Thoughts on Visual Poetry and Thoughts on Geof Huth's Thoughts on Visual Poetry

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

This opens the discussion into another subject I'm not prepared to go into right now: illumagery which is not semantically but . . . linguiconceptually meaningful. Conceptual illumagery about language. I think it, too, ought to have its own name. I'll work on it.

A Transform Re-Revealed

via Crag Hill's poetry scorecard:

I haven't seen a trace/tissue issue of my Transforms for years. Each issue was different -- different poems selected, selected poems rendered in different colors, seeking an/other dimension/s to each poem.

Visual Poetry in "Art in America," Part 1

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

We visual poets are accustomed to believing it very marginal--but visiotextul works almost all American visual poets would say were visual poems (because they consider any artwork combining visual elements and anything suggestive of text to be visual poems) were everywhere in this non-marginal publication. I scanned eight of them, three of which I'm posting here:

Visual Poetry in "Art in America," Part 2

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I don't know anything about James Plensa but like his piece. If there are words in it, I haven't been able to make them out, so I'd call the work a textual sculpture. I haven't worked out any theory as to why the letters are in it--a person as a vaccuum disguised by a layer of language? Is the statue based on some canonical statue? It reminds me of one, I think--ever so vaguely.

Visual Poetry in "Art in America," Part 3

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

The piece by Doogan is fully a visual poem, in my view. It shows an O with its "latch" in the down position to prevent the virgin from having sex. The O thus become a G--which goes on to spell "GO" (or "escape," "move," "start," "live.") over the second woman's vagina, with its latch back up.

"The State of the Contemporary American (Actually North American English-Speaking) Visual Poetry Scene"

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I would add to this that visual poets have been poor marketeers of their work. Very few real artists are not poor marketeers of their work. But, being more creative than the most prominent language poets, say, they could not (generally) conform sufficiently to gain influential university positions, or waste time exhibitionistically furthering themselves commercially a la Allen Ginsberg.

An Interesting Bit of Finnish Visual Poetry

via Marko Niemi's Nurotus:

visual poems by Sami Vainikka at Nokturno.

Concrete Woman

via Crag Hill's poetry scorecard:

We're brainstorming women of concrete, women of visual, of all countries. We have at first blush these poets:

Liz Was, Kathy Ernst, Marilyn Rosenberg, Carol Stetser, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (Germany), Rea Nikonova (Russia), Carla Bertola (Italy), Johanna Drucker, Ana Hatherly (Portugal), Celestine Frost, Nancy Brush-Burr, Susan Smith-Nash, Sheila Murphy, Grace Vajda, C. Mehrl Bennett, Marilyn Damman, Mirta Dermisache, Wendy Kramer, Donna Kuhn, Arlene Hartman, Wendy Collin Sorin, judith copithore, peggy lefter, jennifer books, Camille Martin, Maria Damon, and Shin Yu Pai.

The Verbo-Visual Street

via David-Baptiste Chirot's David-Baptiste Chirot:

I found a stiff piece of paper folded with some interesting lettering on it--it felt like a possble cover for a small book--turned it over and found the letters WPA on the back, like he old Works Progress Administration--unfolding it, found the letters all together spelled--wet paint! Think it will do well for smll handmade book--

Graffiti as Visual Poetry

via David-Baptiste Chirot's David-Baptiste Chirot:

I'm going to be including not only my own work but also visual poems in any materials found on street.
These will include everything from twigs in interesting forms, marked stones, scratched boards, torn papers, interesting feathers, anything that has visual poetry notation/calling apects to it.

The Nonlinear Poetry of Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

via Gregory V. St. Thomasino's eratio:

Mr. Kervinen's works "speak" to us in terms of grammata, and not in terms of pragmata, and then only in terms of a grammata that is in abstractus--drawn away, if you will, from any thing, from any pragmata. And thus these words and word-fragments do not signify, but come to symbolize.

Reviewing Grumman

via Gregory V. St. Thomasino's eratio:

I came on board just about when Bob began experimenting with mathematics, and was discovering his mathemaku form and was publishing his first "specimen" (Bob has always enjoyed using scientific/experimental jargon). My initial impression of all this was to ask why anyone would want to "quantify" sentiments. Then Bob began sending me photocopies of more and more mathemaku specimen and I saw that my initial impression was all wrong, that Bob was not exactly "quantifying" sentiments as much as substituting math, or the arithmetical, for grammar. The end result was an amplification (or perhaps I should say "a mutiplication") of symbolism.