A journal of vital, progressive visual, concrete and experimental poetries
from Eric Goddard-Scovel’s LINES
These five poems are excerpts from a collection called LINES. They are defined primarily by their formal constraint of a single line of text roughly 4 inches in width. Many also have the same number of characters, although several of the poems flouted these constraints for effect. Titles were used not only as tags for the poems, but often as “keys” to access the idea or interpretation of the poem that I wanted most strongly to communicate.
While these poems stand out within the context of my other writings, they share in common an obsession with containers for text and a love for the visual possibilities of punctuation. Within the one line container, I aim for the most striking possible effect; to this end, I have found that punctuation and symbols are often more evocative than letters, possibly because they are already outside of the context of spoken or heard language (they are not usually an audible component of the spoken word) and their functionality can be more easily divorced from their appearance. None of the five poems selected here can be “read” in the normal sense of the word, although I believe they may be apprehended, hopefully with some sense of delight.
Televispo by Nico Vassilakis
Nico Vassilakis is unique among visual poets for several reasons, not the least of which is his near-obsessive focus on the microcosmic in language. While most of us are content to seek out large-scale associations and meanings, Nico digs deep into the written forms of language, oft favoring the curve of a letter’s bowl or the climactic union of a ligature to the macrocosm of a word in its whole, complex shape. This focus on the details dovetails nicely with his uniquely elaborated theoretics of visual poetry, which he calls Staring Poetics. His works are often the product of an act of staring, a moment of concentrated focus few are able to enjoy in our surface-skimming age.
In this small suite of works, Nico focuses on the television, quietly reminding us of two important facts about this once-revolutionary and still powerful medium: One, that though we tend to think of it as a wholly graphic medium, it is in fact one place where we most often encounter language and are subjected to its power. (Of course, he turns that power on its head by denying letterforms their complete manifestations, rendering them from speaking signs back to mute symbols for unknown quantities.) And two, that, though usually experienced in a dynamic manner that refuses us the luxury of staring, this medium too can be rendered unto stillness for our sustained meditation.
Five from Mike Cannell
Mike Cannell is a dynamic and prolific member of the new generation of visual poets. The diversity of forms and productions is not simply a reality either. In fact, the plurality of his media is a feature of individual productions as well, so that his visual work acts as a score to a host of vocalized and unvocalized sound poems … and vice versa. Here he expands on his methods and focus:
Five Pieces from Staunch by Sean Burn
It’s a truism in the world of visual poetry that we are constantly being bombarded by language. Whether at home in front of the TV or computer or walking down the street, riding the bus or on the subway, words and letters surround us, a maelstrom of pleas and entreaties, assertions and questions, assaults us. This deluge of language is oft cast negatively, as a violent, chaotic force in opposition to the quiet moment of attention many a visual poem tries to bring the reader to. Some, however, see it as a source for content, a vast well from which the moment of attention may be drawn by nothing more than a simple editorial act of excision. Sliced out from the storm, a few drops of rain form into a message wholly distinct from their original attention, becoming a poem we might otherwise have missed. In these five one-word pieces, or this single piece of five-words, Sean Burn brings us such a moment.
Five from Carlyle Baker
Carlyle Baker is a widely published and highly regarded visual poet – despite the fact that he doesn’t think of his work as visual poetry as such. His own term, graphism, seems an apt moniker for his striking explorations of the forms of glyphs and the dynamic interplay of color. Semantic content seems always to hover at the edges of these pieces, a ragged ghost flickering in and out of the frame, remaining always tantalizingly elusive. They remind one of careworn and coffee-stained maps from lost countries, time-muted guides to places we may have missed or are yet to discover. Here Carlyle expands on his methods and focus:
Some Speartips, by Zachary Bos
Zachary Bos here skillfully employs a technique I call minimal intervention to create fantastic miniatures of meaning. Here one does not read for a gestalt or accumulative meaning; instead, each line build on (often, paradoxically, via subtraction) the previous, becoming, by the poems’ end, a kind of performance. Of course, per usual, the artist himself has his own, rather more eloquent way, of putting it:
One from Ayşegül Tözeren
While we prefer to truly feature an artist and his or her work, occasionally a single submitted piece will strike so forcefully that we feel we simply have to publish it. And, given the relative rarity of non-English submission so far, we were particularly pleased to receive this Turkish piece from the talented Ayşegül Tözeren. Here he gives those of us who do not speak Turkish an entrance into the work:
About this piece:
bilinç: consciousness
linç: lynch
sınır yine sınır: border again border
“border again border” is a poem that carries the tension between bpnichol’s “borderblur” term and Nilgün Marmara’s (Turkish poet) line of poetry:
“border again border”
Bio:
born in Istanbul. working and living in Istanbul (if the life is living…)
Three Lexical Works from John M. Bennett
John M. Bennett’s has been a long and almost ridiculously productive one, important not only for his relentless experimentalism in both visual and lexical forms, but also for his curatorial and editorial work as well. In contrast to this wealth of creative work, Mr. Bennett offers a succinct word on his praxis:
Be Blank
Four from Bernd Reichert
While black and white are the dominant colors of a great deal of vispo, Bernd Reichert’s integration of vibrant tonalities into his “written” works adds new dimensions of meaning and evocation. In these four fine pieces, Bernd creates asemic explosions from masses of illegible text and dynamic compositions. Here, Bernd expands on his interests and methods:
Three from Andrew Topel
Andrew Topel is a modest poet of by-no-means modest talent. While in the following he eschews the terms most often applied to one of his talents and productions, he gladly accepts the term that lies at the heart of those others names:
i am neither a visual poet nor an artist; i am an explorer. here, then, are some explorations.
