Visual Poetry Clippings

Could "Calligraglyph" Be Just a Joke?

2008-05-10T00:40:00.001-04:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I thought the first of these one of the best of Geof's fidgetglyphs when I got it on a postcard he sent me. In fact, I told him it deserved to be called a "calligraglyph," rather than disparaged as a "fidgetglyph," as I think I said here (except that I called it then a "Calligraphiglyph," I don't know why, except that I just wasn't thinking). Geof described it on his card as an expression of his poetics, by which he jokingly meant, I believe, that his poetics had nothing to do with words--so not with what I consider poetry.

A Fun Rant

2008-04-28T21:29:00.002-04:00

via Bill Knott's billknot:

I wonder what other poeticules of diversionality PSA Prez Alice Quinn has queued up for future honors—

what other freakish oddities of the past does she plan to revive,

what other obsolete stunt-acts resurrect—

maybe she can find that "Found Poetry" guy, what was his name?—

or what about "Exquisite Cadaver", or Clerihews;

if it's Concrete today, why not Palindromic tomorrow . . .

there are after all many entertaining playtime pastime recondite forms of vacuous verse to waste away the rainy afternoons with idle fun and frivolous games . . .

she did the VizPo gimmick this year, so why not next year pick a similar trivial arcane amusement like refrigerator haiku, or limericks?

Poetry, Vispoetry, and Minimalism Awarded

2008-04-18T09:10:00.001-04:00

via Ron Silliman's Silliman's blog:

One of the things I like about it is the way it makes clear that visual poetry & “poetry” are not entirely separate genres.

Eye v. Ear

2007-10-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

via seaworthy southeast thesaurus:

“At some point (in my writing life) I realized that precision can be a kind of poetry, and the more precise you try to be, or I try to be, the more simply and correctly responsive to what the world looks like—then the better my chances of creating a deeper and more beautiful language.”

Huth Interviewed, in Turkish

2007-10-27T14:44:00.000-04:00

via poetikhars:

Huth: Yazınsal bir gelenekten geliyorum, bu önemli benim için, çünkü şimdi etkileşimde bulunduğum yazın dünyası görsel ve dil şiirinden oluşuyor. Görsel şiir yapanların pekçoğu, gerçekte harf biçimlerini görsel bir mesele olarak ele alıyorlar, oysa ben öncelikle bir yazarım.

86, Not Quite 87

2007-07-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

via Tom Orange's heuriskein ευρισκειν:

Mary Ellen Solt was born in Gilmore City, Iowa, and spent much her life in the Midwest. Her poetry and essays were heavily influenced, however, by her international travels. Moreover, Mary Ellen Solt's Concrete Poetry: a World View established her as a powerful influence on the genre of concrete poetry around the world.

A Doubling of Eyes

2007-06-28T01:36:00.000-04:00

via 9th St. Laboratories:

to·pel
Pronunciation: 'toe-pell
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): to·pel·inzki /-p(&-)el[ki]/
Etymology: from the mind of God, from the womb of Topel, Sharon, 1977
intransitive verb : to form poetry or as if from language robed in Swahili
transitive verb
1 : to cause a deep rumble trapped in whispers
2 : to make compositions made of letters, music or thoughts (as paper, cloth, or wood)
glued on a surface of linguistic texture

Kenny Goldsmith Interviewed

2007-06-28T00:17:00.000-04:00

via Archinect:

The idea behind concrete poetry (and it's a very interesting idea) is that it emerges around the time of tendencies toward world languages--Esperanto say. And there is a utopian idea of concrete poetry, that says, imagine a poetry that transcends language, that is a visual poetry that can be understood with maybe a key of just one or two words, that can be understood by anybody anywhere around the world. Hence creating a truly global poetry movement and that is the kind of utopian--mid-century utopian idea behind concrete poetry. And it did in fact, people were able to write very simply and very visually using very few words.

Grek

2007-05-27T10:19:00.000-04:00

via Jenny Sampirisi's Other Clutter:

Nico Vassilakis lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle. Your logic or
logic itself unsettles. Straightened lines devour folding unfolding. The
pulled stone shows no elastic. No fever in the cells. An extended surface of
accidental and haphazard cursive.

E-Poetry 2007

2007-05-27T10:11:00.000-04:00

via networked_performance:

The first event is epoetry. Everybody (or almost) that counts in digital and new media poetry was there, from all over the world : the pioneers, the big names, the about-to-become-big-names, the new emerging generation. Too many names to list !

and

Much of the work performed over the three live evening events remained rooted within the performance poetry tradition. Flash animations illustrating word play rarely manages to add anything significant to the oeuvre and certainly such works do not propose any significant shift in how a digital poetics practice might evolve. Many works presented thus failed to transcend being illustrated poems. To my mind there seems a similarity here to the dead hand that Powerpoint passes over academic presentations, with Flash functioning to banalise what might be potentially interesting textual projects and performances.

The Fruit is Actually the Durian

2007-05-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

from Scott Rettberg via Grand Text Auto:

First of all, let me point in brief to networked_performance for Simon Biggs’ very good report on the E-poetry 2007 Festival in Paris.... Rather than a more formal report, I offer you this cellphone video extravaganza — short clips of 30 seconds to a minute of many readings from the festival. Forgive the quality — it was my phone used in dark crowded rooms filled with poets drinking in the poetry, after all.

eyeyeyelighghght

2007-05-21T22:53:00.000-04:00

via Ron Silliman's blog:

A second Saroyan type that comes closer to Grenier entails poems that utilize the graphic elements of language – the poem at the top of this note is a famous instance of this. As it does there, this kind of poem works when there is some intelligible connection – it doesn’t have to be articulatable – between what is going on the page and denotative & connotative dimensions of the word at hand. Thus

eyeye
strikes me as effective precisely for the way it calls up the double-image element involved in stereoscopic vision, why humans see in 3D, whereas

lighght
just sits there on the page doing not much of anything.

&

via Nathan Austin's This Cruellest Month:

But exclusive attention to these poems' graphical components ignores — as Silliman does — their sonic dimensions. I'm not interested in disagreeing with Silliman, of course; his attention is focused on the visual by the parameters of his essay, and particularly by his comparison of Saroyan with Grenier. Rather, and nevertheless, I want to look at other ways of reading the poems to investigate them differently.

Scatterlogical Poems

2007-05-21T00:37:00.000-04:00

via Jenny Sampirisi's Other Clutter:

Jesse Patrick Ferguson is the author of four chapbooks. His visual poetry has appeared in dANDelion, GRIMM Magazine, various Peter F. Yachtclub publications (above/ground), in his chapbook catch a bird (above/ground, 2006) and in QWERTY (where he is now on the editorial board). He plays several musical instruments and aims to keep it that way.

Concrete Objectivism

2007-01-31T20:51:00.000-05:00

via Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey:

I don't know why it didn't quite consciously occur to me before, but of course Concrete Poetry has obvious affinities with Objectivist writing, which in turn of course derives from Imagism and "No ideas but in things," etc.

Constellations of Letters on a Field of Timothy

2006-08-14T20:23:00.000-04:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

The last piece I feel I've grasped the least. I see many words in it, but . . . I suspect that in the context of the entire sequence, much more of it will make sense to me. As is, it's engaging, provoking, simple/complex, full of potential.

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

2006-07-23T22:02:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-23T11:11:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-23T00:43:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-23T00:41:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-23T00:39:00.000-04:00

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"

2006-07-23T00:35:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-23T00:33:00.000-04:00

via Marko Niemi's Nurotus:

visual poems by Sami Vainikka at Nokturno.

Concrete Woman

2006-07-07T22:27:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-02T21:12:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-02T21:04:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

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.

The Limitations of Imagination

2006-06-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

via Jeffrey Side:

It could be argued that visual poetry is, indeed, semantic. I agree to a point. For instance, Ernst Gomringer's 'WIND' (which plays with associations such as the words "in" and "win" contained within the word "WIND") and Augusto de Campos's 'CODIGO' (which contains the word "God" as an anagram and alludes to "cogito ergo sum") do, indeed, operate semantically. Nevertheless, their semantic operations are extremely meagre. With 'WIND' the associations come to only two words: "win" and "in" (perhaps also the word "wind", as in to wind a clock). The same limitations can be seen in de Campos's 'CODIGO'. Apart from a reader's fleeting appreciation of the novel aspects of these poems their affects are exhausted no sooner than they are recognised.

Visual Poetry from the 1500s

2006-06-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

via PK's BibliOdyssey:

Among his many writings was an interesting collection of poetry - De Laudibus Sancte Crucis ('In Praise of the Cross') - "a collection of twenty-eight encrypted religious poems, rendered before 814 AD. He was said to be the inventor of a cyphering system of 36 lines containing 36 letters evenly spaced on a grid. In this grid, Maurus included figurative images, putting the poems in visual terms. The poem filling the cypher grid was enriched by these smaller images, as most of the letters contained within them created tiny individual poems." Thus his writings could be appreciated at least on one level by the largely illiterate populace.

A Vain Attempt: Concrete Poetry vs Visual Poetry

2006-06-03T22:45:00.000-04:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

Speaking of "concrete poetry," I recently saw two definitions of it at Dan Waber's website. They made me want to put my own two cents in about what it is. I differ from the two definers at Dan's site, and most definers of terms like "concrete poetry," in that I try to define them intelligently rather than historically--that is, by how the terms have been used by the general population, or even by the specialists in the field the term popped up in. I also (sacrilege!) ignore what coiners of terms say they mean if they ignore the meaning of the words they create their terms from.

One More Time: Defining Visual Poetry

2006-06-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

A visual poem is an artwork aesthetically dependent to a major extent on both elements that are semantically stimulating to a significant degree and elements that are directly stimulating visually to a significant degree.

Ronald Johnson, Visual and Verbal

2006-03-17T20:48:00.000-05:00

via Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey:

Jena Osman is next, talking about the visual elements in RJ's early work. Originally she saw his concrete poetry work as in service to his transcendental vision rather than being particularly concerned with the materiality of language, but then her view shifted. She shows us some images from a poem called "io and the ox-eye daisy" that was published in Finlay's magazine poor old tired horse in the 60s.

Uruguayan Masterpieces of Minimalism

2006-03-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

When I first found the work of Clemente Padín, I thought he was a [ new media | hypermedia | digital | multimedia | electronic ] artist.

Building and Toppling

2006-02-18T10:47:00.000-05:00

via S M Johnson's minus1 plus6:

I think of the words within these pieces as having a relation to a photographic process. When I take a photograph with my camera I am finding images in the world which are manipulated through selection and fine tuning of colour, contrast, etc, into the final image. In working with words I use a computer script (using Python) which outputs a number of images, based upon a source text and applies a variety of algorithmic mechanisms, that I may then select from, fine tune, and blend with other images.

The Mimeo Re-volution

2006-02-13T00:10:00.000-05:00

via Richard Lopez' Really Bad Movies:

one of hansen's specialties is mimeo-era poets and poetry, poets such as d. a. levy, tom kryss et al. so there was a levy celebration a couple of months ago at hansen's bookstore, the book collector. for the occassion a local poet's press, polymer grove, published two beautifully designed chaps of levy's work. i devoured the collection miniConcrete, which contains some of levy's vispo and concrete work.

A Few Concepts in Digital Writing

2006-02-01T22:50:00.000-05:00

via Brian Kim Stefans' Free Space Comix: the blog:

Keep in mind that very little is entirely “new” in “new media writing.” There are often examples from the analog world that explain certain principles of electronic writing even better than the electronic writing available.

e-Game as e-Lit

2006-01-29T15:52:00.000-05:00

via Brian Kim Stefans' Free Space Comix: the blog:

Isn’t it possible, though, that many hugely successful computer games — those that depend on or at least utilize storytelling conventions of narrative, character, and theme — can be seen as examples of electronic literature? And isn’t it likely that the truly significant new forms of electronic literature will prove to be (like games) so deeply interactive and procedural that it would be impossible to present them as paper-like “e-books”? The editors of First Person have gathered a remarkably diverse group of new media theorists and practitioners to consider the relationship between “story” and “game,” as well as the new kinds of artistic creation (literary, performative, playful) that have become possible in the digital environment.

Reviewing Reinhard Döhl's "Apfel"

2006-01-29T14:25:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera (certainly in response to this at dbqp):

There are a number of current visual poets who do not consider the above poem, one of the most popular visual poems of all-time, highly. So, to continue to be a Prime Annoyer in vispo circles, I've taken it upon myself to defend it. On the surface, it is merely a specimen of visual onomatopoeia, or poem whose text says what it looks like--or, if you prefer, poem whose graphic elements show what its text says. I think even those who don't think much of it would admit that it was clever and effective for its time. I think it may be more.

Visual Poertugesetry

2006-01-29T11:15:00.000-05:00

via Crag Hill's poetry scorecard:

Curious about the vigorous concrete/visual poetry movement in the world? Curious about the strong, ongoing tradition of concrete/visual poetry in Portugal in particular?

A Pen-Case with Inkwell

2006-01-29T01:45:00.000-05:00

via Serkan IŞIN's zinhar somut ve görsel şiir galerisi:

Generally in concrete poetry each letter is considered as units, and the pauses and subscribing of the coescalences that reflect the whole image of the poem. The aim is partly placing the letters, words in the spaces on page in concrete poetry, typography and visualization. If you glance at Campos' and Günersel's works you will find out what I meant. Visuality works in two layers, first is at the seeing eye, second is at the localization of imagination which is reading and the things intended to make read according to each other. This is an energetic field and the eye goes into there with the aim of reading poetry. Look from a distance to the poem.

Defining Electronic Writing

2006-01-29T01:42:00.000-05:00

via Brian Kim Stefans' Free Space Comix: the blog:

If I were to come up with a fortune cookie answer to the question, I would say that it is any form of writing that takes advantage of the possibilities afforded by digital technology – such as the internet, or graphics programs such as Illustrator or Photoshop, or animation / audio / interactive programs such as Flash – in their creation and presentation.

Creating a Mathemaku

2006-01-28T21:16:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

One of my characteristic sort of tropes occurred to me--use of some word having to do with thought processes as a verb for some physical action. The result I like best so far is "another year/ understanding/ up into/ a fresh order of/glaze and scent." I'm not at all satisfied with any of the remainders I've come up with.

New Mexican American Poetry

2006-01-28T18:34:00.000-05:00

via Kaz Maslanka's Mathematical Poetry:

There are four axes in this Cartesian system: the first axis is that of east and west the next axis being north and south the third axis being up and down and the last axis being inward and outward. Mathematically speaking the point described uses the analytic geometric midpoint formula to define the midpoint in each of the four axes. Metaphorically speaking The point described is at the center of everything and nothing.

From Mathematical to Visual Poetry

2006-01-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

via Kaz Maslanka's Mathematical Poetry:

One way it functions mathematically as a visual paradigm for a physics tenant of kinematics. Notice a paradigm is not a metaphor it is a simile. The Second way it functions is mathematical vispo because it performs math operations on text. The bottom line is that I would not call it mathematical poetry as such because we are not performing mathematical operations on words as meaning with the intent for connotation.

A Call for Vispoets from the Northwest (and Southeast)

2006-01-28T17:35:00.000-05:00

via Ted Warnell's mo'po:

The theme will be Northwest Concrete & Visual Poetry. This is a call to submit work toward that end. The eventual product of this document will be on CD. In attempting to take a snapshot of our diverse and mutual alphabetic attraction, I ask that you forward this call to those whose work I'm not familiar with. The geographic scope I've chosen should encompass Calgary & Vancouver(and outlying), Montana, Oregon, Washington, & Alaska [and Idaho].

The Deep Focus of Nico Vassilakis

2006-01-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

One (of the many) things poetry (all poetry, any poetry, be it concrete, visual, sound, or academically sanctioned) should do is make us look at language in new ways. Because looking at language in new ways allows us to look at the world (exterior and interior) in new ways. I have never seen anything by Nico Vassilakis that didn't make me look at langue in a new way--and I've looked at a lot of work by Nico Vassilakis.

Three Ways of Looking at a r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

2006-01-23T21:28:00.000-05:00

via Brian Kim Stefans' Free Space Comix:

Further adventures in the one-letter-at-a-time pieces, Flash setting of masterpieces of world literature as simple movies. Here is a setting of a wacky e.e. cummings’ poem, spaces, tabs and all.

Have You Thought of "Shift & Switch" Recently?

2006-01-09T20:37:00.000-05:00

via rob mclennan's blog:

Impressive, too, that the editors would include as much visuals as they have, since visuals in trade books seem few and far between (the production values of "Cantextualities: Contemporary Visual Poetry in Canada," the visual poetry issue of Open Letter edited by Jars Balan [10th series, number 6, summer 1999], was unusually bad). Unfortunately, very little of the visual pieces do anything for me, and even for me, who knows so little of visual works, I feel as though I've seen so much of this type of work before in the works of older Canadian writers, including bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Judith Copithorne, bill bissett, jwcurry and others, but for a piece here or there by Max Middle, or derek beaulieu's "For Brian" piece (otherwise, I know for a fact that derek, one of the most visible of the younger visual poets in Canada, can do better; we will know for sure when his book of visuals from Talonbooks comes out in the spring…). Windsor, Ontario writer gustave morin, as well, has produced some extremely interesting visual works, but unfortunately, there is little evidence of it here, and Jason Le Heup, who used to self-produced odd chapbooks of visuals when he still lived in Vancouver, included text as his submission (he's been threatening to produce a full manuscript of visual pieces for years, but so far, nothing seems to have surfaced).

