dbqp: visualizing poetics

I’ve been digging through the past this week, pulling boxes out of my third-floor closet to find little printed memories. I store my neat piles of boxes in the closet right up to the door. This solution uses storage space efficiently, but it’s a disaster in terms of access. I’ve labeled each box and stacked the boxes in a particular order, so I can find what I’m looking for—assuming I know what I want.

The other day, I went in search of the little-known issue of jwcurry’s zine Industrial Sabotage, the issue focused on pornographic visual poetry.

A typographical issue unique to the past century is the management of moving text.

In what direction should the text move? Up or down? Left or right

And what does it mean in English if the text moves to the right? away from the trained movement of the eye across the screen.

Christopher Fritton has once again transformed his teacher's assistant office at the University of Maine, Orono, into a small gallery: 107 Neville. This time he has brought together Toronto artist Nadja Sayej and Minnesota visual poet Scott Helmes in an exhibition entitled "independently developing geometry."

Scott Helmes, "a poem for 3 voices" (2005)

The two artists' works fit together quite well, both exhibiting an interest with the line and its intersections.

A week from the day most people will read this entry, "Infinity," "an exhibition of visual poetry and artwork built on/from/around words and letters," curated by Jamey Graham and Melissa Shields, will open at Harvard, followed by an online opening a few hours later. The Cambridge opening will happen on Thursday, March 3, 2005, at 7 pm in the Dudley House (Lehman Hall) Common Room, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

just a piece of calligraphy?

Geof Huth, “still slow soft” (30 Jan 2005)

or a typographical bauble?

Geof Huth, “aove” (2003)

if ever?

ecr. l’inf.

Hilton New York, Room 3213, New York, New York

My life was far too hectic today, which is a bit strange since today is a holiday for state workers. But I had to work today at the Association of Towns conference, advising town government officials about records management and giving a presentation on information security. During my many small breaks, I spent time with my family.

Most importantly, during my longest break, we had lunch with the visual writer Roy Arenella and his wife Martine.

Hilton New York, Room 3213, New York, New York

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates,” a giant installation of orange poles holding up orange curtains along every trail in New York’s Central Park at the moment, has nothing at all to do with visual poetry, or even with language, but I find it worthwhile to mention since it has captured the imagination of so many.1 I do not mean to imply that everyone likes this piece of art.

emphathize

The snows come, and they fade away. Snow is followed by rain followed by snow. There is too much warmth for February, then the days turn to bitter cold.

Today the cold returned with some ferocity, yet I found exposed in my backyard one page of the snowglyph I deposited there last month. The aleatoric process of nature had revealed but a part of the poem, reducing the text to a fragment that is both visually balanced and full of allusion.

In my profession as an archivist, I often talk to people about electronic records: what protections to include in electronic recordkeeping systems, how to maintain and provide access to the records, how to preserve these records. A few times a year, I fly to some part of the country and talk about electronic records. During these conversations, archivists often talk to me about imaging paper records (what we sometimes call “digitizing”).