dbqp: visualizing poetics: May 2007

Page 1115, the Centerfold, and the Sweet Promise of Errata

Some days, I look forward to my retirement, when I hope to be living in New Mexico, close enough to Sedona, Arizona, that I can stop by to see Carol Stetser from time to time and watch her create her xerographic visual poems. For the time being, though, I’ll have to satisfy myself by finding a xero-booklet in my mailbox from Carol when my day is turning towards the providential. Discovering a book like her green-covered toner-splattered booklet, The Meaning of Words, there would be one of those days of good fortune.

Carol Stetser, The Meaning of Words, pages 5 & 6

The structure of this book is simple but musical. It takes place in three movements, with the opening movement as the most complex.

May

An Introduction to Præcisio

A message from the minimalist poet endwar about a couple examples of præcisio led me to recall the columns I wrote dedicated to the subject in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This strange obsession with a figure of speech and action still continues, but all I have to show for my trouble is the past. So herewith is the first præcisio essay I wrote. I present this with the strange spellings (“thot” for “thought”; “&” for “and”) that were common in my writing at the time.

May

A Seattle Visual Poetry Show from 2002

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

Nico Vassilakis sent me some photographs, the other day, of pieces exhibited at a visual poetry show he put on in Seattle back in 2002. I thought it might be interesting just to review a small portion of that show.

Nancy Burr

Something of a prepared text by Nancy Burr, this visual poem stretches and twists some text into rubbery shapes.

mIEKAL aND, “pollination – fertility – transference”

Three intertwined meanings for one glyph created by aND.

May

lightnigh

May

Imagining the Woods around Me (A Thirty-First Letter to a Young, Imaginary Visual Poet)

Caterpillars, Caroga Lake, New York (14 June 2005)

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

This weekend every year, my family heads out to this modest camp* on East Caroga Lake, the lesser lens of this spectacle lake, rests just behind me—heavy, cold, and dark. We stay here, surrounded by people in other camps, but keeping mostly to ourselves. We read, we write, we watch movies, and when the water is warm enough we swim through the murky waters of the lake.

May

The Minimalism of Everyday Life

As a birthday gift to myself, ever the minimalist, I’m announcing that Dan Waber and Jennifer Hill-Kaucher’s Paper Kite Press has just released my most recent “book,” Out of Character, a series of 25 minimalist visual poems (25 being an important number to me).

May

Homage to Aram Saroyan

On this Magic Day, I was unintentionally reminded of an old poem of mine by Gary Barwin in his comment from a post of mine now a few days old. I've never really created an acceptable final version of this poem, but its structure recalls the geometric structure of the word "eye" presented in his comment.

May

Another's Reading

Dan Waber and Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, proprietors of kite tail press and Paper Kite Press, will be giving a reading in western New York in a few weeks. This may be my first announcement of a reading I won’t be participating in, but I’d like to encourage people to attend—and, by coincidence, I’ll be in Buffalo for work that day (and overnight), so I’ll be attending as well.

May

Hope and Pear

Never wait. If you will, you will be too late.

Tonight, I returned to a webpage showing some examples of Basque visual poetry (apparently only from the Spanish side of Euskadi), only to find that most of the images had disappeared from the page. I was too busy or lazy tonight to read the Spanish text, which is easy enough to read. But I did find a poem of absolute punnishing simplicity, and I felt compelled to bring a little attention to it.

May

eyeye + lighght + (twelve x twelve) = today

Of matters visual and aural

Today, Ron Silliman posted to his blog one of his most perceptive entries, one that compared the work of two of my favorite minimalist poets, Aram Saroyan and Robert Grenier. For the full discussion, read the entry.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience