Stones at the Reception for Robert Grenier's Language Objects: Letters in Space, 1970-2013 (Brooklyn, 19 May 2013)

The word comes rough out of the body. A wind. Constriction. Friction makes the sound. We all hate speech because it forces us to believe we are human, because we are forced into the human horde. The only way to control it, to control the word, is to write it. To draw it.

Last night, I attended the opening reception for a retrospective of Robert Grenier's poetry at Southfirst in Brooklyn. The show went by the name "Language Objects, Letters in Space, 1970-2013," and it included everything after his first book of poetry, Dusk Road Games. Poetry, an essay, an edited set of poetry by Larry Eigner, one photograph, a letter, some archival materials (notebooks with poems wrawn into double-page spreads and across the physical gutters of the books)--yet this was an art show.

For many reasons, Grenier is my touchstone poet. In so many ways, he inhabits my interests. (Although, I admit, not in all.) He is a massive minimalist, a maximinimalist, a masculinist maker of micropoems that build into giant works, sometimes works of such massive size that we cannot well understand their extent. And he is a visual poet, one who grew into that state later in life but landed there tenaciously and has set up house, even though he does not wander in visual poetry circles, though his imagination is not that of the main herd of us. He is a worker of an idea all the way. As his namesake Robert Lax, he grew out of sentences into words, but then he grew further, into a realm of spidery letters that formed words if you worked hard enough to read them. If you tried to read them.

He is commonly the poet of four-word poems, always short words, sometimes with words breaking across the line. He is a poet of patience. Maybe not his, but ours, the patience required of us to read his poems. He is the practitioner of slow poetry. He slows us down enough so we can see well enough so we can hear the words that are not spoken, even though only imagined so.

People at the Exhibition

The exhibition consisted of a few vitrines, a number of poems presented as art on the walls, and a few items, mostly the most booklike of Grenier's books, on shelves. The space was raw--exposed beams and supports, rough wood--but surrounded by clean white walls, order, control. The space, but a room, presented to us the poems in ways to allow us to interact with them, to read these often (physically) difficult to read poems.

It was a good space, and it filled with people as I walked through it.

The Man in the Corner

Exhibitions are spaces for showing things, and often the things are people. I watch people as much as I look at art when I'm at a gallery. I'm more of a viewer of than a interactor with people. I take everything in. I slow down. I read. The roughness of the word, of the human being in space, softens. Everything becomes palatable, edible, digestible. I take them all in.

Most people spent most of their time talking, but I spent my time watching, breathing in the words. When I spoke, it was with a kind of reticence born out of a deep shyness, a resistance to people, a writer's desire, maybe an artist's, to be alone.

Still, I broke my silence quickly.

Robert Grenier Holding a copy of "This" # 1 and Showing His Famous Essay, "On Speech" (19 May 2013)

I recognized Robert Grenier immediately upon entering the room, and within a few minutes I'd introduced myself. Grenier knows I exist. I've written about his work enough to gather such attention, so I thought he would know who I was, though he was surprised, as everyone is, to learn that my last name rhymes with "truth."

"Mr Grenier," I said, "my name is Geof Huth." Then I explained a bit about myself, enough to put myself (as a word) in context.

Grenier was simply a New Englander, in his manner, his accent, the way he dressed, the careful way he spoke. There was an enduring simplicity to him--as if he were once of his own poems--a sense that he was merely who he was, a man without trappings. We talked for a while, but others shuttled him away since he was the reason each of us was there, and I ended up in a good conversation with John Batki about Grenier. Batki is a good friend of Grenier's and the one who suggested the spelling of "M'ASS" in BOSTON, M'ASS to Grenier, which was the reason (according to Batki) that the poem is dedicated to him (along with Anselm Hollo).

Batki and I looked at Grenier's poems, sometimes reading them, often discussing them, and discussing Grenier's books, most of which I own. (Since Grenier's books are often quite rare and, thus, quite expensive, collecting Grenier's work is difficult).