bio: andrew has nothing to say at this time. perhaps later, though.
from Eric Goddard-Scovel’s LINES
These five poems are excerpts from a collection called LINES. They are defined primarily by their formal constraint of a single line of text roughly 4 inches in width. Many also have the same number of characters, although several of the poems flouted these constraints for effect. Titles were used not only as tags for the poems, but often as “keys” to access the idea or interpretation of the poem that I wanted most strongly to communicate.
While these poems stand out within the context of my other writings, they share in common an obsession with containers for text and a love for the visual possibilities of punctuation. Within the one line container, I aim for the most striking possible effect; to this end, I have found that punctuation and symbols are often more evocative than letters, possibly because they are already outside of the context of spoken or heard language (they are not usually an audible component of the spoken word) and their functionality can be more easily divorced from their appearance. None of the five poems selected here can be “read” in the normal sense of the word, although I believe they may be apprehended, hopefully with some sense of delight.
Televispo by Nico Vassilakis
Nico Vassilakis is unique among visual poets for several reasons, not the least of which is his near-obsessive focus on the microcosmic in language. While most of us are content to seek out large-scale associations and meanings, Nico digs deep into the written forms of language, oft favoring the curve of a letter’s bowl or the climactic union of a ligature to the macrocosm of a word in its whole, complex shape. This focus on the details dovetails nicely with his uniquely elaborated theoretics of visual poetry, which he calls Staring Poetics. His works are often the product of an act of staring, a moment of concentrated focus few are able to enjoy in our surface-skimming age.
In this small suite of works, Nico focuses on the television, quietly reminding us of two important facts about this once-revolutionary and still powerful medium: One, that though we tend to think of it as a wholly graphic medium, it is in fact one place where we most often encounter language and are subjected to its power. (Of course, he turns that power on its head by denying letterforms their complete manifestations, rendering them from speaking signs back to mute symbols for unknown quantities.) And two, that, though usually experienced in a dynamic manner that refuses us the luxury of staring, this medium too can be rendered unto stillness for our sustained meditation.
Five from Mike Cannell
Mike Cannell is a dynamic and prolific member of the new generation of visual poets. The diversity of forms and productions is not simply a reality either. In fact, the plurality of his media is a feature of individual productions as well, so that his visual work acts as a score to a host of vocalized and unvocalized sound poems … and vice versa. Here he expands on his methods and focus:
Five Pieces from Staunch by Sean Burn
It’s a truism in the world of visual poetry that we are constantly being bombarded by language. Whether at home in front of the TV or computer or walking down the street, riding the bus or on the subway, words and letters surround us, a maelstrom of pleas and entreaties, assertions and questions, assaults us. This deluge of language is oft cast negatively, as a violent, chaotic force in opposition to the quiet moment of attention many a visual poem tries to bring the reader to. Some, however, see it as a source for content, a vast well from which the moment of attention may be drawn by nothing more than a simple editorial act of excision. Sliced out from the storm, a few drops of rain form into a message wholly distinct from their original attention, becoming a poem we might otherwise have missed. In these five one-word pieces, or this single piece of five-words, Sean Burn brings us such a moment.
Five from Carlyle Baker
Carlyle Baker is a widely published and highly regarded visual poet – despite the fact that he doesn’t think of his work as visual poetry as such. His own term, graphism, seems an apt moniker for his striking explorations of the forms of glyphs and the dynamic interplay of color. Semantic content seems always to hover at the edges of these pieces, a ragged ghost flickering in and out of the frame, remaining always tantalizingly elusive. They remind one of careworn and coffee-stained maps from lost countries, time-muted guides to places we may have missed or are yet to discover. Here Carlyle expands on his methods and focus:
Some Speartips, by Zachary Bos
Zachary Bos here skillfully employs a technique I call minimal intervention to create fantastic miniatures of meaning. Here one does not read for a gestalt or accumulative meaning; instead, each line build on (often, paradoxically, via subtraction) the previous, becoming, by the poems’ end, a kind of performance. Of course, per usual, the artist himself has his own, rather more eloquent way, of putting it: