinds of poetry. There are also reviews and a list of other sites worth visiting if you find the l&d one to your liking.

The l&d site is a sub-site of the Grist website, which is truly a super-site, umbrellaing not only l&d, but Jukka Lehmus’s neo-visio-scientifico-dada Cyanobacteria, Thomas Lowe Taylor’s language-poetry-oriented anabasis and Robert Bove’s Room Temperature, a more down-to-earth site, featuring plaintext poets like Michael Lally. The Grist site itself showcases a great deal of varied poetry and prose.

A second major source of visual poetry–and sound poetry–is the ubuweb. It’s especially good for its collections of historical visual poetry, starting with Apollinaire’s. It also has essays, and a useful bibliography by Ward Tietz of vispo-related books.

Then there’s the Electronic Poetry Center, which SUNY, Buffalo, devotes to “contemporary experimental and formally-innovative poetries.” There’s too much good stuff here to list it all. I’ll just say that you can get from it to the home page of just about any otherstream press or zine that has a home page, notably Taproot Reviews, with zillions of its reviews of the micro-press over the years. And that my favorite section of the SUNY site is its poetics list, which was set up by Charles Bernstein to encourage discussion and information-exchange among people like David Bromige, Marjorie Perloff, Nick Piombino and so on, but includes a number of lesser names from other poetries–including, now, me.

I haven’t yet generated much interest in my posts to the SUNY site (list members were as indifferent to my attempt to get a list of poetry schools worked out as readers of this magazine were a few years ago when it had an earlier version of it). Nonetheless, I’ve been having fun. There have been discussions on my kind of topics, like what to call the white spaces like              this that many contemporary poems have. My suggestion was “white caesurae.”

Most recently I’ve gotten into a “thread,” as they call them, on what the smallest unit of a poem is. Whether, for instance, it’s something smaller than a syllable. Tom Orange started it, and as of 18 June I had contributed four or five notes to it, including the following, with which I am now going to end this installment of my column:

“Much of my interest in what might be called micro-poetics is hard for me to defend. For instance, I disagree with Charles Smith when he says that it would not be ‘very useful to posit partial phonemes’ but I can’t offhand think of an example of where it would be useful, only that I vaguely remember from time to time being bothered in my writing by the lack of one.

“As for just calling s and t alphabetic letters, I generally do–but it might not be enough. What if, to take a crazy example, you were dealing as a critic with the line, ‘The twenty-two trucks turned.’ You could say its author used the letter t six times and the phoneme t thrice; but what if for some obscure reason you wanted to say he’d used the t three times as a part of phonemes? That is, what if you wanted to distinguish the fractional phoneme t from the plain letter t, and also from the plain phoneme t (which interestingly to me isn’t necessarily the plain letter t–which makes me wonder what the w is in the phoneme tw of ‘two.’)

“All of this got me rummaging through Cummings, master of the expressive use of the less-than-syllable, as in the following:

“Speaking of syllables-that-aren’t-words like ‘ent,’ just look at how much meaning he puts into ‘ness!’ And at the ‘ting(le)’ he adds with an incomplete syllable, and the zing/sing he gets from a complete but isolated syllable, and–best–the breakdown of the syllable/word, ‘are’ (reversing the expansion of ‘vast’), to show/say the scattered birds’ voices becoming one (with the hint of that one voice’s beginning some primal alphabet). In short, there’s much in poetry that’s smaller than syllables.

“(As Alan Sondheim beautifully demonstrated yesterday at this site with his ‘wundering wumb,’ utc.)

“Now a literary history question. I’m not very widely read but my impression is that Cummings (in English, at any rate) was the first poet to use the ‘intra-syllabic word-break’ to aesthetic effect–as in his breaking ‘inventing’ into ‘inven’ and ‘ting’ for the latter’s hint of ‘tingle,’ and ‘using’ into ‘u’ and ‘sing.’

“Does anyone out there know of anyone who did this kind of thing before him?”