dbqp: visualizing poetics: January 2010

The African Burial Ground and Symbology

On October 3, 2008, I visited the African Burial Ground National Historic Site in Lower Manhattan. The site was of interest to me as one of the contemporary examples of semiotic monumental art, monuments created as memorials certainly but also as texts, and as texts that are both of words and symbols and of visible shapes and architectural structures. As an example of architecture, the African Burial Ground is a structure of polished black granite, one that reflects its surroundings. That is a message I could never forget as cars streamed by me the entire time I was there.

One of the features I enjoyed most about this site were the religious and funerary symbols etched into a wall that curved around the central floor of the burial ground.

Jan

The Dozenth Try, and the Eleven Before It

I am clearly a poet, which I prove by the evidence I present above, twelve of the thirteen poems I wrote today. (I used a pencil for the thirteenth, and its last line was "Ere thou shalt," which I believe also proves my status as a poet.)

Gary Barwin is clearly a poet, and he proves this by writing poems on slender slips of greyish paper, just as I do.

Jan

Does Poetry Lose Value When We Look at it a Second Time?

A friend of Nancy's and mine emailed a question to us and a couple of other friends, and we responded to the question over the course of today. The question concerned whether or not we ever believed a poem of ours had some spark of originality and quality only to decide, on later examination, that there was nothing good or valuable in the poem at all. Our friend had begun to experience this and wondered if this had happened to us in the past and whether it was persistent.

Jan

Zombie Eyeland

1.

The eyes are the only white

From within that night

The eyes

Are the only white

We see

2.

The zombies stare

Because they cannot

See who they are

Cannot see

They cannot see how

They push

The grinding of the mill around

In a circle

In a circle

Counterclockwise

In a circle of walking

They cannot see

How they pour

Each basket of sugar cane down

Into the grinding

Into the grinding

3.

Jan

ntst: a continuation

For the past few days, I've been working on the text of my next book. And I have to use the word "text," because what I'm working on is the layout of the book, but it is also the manuscript of the book. As I work on the book, I remember other poems, tucked here and there in my life, in my memory, in my house. And I pull them out and put them in. The text has grown to 775 words, still not the longest book of pwoermds ever, which honor belongs to the marvelous Finn Karri Kokko.

Jan

sansounds

I usually announce a publication from dbqp officially on the date of publication, but I let it slip my mind since the release of NF Huth's sansound coincided with her latest reading. Details of the publication are on the dbqplist blog, but US$4 sent to me or (better yet) something in trade will get you a copy until they run out.

Jan

Reeding

I read for sound and let the sense take care of itself. I read for shape and wait for the hair to rise on the nape of my only neck.

The world is surface to us more than depth. We are surface dwellers. So we need that surface to shine and shimmer, its hum and rumble. We wait until something rises to the surface before we know it's safe to dive under the water.

"On the unread page of water," our eyes glide.

Jan

Three for Thee

Thus far, Redfoxpress of Achill Island, Ireland, run by Francis Van Maele (an expatriate Belgian man) and Antic-Hay (an expatriate South Korean female)—and by their mere union serving as evidence of the internationalist focus of mailart, visual poetry, and neo-Fluxus—have released thirty-seven tiny books of visual poetry and other manner of verbo-visual expression in their “C’est mon dada” series.

Jan

The Poet, The Dog, The Train, The Sound

Tim Huth's Film of Paula Roland's "Disappeared" (a Layered and Cut Monotype Installation) as the Audience Talks at R&F Paints after a Cadmium Text Reading featuring NF Huth and Sam Truitt (16 January 2010)

My son Tim was the videographer for Nancy and Sam's reading last Saturday, and unbeknownst to me he began to capture something like found audio-visual data. He took two films of Paula Roland's quite fantastic piece "Disappeared" as a large crowd of people spoke around him.

Jan

Cut-Grass Illumination

NF Huth (AKA Nancy Huth) Preparing for Her Reading, Kingston, New York (16 January 2010)

At some point, I realized that Nancy's reading this past Saturday was the first reading she had ever done without me on the bill too, and it was good to have the opportunity to sit back and enjoy the job she did.

Nancy is not much like me at a reading. She is quite and shockingly clear, belllike in her clarity. I always know each word she's saying.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience