Archive for the ‘visual poetry’ Category
Entry 1712 — Ground Hog Day
Monday, February 2nd, 2015
This morning, at 4:48 A.M., I turned 74. My Facebook Timeline is swamped with birthday greetings, which is very nice, but it bothers me that Mary Worth hasn’t yet wished me well on my day. The card below from Karl Kempton almost makes up for that, though:
I was delighted with this when I first looked at it. A gorgeous design, yes? After a moment with it, I realized that the message at the top was in code, and quickly decoded it, now doubly delighted, for I love codes. Moreover, this use of a code made Karl’s design not just a birthday card, but a veritable birthday poem! Karl had secreted his message in an underground that had allowed it to wend its way back into sight as little flowers, celebrating their secret message’s meaning! What’s more, the two lines of sheer garden swirled into a single, three-dimensional super-blossoming: I had been given a master-poem with three levels for my birthday.
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Entry 1709 — I Done A New Math Pome!!!!
Friday, January 30th, 2015
The following is an accident, whether a happy one or a disappointing one, who knows. What happened was that I was looking through my digital files for a poem for Bill Michele and came across the divisor and dividend of this one in a folder labeled, “Long Division Problems Worth Attacking.” I immediately wanted to attack it. What’s below is the result (so far–I’m not sure whether it needs more work or not):
I think I was in the mood to work on it because of my thinking about HSAM yesterday. It may be my first autobiographical long division poem. The only unauthentic thing in it is the divisor. Actually, they may well have been there, hard to imagine they would not have been. But they’re not in my memory of the episode. Extremely sentimental, yes? It’s very simple but perhaps still “difficult” for many . . . Will it nonetheless make me famous?
I’d sorta like to do more poems like it, but have no ideas for any yet.
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Entry 1666 — Back to Beining
Friday, December 19th, 2014
Here’s the latest image I got from Guy R. Beining:
It is part of a letter it grieves me to report on. He asks if I think I could sell works like it on my website, suggesting a price of $200 for this. I’d get a 33% commission on all sales. Gah. If I had any semblance of economic security, I’d buy this and four others sight unseen for $200 each. I grieve because I know I can’t sell anything here, at any price. I once offered 25 RASPbooks for $50 and Karl Kempton was the only one to buy a set (and he ain’t rich). No complaints, because I hardly ever buy anything of anyone else’s. Not only don’t I have the money to, but my concept-appreciation to ornament-appreciation (like the feel of hardened acylic, etc., even the size of an image) is much higher than most lovers of visimagery’s (i.e., “visual art”), so Internet access rather than physical ownership is enough for me in almost all cases.
Of course, I also grieve because Guy’s stuff should be in bigTime museums with articles in ARTnews about it. If he can’t get the recognition he deserves, who can? Or am I so out of it that I don’t see how much better New York stuff is than the above?
I wish I had time to really deal with the above critically, but the year is about to end, and I have so much to do! For instance, I still haven’t finished either of my next two columns for Small Press Review, and I’ve had full-length fairly decent rough drafts of both of them ready for a final attack for over a week. Wotta life.
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Entry 1626 — Another from Karl Young
Sunday, November 9th, 2014
Yeah, I’m cheating here again, but with something good! The following is another specimen of Karl Young’s Clouds:
This seems to me exactly the kind of thing Ezra Pound did when at his best–but given a near-perfect visioaesthetic presentation.
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Entry 1624 — A Selection from Clouds
Friday, November 7th, 2014
I’m pretty much non-functional, so once again finding work by others I hope my readers will enjoy. The following is a selection from Karl Young’s Clouds. It is best experienced one column at a time, as presented on the sheet of many folds each of the selections Karl sent me are. No one does hakuic serenity like he does!
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Entry 1623 — 2 from Snap
Thursday, November 6th, 2014
Two pages from the collection by Mike Basinski I’m calling Snap:
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Entry 1622 — Snap
Wednesday, November 5th, 2014
Here are the back and front covers of one of the books from a series published by Dan Waber almost every one of which is major:
Needless to say, none of the books in this series has gotten any attention from any critic reaching more than a hundred readers.
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Entry 1602 — Long Division of Athens
Thursday, October 16th, 2014
Here’s my latest, unfinished:
The neato recreation of Ancient Athens in my poem was stolen from www.sikyon.com. It is copyrighted by Ellen Papkyriakou/ Anagnostou, with all rights reserved. If I’m still around in 2015, I’ll try to get permission from her to use it here. Still here, you wonder? Well, I think my nervous system is about to go. Lou Gehrig’s disease? I don’t know. I seem to only be half in touch with the lower part of my legs, especially after sitting for a half-hour or more. It’s as though they are on the way to being asleep. I can still walk on them, but if I jog a few paces, I feel the left one beginning to give way. I will be seeing my regular doctor Friday. A week or so after that I have an appointment with the surgeon who did my hip replacement. My hip now feels about the way it did when I went to him to get the replacement. Whether that’s related to my leg problem, I don’t know. It’s quite interesting. Needless to say, I give myself only a fifty-fifty chance to make it into 2015, but that’s just me, always sure of the worst when anything like this happens to me, but sure of the best when it happens to anybody else. Anyway, I’m proud of myself for finally converting my notes for the thing above into a semi-finished product. Gotta add color, and I may change the divisor, but don’t feel up to it right now (15 October, 2 P.M.).
Nota Morbeedissima: if I don’t never finish the above, I’d be grateful is someone else did, following how I done my swan one. Actually, I would not be able to be grateful, but you know wot I mean.
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Entry 1597 — My Swan Poem, Finished
Saturday, October 11th, 2014
I finished this at around 5 P.M, yesterday, and immediately stuck it here. I plan to comment on it tomorrow, when perhaps I’ve calmed down a little about how terrific it is.
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Entry 1591 — “The Night Times Who”
Sunday, October 5th, 2014
Here’s the poem I made the “tyger” image for yesterday:
I made the original, in black and white, a little over a decade ago.
Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that my new poem of a couple of days ago with the swans is screwed up. I must change both its remainder and its subdividend product. I have a good idea, I think, for the latter, and a vague one for the remainder.
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