dbqp: visualizing poetics: December 2009

The Last Twenty-Five Pwoermds

While working on ntst, my collected pwoermds, today--and not yet finishing with the book--I noticed that the book included exactly 725 pwoermds (a few of them repeated), and I decided that 750 was a better number for that book and that a set of twenty-five would be a good way to finish the book, since five is the mystical number of my life, and 25 = 5 x 5, so I created 25 new pwoermds, designed to be a bit more Anglo-Saxon and a bit less scrutable than those in the rest of the book:

dwandle

brindering

glinger

dlont

indermal

quinmil

andermost

grelp

bdersion

splurl

brendlemas

plulge

lelted

stug

horted

reremiddle

marstrel

knervle

gnerbite

lorsion

rhonses

persnorvid

vrisreal

smunge

hodgamary

ecr. l'inf.

Dec

bindithoughts 18

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The Huthhold Living Room on Christmas Morning (25 Dec 2009)

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After another grueling Boxing Day, which allowed scant time for blogging, I am now back to writing about issues poetic and various.

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The rule about writing bindithoughts is not to start them late at night or without a raft of notes to work from. I’m breaking both rules tonight because I somehow lost my notes on this computer that otherwise saves everything I ever see or smell.

Dec

Before the Ice, There Were Starlings

Jack Kimball, "xmas09" (Dec 2009)

My Christmas traditions are set. Hours opening presents followed by hours reading, a fine but not extravagant meal, and a posting about some kind of verbo-visuaul digiteratum by Jack Kimball, something with a little soul and darkness to it, like a powerful grappa over a delicate tongue.

This year, I thought Jack might not make something for me to steal in time. I kept checking his blog, Pantaloons, but nothing appeared.

Dec

Waxing Wordy on Christmas Eve

Geof Huth, "Waxwords 5" (23 Dec 2009)

There is nothing particularly reminiscent of Christmas in this visual poem, this little piece of faux text, this little lie we call asemic writing, but to balance things out Christmas sometimes appears where least expected. Nancy, the kids, and I watched the film "Love Actually" tonight, which is a Christmas film of sorts, though truly just a film concerning the various manifestations of love and how these hurt and help us.

Dec

The Letters and What They Let Her Do

Satu Kaikkonen, yvonna (2009)

Last month, Satu Kaikkonen, the most prolific of the Finnish visual poets, sent Nancy and me the smallest of books, a little purple-colored affair, twelve pages long, and carrying forth only seven one-letter visual poems. The presentation of the booklet, which was sewn together with regular pink sewing thread, was perfect for these little creatures of hers, which she call LetterVispoems, visual poems focused on not just the letter but decidedly on a letter.

Dec

Yesterday, My Son Asked Me What Those Birds Were Called. I Told Him They Were Starlings

Everything's hiding from me even Everybody Funny, the blog that, I have just realized tonight, Mike Busam runs. A blog, I am reminded, is more of a prism through which to see the room, and the light is slightly bent and split open into colors as we do. To put it another way, if we spent our entire lives looking through only our own eyes, it would be as if we were blind. We would miss more than we'd see.

Or so it seems to me after just a brief swim through Mike's blog.

Dec

In Place of a Thought

ecr. l'inf.

Dec

Welcome to the Waxwords

Geof Huth, "Waxwords 1" (20 Dec 2009)

The ways of inspiration are mysterious indeed. I'm am always prepared to create something, but I'm not always ready to create what I want to create. Today proved proved this point. I was productive during the day. Did much reading, worked on the layout for my upcoming collected poems (which now goes by the name ntst), created a couple dozen nanopoems, and even created a few visual poems of the asemic variety.

Dec

Fingered Words

Geof Huth, "nigh the nigh" (18 Dec 2009)

A bit of driving tonight, in the dark. A bit of back and forth in the dark. Six hours of driving after work, and now we're back home, with our son. The TV is on. Children returning to the fold, and how the night flattens everything out and folds us into it. Nigh the night.

Geof Huth, "th'last line of it" (18 Dec 2009)

Not quite, never quite, the last line, no last line of it, but the thought of it. A finish. Something we cannot achieve.

Dec

When We Age and Remember

Postcard (Reverse) from Dees Stribling to Geof and Nancy Huth (25 Nov 2009)

My friend Dees, it appears, is one year and fifteen days younger than I. Another Gemini. Now that I've worked that out, by evaluating the evidence above (the date on the card plus the indication of my age), it seems to me that I knew this all along, knew he was a man from the first half of June.

That is of little importance to me.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience