Archive for May, 2010
Entry 138 — “Maternity Ward”
Monday, May 31st, 2010
The title of the following work is “Maternity Ward at Wesson Women’s.” Its author is Alexander Jorgensen, one of his four submissions to The Pedestal Gallery, all of them quite good but in the second twelve (in the editors’ highly subjective view). Before he submitted it to the gallery, it appeared in Mark Young’s excellent publication, Otoliths, Issue Eleven, Southern Spring, 2008.
I first saw this at Spidertangle over a year ago, and at once liked it a good deal. I still do. For a while I thought it a perfect example of alphaconceptual textual designage, viewing it as asemic. A charmingly understated design consisting of the letter a to make it textual designage, with a, for me, strong suggestion of language soon to be born, these three a’s close to getting alphabets going.
Later I had to accept it as (barely) a visual poem, for “a” is significant as a word in it, here pregnant with whatever noun it will soon modify–a doubly alphaconceptual visual poem. It’s also pain beautifully serene: all’s right with this world–at least to me.
I
Entry 137 — Whee
Saturday, May 29th, 2010
For the first time in ever so long, it’s nine o’clock and I don’t want to retire for the day! That’s Very Nice. What’s not nice is that it took an overdose of pain medication to make me feel that way. Oh, well, that I’m able to feel this way is a plus, whatever it takes to make me feel this way.
Ergo: whee!
Entry 136 — Health Bulletin
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Not that anyone should care or does, but I feel my old fart need to jabber about my health again, hence this report.
Today I’ve started taking one hydrocodone pain pill every four hours. The proper maximum dose is one every eight hours. It’s an experiment to see if there’s anything I can do to cancel the pains in my leg. Not that they’re particularly bad. Much of the time I don’t notice them. But at night they’re just enough to interfere with my sleeping, and they keep me from running. I’m also annoyed because last Monday I was given a shot of cortisone and some kind of numbing medicine in my bad hip that was supposed to nullify the pain, or at least reduce it, in two days or so. It did nothing. Which is what two similar shots in my back did a few months ago. Hydrocordone have never cancelled the pain, either. I think it may have reduced it somewhat a few times. Anyway, I’m trying it.
I feel I’m pretty adaptable, and have not whine much about growing old. I’ve expected to slow down, wrinkle, taken longer to mend when I’ve bumped myself or something, and experienced arthritic aches and pains. Until last year, I’ve even been pleased with how little, really has gone wrong with me. this year has been an ordeal, though. And I just can’t understand my leg problem. It would seem that my bad hip is not responsible for it, which is good. I fear it is probably half responsible for it, though. I’ll be talking to my orthopedist in a week or so about what to do. I’d be surprised if there was anything else to do but have my back operated on, and hope that takes care of it.
I seem to be functioning okay otherwise except that I feel tired most of the time. I want to take naps but rarely go to sleep when I try for one. I’m now getting five or six hours of sleep at night, which is the most I’ve been able to get for five or ten years. It’d be wonderful to be able to get eight hours nightly for a week, but I suspect that will never be.
I continue to find it difficult to sit down at my computer and do anything more strenuous mentally than firing arguments and invective at my Shakespeare authorship foes. Recently, though, I’ve started to come out of what I consider the kind of tenth-rate depression I often am inflicted with. I managed finally to post on the visual poem of Connie Tettenborn’s that I’ve wanted to. One would think that no great accomplishment, but doing it was a major accomplishment for me. I kept thinking that I’d be unable to say anything of any value about it. so why bother. And even if I did say anything of value about it, no one would read it. Wanh wanh.
I have plenty of good excuses for feeling depressed, fearing I’m be limping the rest of my life not least among them. But a few good things have been happening, too. The publication of my this is my visual poetry chapbook, for one thing. And recently a Finn has asked permission to publish a book or chapbook of his translations of my mathemaku. That’s huge. I’d love to be able sincerely to feel that I don’t need any positive feedback from the world, but I do. I got paid for something literary recently, too: by The Pedestal for co-editing the gallery the Spitter and me done for it. $75. Final nice thing that happened to me of late was being invited to blurb the upcoming Otoliths publication of a (terrific) collection of pieces by Marton Koppany, and coming up with a blurb he and I both liked. I don’t blurb, by the way–I always try to inform potential buyers about what I compose blurbs for, not hype it.
Enter 135 — 13’s from The Pedestal Project
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Today I’m finally starting to post what I’ve decided to call “13’s from The Pedestal Project,” by which I mean my favorites of those submissions to John M. Bennett’s and my gallery of visio-textual art at The Pedestal. I call them “13’s” because the people who created them were, so to speak, all–in my opinion–tied for thirteenth place in the competition for the twelve spots available in the gallery.
The first piece is “Fifth Grade,” by Connie Tettenborn:
When I saw this, I was biased toward it because so many of the other submissions to a gallery supposed to be of visual poetry was (tediously) not visual poetry by any reasonable definition, and this was. I was also charmed by its evocation of what fifth grade seemed to me. I found the choice of data the kids were being bombarded with interesting, too: it happened to include three pieces of knowledge of extreme importance to me all my life: the discovery of America (and I claim Columbus discovered America; Eric the Red or his son, whoever it was, who got to Newfoundland only extended the shoreline of Europe), long division and the planets (which in fifth grade were just about equal to dinosaurs and the Pyramids to me).
I liked the little kids in proper order–although I’m not sure why Connie uses the particular letter she does to represent them. Wait, they are, I now see, “e.g.’s” . . . I’m still not getting the connection . In any case, one of the kids seems not paying full attention, which is a nice touch. The idea of Knowledge coming in from some Afar that seems almost divine intrigued me, too. There’s the concept of a window into understanding, too.
In chatting over syberspace with Connie, I’ve learned that she is new to visual poetry, so deserving of special praise for doing so well to being with. Because she asked for help, I’m now going to say a few minor negative things about “Fifth Grade.” One is that I’m not sure “bah bah” fits the piece as well as “blah blah” would have, and I think “gaga” and “lala” not particularly effective. I think the choice of varied fonts good, but believe a little more could have done to the in-flow–for instance, some overlapping could have worked nicely, I think, and great difference in the size of letters.
I wondered about the use of color, finally deciding straight monochromatic, facts-only dry knowledge worked best. But use of colr and visual imagery might be something to try, too, if the artist wanted to make a sequence of variations on a theme, which her piece would be a good start to.
Entry 134 — Ellipsis-Haiku
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
I’m still having “creative ideas” but having trouble bothering to put them on paper, even ones as easy to do that with as the ones that led to the following:
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Good ideas (inspired by Marton Koppany’s recent Otoliths book) not yet finding their best presentation, it seems to me.
Entry 133 — Somewhat Awake Again, I Think
Friday, May 21st, 2010
I simply disconnected from my blog–just didn’t think of it for about a week until a day or two ago. Then last night for some reason I started thinking about haiku and came up with the following poems that I thought worth making this entry for:
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. early April night:
. barely a single haiku
. of moonlight in it
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. the street’s cherry blooms,
. dazzling, yet almost grey
. besides the haiku’s
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Entry 132 — What a Visual Poem Is
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Tough times here, again, so I’ve neglected my entries again, and today am simply repeating the work below:
I’m reprising it as an illustration of what may be my best definition of what a visual poem is: an artwork in which verbal and graphic elements are combined which are intended to be experienced together, with each of them contributing significantly (and more or less equally) to the aesthetic effect of the work, but neither of them by itself necessarily of any significant aesthetic value by itself.
The poem above illustrates this perfectly. One can’t read it without also seeing it, or experiencing it both verbally and graphically at the same time. (Note, for me to see a word in order to read it is to visually but not graphically to experience it; reading is not a visual experience: the mind’s use of the eyes to read is different from the mind’s use of the eyes to see.) In accordance with my definition, the word, “sleep,” printed by itself with no visual enhancement, would be of no aesthetic interest; nor would its being changed to “grilt,” say, to make it non-verbal, would result in nothing but a perhaps mildly pretty picture.
Wait. The nullinguists would find “grilt” verbally meaningful. So make the purely graphic version of this work this:
I suppose it’s close to impossible to make a graphic work that isn’t in some way aesthetically interesting, but I would claim that anyone who finds this as aesthetically appealing as the work with “sleep” in it is dead to the aesthetic value of visual poetry.
My definition, by the way, comes out of the thousands-of-years-old tradition of considering the word “poetry” (in whatever language) to denote something made of words (although it can be used metaphorically to describe something non-verbal, like a pretty sunrise). There is, in fact, no sane reason to reject it as the final definition of the kind of art I apply it to.
The one objection to it seems to be that so “narrow” a definition may inhibit people making artworks it doesn’t cover from continuing to do so. I say if it does, they are clearly not artists, so who cares. Several of my early mathematical poems do not conform to this definition of visual poetry. Do I care? No, I accept them a mathematical poems, but not visual poems.
I ignore the other standard objection of nullinguists: that nothing is definable.
Entry 131 — Another Variation
Monday, May 10th, 2010
I like this one:
In fact, I’d include it among my all-time best works.
Entry 130 — A Variation
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Guess what will be next in this series?
I’m not sure I like the colors in the addition. Oh, well, it’s something to use for another entry. I’ve had another setback, by the way: a very close local friend’s husband died Thursday. I only found out yesterday. I had only gotten to know the husband well enough to extremely miss him–but my sadness over what my friend is going through is worse. I spent a lot of time with her yesterday, but my ability at brightening the bereaved is pretty poor. I think I distracted her at least a little.
Entry 129 — More Futzing Around at Paint Shop
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
This is here not as a finished product but as a sketch to remind me to make something decent of it when I’m in better shape mentally.