Shift & Switch & Controversy

2006-01-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

via Sharon Harris' I Love You 365:

The reviews are starting to circulate, and they're mixed. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet -- the book is still very new, and after all, I'm a biased contributor. It's a brave project and its editors and publisher should be applauded for taking chances on new and "untested" work. The book might be a bit overwhelming. In most Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, we're used to seeing one or two token "experimental" works for spice, but rarely an entire volume of different avant-guarde pieces (er, a spice rack?).

Bait & Switch & Shift & Pivot & Repeat & Review

2006-01-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

via a.raw's 537neon:

Early public reactions to the anthology have included frequent reference to the volume of visual poetry and graphic documentation of poetic projects. You'll find Chris Fickling's textual translations of found art, Jeremy McLeod's printer poetry, and gustave morin's treated found collage. There's an excerpt from Matthew Hollett's digital poetry speechballoon, a still from the interactive Flash project (go play now!!); its font-play reminds me of Paul Chan experiments.

Guerilla Vispo, Part Two

2006-01-08T20:09:00.000-05:00

via Serkan IŞIN at zinhar:

So what is "life" for a visual poet? Among the thousands and billions of images, words, letters a visual poem is an accident which happened accidently but consciously. So it is some kind of a semiotic accident, low in probability for the designer or for television programmers, logo designers, commercial graphic ads artists, game designers, high in possibility which is manipulated, found or assambled by the visual poet, for life, in-life, against life.

The Other Side of the Pond

2006-01-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

via Kaz Maslanka's Mathematical Poetry:

Bob Grumman has recently posted another mathpoem worth thinking about. Its history goes back to early March 2005 when Bob was blogging about his version of the Basho haiku which concerns a frog jumping into an ancient pond.

Portmanteau Punctuation

2006-01-03T21:28:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

But yesterday, when writing an entry for this blog, I used an embedded exclamation mark (!), which was not all that exciting a thing to do, except that it made me remember the interrobang, and suddenly see how convenient the following "parenclamation mark" would be:

"Writing to be Seen" Seen

2006-01-03T21:26:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

Dan Waber was wondering about Writing To Be Seen, the anthology of visio-textual art that Crag Hill and I edited a while back. I realized we have no website (that I know of) for it. It should have one, even though it is more or less unavailable at this time.

Bill Keith on Safari

2006-01-03T21:23:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

Now to the first poet in the anthology, the late Bill Keith, very-much-missed friend and important force in more than one art, but especially visual poetry.

Visiosculptural Poetry and its Neighbors

2006-01-03T21:21:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

Below is another great visual poem--visiosculptural poem, I should say, as it's a photograph of a work in wood--by Kathy Ernst. It's one of her pieces in Writing To Be Seen. Each contributor has twenty pieces, plus any extras they may have included in the Artist's Statement each was asked for.

Bait & Switch & Shift & Pivot & Repeat

2006-01-03T21:15:00.000-05:00

via Daniel f. Bradley's fhole:

silliman reviews Shift & Switch – rightly pointing out one big flaw in the book, most of the visual poetry is published in this anthology is crap. it is pretty funny that i agree with him on this (but for different reason), because silliman is usually very wrong about visual poetry.

Bait & Switch & Shift & Pivot

2006-01-03T21:12:00.000-05:00

via Ron Silliman's Silliman's Blog:

The work in Shift & Switch is broader than that, happily. Reg Johanson, Glen Lowry & Nathalie Stephens are all poets new to me whose work I now know I have to seek out. But, combined with some of the dicier side-effects of computer typesetting – the names of poets in both the table of contents & contributors’ notes are difficult to read, having been printed in a pixilated gray, AND combined with the anthology’s weakest element – three uncoordinated, repetitious introductions by its editors – the heavy sprinkling of vispo gives the overall project a haphazard, makeshift air that does a disservice to the book as a whole.

Intermultimedia

2005-12-26T00:13:00.000-05:00

via Dan Visel at If:Book:

Higgins recognized this – he was perhaps as strong a critic as an artist – and in 1964, he coined the term "intermedia" to describe what he & his fellow Fluxus artists were doing: going between media, taking aspects from established forms to create new ones. An example of this might be visual, or concrete poetry, of which that of Jackson Mac Low or Ian Hamilton Finlay – both of whom Higgins published – might be taken as representative.

Chronotext

2005-12-25T23:20:00.000-05:00

via Loreto Martin's Blog:

Ariel Malka is a designer and programmer from Tel-Aviv, working freelance on a wide range of new-media projects. Occasionally teaching at Camera Obscura School of Art, he spends most of his spare time developing the concept of chronotext.

Parenthetically, Basho

2005-12-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

via Bob Grumman's poe-X-cetera:

So, because haiku is one of the main subjects of this blog, and because I've devoted several entries to the pond haiku, I thought I'd post it. It's pretty simple to solve. Just think ripples.

Guerilla Vispo

2005-12-23T19:43:00.000-05:00

via Serkan IŞIN at zinhar:

Visual Poetry is the probability of the impossible. It is not a some kind of "trick" that has been stolen from the Master's studio or some kind of "techique" learned from the poets. While holding uncompromising sides of "litterature", visual poetry promises us some kind of "can-not-be-written or spoken" mixed with "can-not-be-drawn-or-shown".

Invisible Notes

2005-12-23T19:38:00.000-05:00

viaPeter Ciccariello’s Invisible Notes:

Peter Ciccariello is a visual artist and writer living in Providence, Rhode Island.

An Anthology of Spanish Visual Poetry

2005-11-18T23:23:00.000-05:00

via VisualObxectual:

A editorial Marenostrum publica dentro da súa colección «Clásicos Marenostrum», dirixida polo crítico Santos Sanz Villanueva, unha «Antología de la Poesía Experimental Española» (1963-2004), con selección e edición do investigador Félix Morales Prado, que rescata do silencio un xénero lírico tan descoñecido como malentendido con nomes fundamentais como Francisco Pino, Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Joan Brossa ou Julio Campal.

The Last Text

2005-11-18T23:21:00.000-05:00

via Tony Trehy's blog:

Tomorrow the last exhibition of the 2005 Text Festival opens at Bury Art Gallery with a new neon instalation by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Nannucci.

Tell Me More, Tallmo

2005-11-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

I think this describes an ideal state that a healthy percentage of concrete poetry works towards--to be immediately apprehended in the way a road sign or (since we're here in the land of navigational iconography) a navigational icon is. Slipping in under the threshold of awareness, the twisting scalpel of subverted meaning can strike that much deeper, and be that much more effective. Here, I have a better idea, how about if I let Karl-Erik Tallmo show you what I mean.

The Eternal Struggle

2005-11-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

via fat red ant:

To further let him off the hook I confessed that as much as I want to, I don't think I really get Concrete Poetry. I try, I seek it out, I enjoy much of it, and think I even generate some, but I can't say with any certainty that I "get it."

An Umbrella Closes and Opens

2005-11-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

via Jesse Glass and ahadada books:

Judith Hoffberg's Umbrella has provided a major resource for all things related to alternative and experimental art--with a special focus on artists' books, mail art, and visual and concrete poetry--for 28 years now.

A Few Words on and Pieces by Lora-Totino

2005-11-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

via foxbase:

Arrigo Lora Totino is a leader of the concrete poetry movement in Italy. He is director of the review MODULO, which for its first number published a comprehensive international anthology of concrete poetry. He helped establish the Museum of Contemporary Poetry in Turin along with Carlo Belloli.

The Art of Irving Weiss

2005-10-31T21:34:00.000-05:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

But many are tantalizingly close, and all of them resonate with the mindset I find myself in when I am composing concrete poetry. The tinkerer holds things in their hands and fiddles with the moving parts and futzes with the places where hidden moving parts might be. Fiddling with the conceptual knobs on bits of language is what helps me see opportunities for making concrete poetry. Visual Voices is nothing short of a tour de force in fiddling with the knobs of the poem as a print object. It is so good at what it does that reading it has the effect of gently reminding a habituated brain how to see the knobs and hooks and buttons again.

Three Examples of Linguistic Accretion

2005-10-30T23:19:00.000-05:00

via Jeremy P. Bushnell's raccoon: notes and scavengings:

Been thinking about more examples of linguistic accretion:

The Poetry of Subtraction versus the Poetry of Accretion

2005-10-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

via Jeremy P. Bushnell's raccoon: notes and scavengings:

I can think of a few literary works that use the aesthetic strategy of subtraction (Radi Os, Ronald Johnson's erased Paradise Lost; Srikanth Reddy's work-in-progress, which allegedly erases Kurt Waldheim's biography) but I'm having trouble thinking of ones that work consciously with the strategy of accretion in a way comparable to the Washburn assemblages I talked about last time.

A Brief History of Maurice Lemaître, Lettrist

2005-10-30T19:39:00.000-05:00

via hands_tied:

Maunce Lemaître, born in Paris. Reads for I'Ecole des Arts et Métiers and I'Ecole des Travaux Publics. After taking part in the Liberation of Paris, he starts studying philosophy in the Sorbonne.

Comics and Visual Poetry

2005-10-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

via Austin Kleon:

Neil Gaiman was on Studio 360 a couple weeks ago, talking about reading poetry in relation to comics: “I learned so much using words and pictures and captions from some of the most concrete poets, because poetry is all about economy, and it’s about reducing things down, and you’re seeing how much freight you can actually give words....”

Kenneth Koch was a poet who loved comics.

Poetry in Fusion

2005-10-30T19:07:00.000-05:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications:

Okay, this surreal joke to announce you that this book by Paul De Vree is one of these historical publications you can only regret it is not republished. The title is "Poetry in Fusion; on visual, concrete and phonetic poetry" and was published by "Pages for Poetry" in Lier Belgium in 1968.

Pages from the Chaosmos

2005-10-30T18:59:00.000-05:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications:

Amongst the mail of today I found this limited edition (10 copies, number 4/10) with Vispo by Pete Spence, edited by IMP Press, publishing vehicle of Ross Priddle.

Links to Digital Writing

2005-10-30T18:56:00.000-05:00

via blogotacito (initially via Jim Andrews):

Here are five links to the sites of individuals who are currently producing
work relevant to digital writing or poetics. Some you may have encountered,
some not. And a link to a piece I did last year.

Visual Poet as Sound Poet

2005-10-30T18:46:00.000-05:00

via rob mclennan's blog:

On Saturday, September 24th, a group of nearly two dozen of us were treated to a rare and important reading by Ottawa poet and publisher jwcurry, the first in his Hit'N'Run Lecture Series, called "MESSAGIO GALORE take II," framed as "a performance by jwcurry of sound & related textu(r)al materials with additional vocal aid by Max Middle," and held in the vacated bookstore space underneath his Chinatown apartment on Somerset Street West (see also post-reading reactions by John MacDonald, Wanda O'Connor and jealousies by Daniel f. Bradley, who couldn't make it).

Nico Vassilakis Interviewed

2005-10-28T22:25:00.000-04:00

via Nick Piombino's fait accompli:

Text itself is an amalgam of units of meaning. Words, right. As you stare at text you notice the visual aspects of letters. As you stare further meaning loses its hierarchy and words discorporate and the alphabet itself begins to surface. Shapes, space relations, visual associations emerge as you delve further. Alphabetic bits or parts or snippets of letters can create an added visual vocabulary amidst the very text you're reading.

The Art of Vassilakis

2005-10-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

via Crag Hill's poetry scorecard:

You can't tell me the work hasn't changed your way of seeing language at the letter level, at the subconscious layer before letter, the phoneme, the phrase, the psycho-utterance, the space, the spice, the species of language.

The Subtle Visual Poetry of Sharon Harris

2005-10-17T23:46:00.000-04:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

When I started this site I was genuinely pleased when I started getting contacted by, and receiving submissions from, many of the artists I was already familiar with. That's a beautiful thing, and goes a long way towards affirming the validity of an undertaking. The work of Sharon Harris represents, for me, another beautiful thing. It's a whole new kind of pleasure when, in the course of doing some extended research (which is really the reason I started down this particular road, as a way to document and keep track of some specific areas of search and research), you're lucky enough to have lovely examples of the very thing you're researching brought to your door and slipped in over the transom.

Bob Grenier and the Poetry of the Hand

2005-10-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

via Ron Silliman's Blog, tho Tony Trehy's words:

Chiming with the theoretical position of the Text Festival, while rooted in the Poetry Context and often surprisingly lyrical, Bob [Grenier] sees his recent work as moving into the interstices between poetry and visual art. The reader can step over the fine line to simplistic ‘solving the puzzle’ and miss the thrill of the deeper experience of, for instance, AFTER/NOON/SUN/SHINE or the absolute approximation of birdsong in words.

Meeting Robert Grenier at the Airport

2005-10-05T18:35:00.000-04:00

via Tony Trehy's Tony Trehy blog

Earlier in the week, I had the pleasure of meeting Robert Grenier off the plane from San Francisco at Manchester Airport. Although having exchanged photos so we would recognise each other I thought to be on the safe side I would print out one of his recent drawn poems and stand with it opposite the arrival gate like people do with notices such as “TAXI – MR SMITH”. And something quite unexpected happened: virtually everyone who came through the gate paused to read the poem (without realising that it was a poem of course).

Bob Cobbing via Bill Keith via Reed Altemus via Me

2005-10-03T22:23:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

A catalogue sent to me by the late Bill Keith published by Ceolfrith Press on the occasion of the Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum Retrospective at the Sunderland Arts Center in November 1974.

Bob Cobbing with a Handful of Words

2005-10-03T22:21:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Bob Cobbing, from "Suesequence" 1970

Definining Concrete Poetry

2005-09-30T19:21:00.000-04:00

via marginalia:

According to the wikipedia’s definition, concrete poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.

A Review of a Review of Digital Poetry

2005-09-30T19:17:00.000-04:00

David Han via Future Cinemas:

Poetry-films have a long history, dating back to the earliest avant-garde films. In Poetry-Films and Film Poems, William C. Wees writes: “… a number of avant-garde film and video makers have created a synthesis of poetry and film that generates associations, connotations and metaphors neither the verbal nor the visual text would produce on its own.”

Visual Poetry in Textbooks

2005-09-30T19:09:00.000-04:00

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I have personal news to report today: two days ago I got an e.mail from a representative of a college textbook called, Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing, Sixth Edition, by Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell, and published by Wasworth College Publishers, asking for permission to reprint the poem below, my "Mathemaku No. 10."

Colorful Altered Book Pages

2005-09-30T19:05:00.000-04:00

via Sara Nicole's A Little Nonsense:

This is a Picasa collage of some pages from my altered book, which began in the spring as a project for a class on collage and visual poetry. I have been working on it in my spare time since, and I'm considering producing and selling posters of the pages. So, for my research, please tell me, would you buy one? And what would you be willing to pay?

An Exhibition of Brazilian Visual Poetry

2005-09-30T18:59:00.000-04:00

via O Mundo de Claudia:

Here is the site for the online Brazilian Visual Poetry Exhibition.

This one is by Bené Fonteles (it says "discover the other"):

Description of a Reading of Description

2005-09-25T13:55:00.000-04:00

via Chris Rizzo's In Place of In Place of Chairs:

I did have the opportunity to take a night off last night to read with Geof Huth at the Red Square. Another intriguing performance (perhaps perfromance?) by Geof who, along with a visual aid (chapbook form) presented poetries, from a poetry of silent inscription to a poetry of sounded description.

The Copy Art Visual Poems of Bob Cobbing

2005-09-24T19:47:00.000-04:00

via Reed Altemus' Tonerworks

The late Bob Cobbing was one of the great visual poets in any language probably the greatest English language visual poet ever. At the end of his career he made extensive use of photocopiers using them as the cheap alternative press as well as a platform for experimental visual poetry and copy art. This is one of his book works in its entirety.

Loiez Deniel's Butterfly

2005-09-24T19:32:00.000-04:00

via The-Hold

Loiez Deniel joined the vlogosphere recently and has pretty much blown us all away with his visual poetry.

Frottage and David-Baptiste Chirot

2005-09-20T21:09:00.000-04:00

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry

Others have written about his work with more eloquence than I
am capable of, he gives a wicked interview , and he's got his own blog
chock full of visual poetry and two essays well worth the reading--UNREADABILITY On the Road from Alexia to Zaum , and, Necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention --so I'll just step
out of the way and do what I feel most comfortable doing, serving up some choice
examples.

Asemic Writing from Luna Park Magazine

2005-09-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

The list of names that collaborated to the zine dazzles me. Anyway I scanned the back cover, so you can see for yourself.

The Logogrammes and Logoglaces of Christian Dotrement

2005-09-18T18:50:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Even the logogrammes were quite ephemeral. He often realized these "on the road", while traveling, locked them in lockers at rail way stations and just left them behind.

Reworking Ronald Johnson

2005-09-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

via neverhappened.org

This is a rework of Ronald Johnson's eyelevel. Johnson was an American Concrete Poet who worked out of the Bay area in San Francisco in the 60's. Concrete Poets were concerned with not just syntax and grammar but more the constellation of words with a spatial syntax, The basis for reworking this piece was to make a sound work painting, or a painting you 'hear' rather than see or read.

Asemic Magazine

2005-09-12T19:46:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Another zine production of Tim Gaze in Australia.

This is issue 2,1.

Irrationalist Writings

2005-09-12T19:45:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Another zine production by Tim Gaze.

A collection of what he calls "Irrationalist Writings"

Gazing at Tim

2005-09-12T19:43:00.000-04:00

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Tim Gaze is an artistic millipede, keen on experimental writing, automatic drawings, very fond of Cobra and Outsider art, interested in languages he drove this so far he even learnt Dutch. He also produces many magazines as you will discover in the next pages.