Visual Poetry in The Avant Writing Collection

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Visual Poetry in the
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Edited, with an Introduction, by John M. Bennett
With Additional Introductions by
Bob Grumman
and
Dr. Marvin A. Sackner
The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
The Ohio State University Libraries
2008
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
Introduction
by John M. Bennett
visual poetry
Como de costumbre, para ser futurista solo haba
que ir lo ms lejos possible al pasado.
Augusto Monterroso
All poetry is visual poetry. This idea, along with its corollary that all poetry is also
aural, has become clearer and clearer to me as I have worked with the extremely
varied materials in The Ohio State University Libraries Avant Writing Collection. Visuality in poetry starts with
the simple fact that there are blank spaces at the ends of lines, which is perhaps the most consistent factor that
distinguishes poetry from prose. (A prose poem is poetry in the fact that the blank spaces are present by implication;
present in their absence, you might say.) That blank space then extends to an almost innite variety of forms and
procedures, from typographic variance to three-dimensional constructions, from shaped poems to classical
concrete poems, from recognizable words and phrases arranged in patterns to asemic scrawls and letter-forms and
to purely graphic elements arranged in a poem-like manner. With respect to orality, it is safe to say that there is
not a poem in existence that could not be performed aloud in some way. Even the most illegible asemic scrawl can
be used as a script for the voice, and often is by many of the poets in this collection and in the traditions from which
the work in it has sprung. It may well be that poetry began before writing as a mnemonic social context for stories,
news, and myths and thus as an oral form, but as soon as it began to be written, it became a visual form as well.
1
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S 2 A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 3
Visual poetry calls to mind doubts about the stability of meaning in languagethat is, the strict relationship
between language and reality. Visual poetry, perhaps more than normal textual poetry, presenting or suggesting
meaning on several levels and through several processes of consciousness simultaneously, mirrors that doubt. Or
perhaps it is an attempt to do what language has always tried to do: capture reality and make it conscious. The
difference is that visual poetry perceives realityor the worldas multiple, ambiguous, shifting, polyvalent, and
paradoxical. The opposites join into one total perception. The fact that different parts of the mind and/or mental
processes address visual experience and linguistic experience (and within linguistic experience itself there are
very different and separate processes for each functionality of language: speaking, thinking, writing, translating,
etc.) means that visual poetry is especially useful for dealing with and presenting this multivalent/multiconscious
experience of the world. I suspect that has something to do with why it is so often a eld of endeavor that is
ignored in the genre-categorizing institutions of our society: those genres (visual art, literature, music, and so on)
are not only socially constructed, but present a much simpler and therefore more comforting vision of what the
world is. I suggest that that simple vision is limited and illusory, however. Clemente Padn, the great Uruguayan
visual and experimental poet, has discussed at some length how visual and experimental poetry stand in direct
opposition to the dominant socioeconomic paradigms of our day (see his essay in Signos corrosivos, Mexico:
Ediciones Literarias de Factor, 1987; translated by Harry Polkinhorn as Corrosive Signs, 1990).
Almost all the poets and writers in the Avant Writing Collection have worked in visual media and genres, and
this catalog is an attempt to showcase some of the highlights of that vein of creativity in the collection. I wish to
emphasize, however, that these works do not exist in a completely separate category, a compartment in which
the artist/writer works in isolation from his or her other work, but function on a continuum with all that other work.
Many of these works, for example, have also been treated as performance texts. As Michael Basinski has stated,
A function of visuality is performancea visual poem should be interpreted as a literary scorevisual poets
should consider their pieces to be literary scores rather than purely literary, visual images (in CORE: A Symposium
on Contemporary Visual Poetry, ed. By John Byrum & Crag Hill, Mentor, OH/Mill Valley, CA: Generator Press, c1993).
It is always difcult to select what pieces to exhibit in a catalog like this, when there are so many excellent
possibilities. I have tried to show the immense variety of styles and approaches that exist in the collection and
to pay special attention to those individuals works whose larger collections of papers and archives are at the
heart of what we have here. Visual poetry is a eld of endeavor that is expanding exponentially just now, helped
immeasurably by the ease of distributing it through the Internet: web sites, blogs, e-mail, social networking sites,
and so on. I hope this sampling will inspire more such work.
Dr. John M. Bennett
August 2007
3
Sweeping aside the sweeping generality above, however, it would be of some use to discuss at least some of what
it is that distinguishes the work in this anthology from standard textual poetry. Perhaps it simply has to do with the
fact that all the work here includes strongly visual dimensions that one cannot avoid including as an important
part of the experience of reading/seeing the work in question. Whereas in the case of textual poetry, the visual
dimension is to a large extent unconsciously perceived, or that it is at least possible to experience the work paying
little attention to its visual qualities.
There is also the question of the long and varied history of visual literature, which to a large extent forms its own
tradition or subculture, to which the work in this anthology so often refers. That history is distinct in numerous ways
from the history or subculture of more strictly textual poetry, and therefore is a distinguishing characteristic from it.
Another issue is the relationship of visual poetry to visual art, and the use of linguistic elements in what is generally
considered to be visual art. At what point does such art become visual poetry? I think it is more useful and enriching
to think of it as either or both, depending on the context of ones discussion or appreciation. Just as, at the other
end of the continuum, it is most useful to think of poetry and visual poetry as either or both.
Underlying these considerations is the fact that inherent in Western Civilization, and probably in the human mind
itself (as in large part a creation of that civilization) is the need to categorize phenomena. This is certainly true
for visual poetry, which is generally regarded as a phenomenon separate in itself. In fact, however, as suggested
above, it is an aspect of all written language, and has been since written language came into existence. Being
inherently visual, written language must be seen to be apprehended (or, as in the case of Braille or other
technologies, in some way physically experiencedin the case of a blind person being read to, the reader must
see the text) and its very nature is founded on signs and symbols referring to things in the physical or mental world,
be they sounds, objects, or actions. In the case of poetry in particular, the usual modern poem, with its blank spaces
either at the ends of lines or surrounding the words, requires a visual experience to be fully known.
2
309 poems 11 countries 89 poets
Abstract markings subservient to texts and images are a common component of
visual poems that serve as ornament and are present in 107 out of a total of 309
poems (Kostritskii 151). Asemic writings, a specialized form of abstract markings,
are utilized in 26 poems (Leftwich 181, Dermisache 63). Asemic writing has no
semantic content. As Peter Gaze amplied, asemic texts, a term coined by
Jim Leftwich, have no writer-intended meaning. If you the viewer perceive
a meaning, youve created that meaning yourself. Text or marks formed by
handwriting is the second most common means (25% of the poems) to create
concrete (Beaulieu 12) or visual poems (Weiss 264).
Fragmented texts occur on 14% of the poems. Here, words are only partially
printed (Macleod 200, Ernst 73) or are separated by large spaces (aND 3).
pictures are poems in which letters alone (concrete poems) or combined with
images (visual poems) are present in 16% of the poems. Letter pictures are
rubber-stamped (Helmes 126), printed (Altemus 2, Morin 203), or hand
drawn (Quarles 220, Luis 191). Text over text poems constitute 9% of the 309
poems in the original selection for this book (Cobbing 44).
Made-up words appear in 6% of the poems (Basinski 10). Conventional (Cobbing
46, Nichol 214) or computer typings (Daniels 60) is one of the oldest forms of
contemporary concrete poetry (since the 1950s). Such typewriter poems amount
to 6% of the poems. There are 15 shaped poems in which words or letters outline
recognizable images (Daniels 59). They are the oldest form of concrete poems
in the literature and examples have been recovered from ancient Chinese,
Japanese, Persian, Malayan, Burmese, Tibetian, Indian, Urdu, Ethiopian,
Moroccan, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Hebrew, Greek, German, and Roman
sources. Poems in which the letters or words are smudged or distorted with
rubber-stamping (Helmes 115) or photocopying (Topel 258, Figueiredo 95)
processes constitute 4% of the poems.Cancelled texts are present in ve poems
(Huth 139). Mathematical poems that employ mathematical equations are used
in six poems (Grumman 110). Finally, Ficus strangulensis contributes the only
example of a transmorfation (Ficus 88) in this book, a term he coined (and
also a form used by other poets) of one word calligraphic poems that degenerate
to calligraphic markings and subsequently emerge as another word.
John M. Bennetts compilation of so many outstanding concrete and visual poems
attest to his curatorial skills, honed to perfection in a world he knows full well.
Letter
v i s u a l p o e t r y
Introduction
4
John M. Bennett, the editor/publisher/founder of the most important
and longest running contemporary experimental poetry magazine,
Lost and Found Times, 1975-2004, has put together an outstanding
collection of concrete and visual poems made from 1968 to 2006.
Eighty-nine poets from 11 countries were selected, with the majority
from the United States. The poems are diverse and follow no particular
theme. They reect Bennetts taste and experience, which is conditioned
by his reading and writing several thousand poems in his role with Lost and
Found Times. This book presents a wonderful selection of poetry on the same
level of Bel Canto arias.
Faced with 309 poems [these 309 poems, edited here down to 268, refer
to the original draft selection Dr. Sackner used to write his introduction
the percentages he gives in what follows are based on that original
selection of 309 images] to review for this introduction, I relied on a
classication technique for my own collection, Sackner Archive of
. This forced me to think about each poem and minimized
visual fatigue from merely looking without putting pen or keyboard strokes
to paper. Also, I was curious as to whether Bennetts selected poems for
publication were based upon personal preferences since his style is rooted
in calligraphic handwriting and markings as well as collaborations with
other poets. Only 9% of the 309 poems are collaborations and 25% involve
handwritten texts but these totally differ from Bennetts idiosyncratic style.
Thirty-nine percent of the poems are concrete (Kempton 149) and 61%
are visual (Dalachinsky 57) according to my denitions, although I
acknowledge that Bennett and his circle prefer to lump them together
as visual poems. I dene concrete poems as those in
and/or words are utilized to form a visual image whereas
visual poems constitute those in which images are integrated into the text
of the poem. I counted picture poems as visual poems although in my own
collection, they fall into a separate category.
in which an image and a related
caption are printed together. They are a single-page Livre dArtiste or an
illustrated book. The best contemporary examples are those composed
by Kenneth Patchen. Most picture poems in this book might be designated
quasi-picture poems since the captions are poems that do not strongly relate
to the accompanying images (Taylor 244) with rare exceptions (Ford 94).
by Dr. Marvin A. Sackner
Concrete and Visual Poetry
which only letters
Picture poems are
an evolution of Renaissance emblem poems
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 7
Probably everyone writing about this collections kind of
visio-textual art, or art that combines text and graphics, has a
different way of sorting the various forms it can take. I use what
I think is a simple continuum to do this. It starts an innitesimal
distance from pure poetry, or the wholly verbal, and ends an
innitesimal distance from the wholly graphic, or pure visual art.
Halfway in between are works that are more or less half textual
and half visualcollages and the like, for the most part.
First on my long list of works to treat is the comic, deadpanned
pin in High Arts sometimes pretentiousness provided by John
Furnival and Emmett Williams, Wallpaper for a Classical Passion-
Pit Atop Mount Parnassus (96), whose endlessly repeated text,
Basho bonks Sappho bonks Basho bonks Sappho needs no
elucidation. Few works in the collection are funnier (although
many are quite funny), and it is clearly about as close to the mainly
verbal end of the visio-textual continuum as visual poetry can be.
Perhaps even closer to it is Miekal Ands Automatic (3). In one
portion of it, a Knowing Wages Ways to Collage Lightor so
it plays out for me. It avoids being a conventional, wholly textual
poem due only to its (linear) spacing, and a few made-up words
like Mostra and Agrom. But the spacing of its words makes it
seem some sort of verbal abacus. This, for me, makes the poem
ever-so-slightly more than purely verbal.
A third poem that belongs close to the same end of my continuum
is K.S. Ernsts ROSE POEM (84), a variation on Steins rose
is a rose is a rose. Just three words in length, its about as
compact as a poem can be, but says three things (at least) in the
read-slowing game it plays through the use of unconventional
placement of letters: a rose arose, a rose, a rose and
because of the visual treatment of the vertical rose, a rose
sprung out into full being. Theres a simple rose on a stem in
the poem, too.
Another poem of Ernsts that consists of words only (if you
discount the fact that its page is a small wooden stage),
is the carpentered sculpture, The (66). Like the previous
poem, it goes back to a classical American modernist, this
one Wallace Stevens, grabbing his the the from The
Man on the Dump. Ernst makes the usually hardly noticed
denite article gloriously Important and accommodating,
sheltering (note its enclosures). A featureless bit of text is
given concreteness, identity, its place at the very hinge of
existence. . . .Words as the vital furniture of our minds, with
the a primary supporter of verbal expression, is a central
part of the poems metaphorical richness, as well. And note
how compressed the piece is, in spite of its being so many
repetitions of one word.
In Nude Stare (88), a specimen of what Crag Hill calls
transforms and its author Ficus strangulensis calls
transmorfations, a cursive nude descends through
quivers metaphorically suggestive of ekg readings to the
stare she is certain to causewhile we are reminded of
the famous Armory shows Nude Descending a Staircase
by Marcel Duchamp. Or, we can read the work as a stare
that enters into and becomes its object. This is a classical
visual poem, all words going through visual changes to
enact an image.
The by K.S. Ernst

T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S 6
Who knows how he did it, but my pal, the multivariously-
nutto super-poet John M. Bennett, somehow wound his way
even unto the very bowels of the American cultural
establishment and there builded he a collection of
contemporary artworks amazingly counter to all that
the American literary establishment stands for.
Indeed, theres hardly a poem in it by anybody youd so much hear mentioned let alone seriously
discussed in any but a handful of American university English departments or whose work has ever gotten
onto the pages of such sophisticated venues as the New Yorker. To begin with, the works here do
not trade entirely on literary techniques in wide use 50 or more years ago, nor (usually) force some
socio-political agenda on us. Worse, for the word-centered professors of most English departments and
their counterparts in the publishing industry, they are pluraesthetic, which is to say each of them makes
signicant aesthetic use of more than one expressive modalitygenerally, the visual and verbal.
My hopes of providing a denitive overview of whats in the collection for this catalogue were killed when I
got copies of the pieces curator Bennett selected to reproduce in this catalogue. If only hed sent
them to me three centuries earlier! Even then, Im not sure I could have done a proper
overview of them. So many they are, and so various!
What follows will thus be a hodgepodge of my (very subjective) reactions to more or less randomly chosen
specimensmore accurately (in most cases), reproductions of specimens as they appear in this catalogue,
for Im writing this many states away from Ohio. I hope, however, that they are enough to give those who
come to this publication a reasonably thorough and interesting idea of whats here, and why it is of value.
Introduction
by Bob Grumman
thirds letters, but it is xeroxially enlarged, with one letter tilted, and one larger
than the others and cut off, as well as over- or under-lapping the other letters. Thats enough to
make an engagent perceive the work as what I call illumagery, or visual art. The letters help us feel
at home, with something familiar, to ease us into an enjoyable, quite forceful non-representational
illumagea kind of variation on Franz Kline, the attachment of which to the verbal multiplies a freshness
into it. At the same time, it is (amusingly, among other things) a story about something that was on but
is now off. Something that is off that a huge n, you better believe, is going to knock aside, to produce a
powerful on. Or the reverse, a sinking on that offness is rising out of.
Then theres Julian Blaines point de poesie (35), which I nd somewhat taxonomically problematical.
It graphically denes poetry as a loop in boring straightness, with a literal point making it exclamatorily
valuable (and fun) with minimalistic deftness. No words, but enough of a word-fragment (when we have
the title) to make it impeccably a visual poem.
One nal piece within inches of the all-verbal end of my continuum that I want to bring up is Geof Huths
characteristically simple-seeming space (139). But what an eternity is back-and-forthed in this (implied)
excerpt from a description of the universe! But, wait: I want to mention Huths highly textual book, Dreams
of the Fishwife, as well, because of its demonstration of how much can be done to visually multiply a
text through simple small movements of letters. In his dis trusst of (140), one of his books pages, for
instance, he puts three es in an overlapping stack between a dr and an m to make drem not just
phonetically spell dream but become itself a dream under wayupward, out of the mundane, glaz-
ing the rest of its pages text dream-hued. The extra es also allowdrem to make a visual rhyme with
dseeem due to the latters overlapping es, although they are horizontally, not vertically, overlapping
(and rhymes, not overdone, are always magical). The font employed and medieval-seeming spellings add
a faerie long-ago quality to the dream the page holds, as doneedless to saythe Joyceanly-warped
spellings of its words.
Huths polylinguality, a forte of several visual poets such as Bennett and Luis, is evident in another
of his subtle concrete poems, AGA NEVER (also 139). This poem brings us into a new part of the
continuum, the one where we nd poetry with averbal graphic elements added to it. It nicely exemplies
the canceled poems Marvin Sackner mentions in his introductory essay. The cancellations are the (very
minor) graphic extras of the piece. But they are essential to making it a visual poem, for they disturb its
text into saying things it would not have said if left alone, as pure text.
Self-Portrait/Prole/
Poem by Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Portrait
by Lanny Quarles
One of American visual poetrys leading exponents, Richard
Kostelanetz, is represented in the collection with such
similarly only slightly visual works as no R CAVE (150),
which performs infraverbal tricks such as the division of
caveat into cave and at, and notables into no
and tables. The disregard for linear placement of the
texts words allows more than one message to form. The
message I like best here is, Notables: cave, at rest, rain.
This has a haiku simplicity and depth. Along with it, we
have: Warning: no tables.
Another leader in the eld as poet and publisher (of
Kaldron, which for many years was the only periodical
exclusively devoted to visio-textual art), Karl Kempton is
represented here by probably the
best collection of his work, Rune:
A Survey, among other things.
Charm (149), which is from the
aforementioned volume, is typical
of one of the many lines hes
taken as a poet: 3-D, vibratory,
employing just a single word,
symmetricaland happy.
A page from David Danielss
Years 1974 (61) is one more
completely verbal work whose
typography is altered to transform
it into something visual that can
stand by itself (but agrees with
its text too much not to be much
more than just visual). Its text reminds me for some reason
of John Bunyans Pilgrims Progressbecause, perhaps, of
its seriousness, and concern with the owering of the soul,
as shown with such grace by the pieces design, which is
(metaphorically) a sort of leaf (note the little stem at the
bottom) and much else, that expands globally but gently
outward at its center, with butterights in all directions in
the plane the rest of it inhabits. There is more than a hint of
ames, happy ames, in the piece, as well.
Annalisa Alloatti has a pair of visual poems (1) out of the
concrete poetry tradition here that depict a monument with
letters naming and describing it. ME and TU make up
its sides in the rigidly imposing rst version of the monu-
mentwith NON between them. A sterile monument in
which you and me are kept separate? Im not sure. In any
case, the monument in the companion version is coming
apart, whether shattering with joy or despair, Im not
sure, but equally exciting either way. And with
connotative small words or near-words infraverbally
anagramming out of monument such as muto.
Self-Portrait/Prole/Poem (224) by Marilyn R. Rosenberg
is a charmingly complete fusion of text and graphic whose
subject is self-reection. One wanders over it, its strands
of text pulling us into a much fuller physical examination of
the self that is drawn than a pure painting of it likely would,
while simultaneously carrying us along inside that self (as
it looks down and sees her feet in her shoes).
It is instructive to compare this to
Lanny Quarless Portrait (220),
which goes a good deal away
from just words to attain its
effect. About all one can say of
this piece is that it is clearly
a portrait, but a portrait that
portrays beyond the human
shape outlined in a wild
complexity of everywhere-going
connotativeness.
Ilse Garniers et 1 and et
2 (104), to get back to entirely
textual visual poetry, is about
rhythms (as I take rhythms
to mean) and silence. The
combination at once suggests being and nothingness,
difference and sameness (a rhythm having to have at least
two elements changing back and forth), motion and
motionlessness (because of the back-and-forth
movement a rhythm must have). Order and the void
(because the essence of order is predictable repetition).
At the same time, the two frames of the work express
union and separationalso the centrality of et, or
and as that from which all rhythm and silence issues.
And/or, et as ultimate unmoving fulcrum and unier of
Everything. In short, all kinds of metaphoricality are here.
Outside all this, we have two quite appealing pictures.
As the reader will have noticed, nearly all these poems
Ive been discussing are minimalist poems. Bob Cobbings
Off (45) certainly is. It consists of just three and
Charm by Karl Kempton
When I saw E (40), by Calleja, I immediately thought of our
planete for earth plus the drawing inside the e suggests
a continent. Ergo, the earth around a mind, the latter completely
imprisoning the formerbut only slightly larger than it. That is
just one possible interpretation. Another might make use of the
hook of the e, and consider the brain predatory. A simple work,
but a full visual poem, if one considers the e a near-word, with
the capability of traveling manywhere.
While many visual poets eschew the classic poems, Irving Weiss
has honored a bookload of them with visual manipulations on,
into, against, through, over, under, or beside them in his book,
Visual Voices, which is included in the collection. For instance,
in his Horror Poem (265), he reverses the message of Robert
Brownings dazzlingly positive poem, Pippas Song, with a
dynamically cruel X (to add a very small but consequential
graphic extra to the text of his work). How more devastatingly
(and hilariously) could one depict genuine horror?
A relatively large number of collaborations are in the collection
which is to be expected, considering what a prolic collaborator
curator Bennett is. One thats at this end of my continuum is
Thinking Zen (70) by Ernst and the late David Cole. Central to
it is a wondrous square aperture from which oats an oand
all an o can represent, as well asin my readingmaking
possible the 3-D (zen) thought it pivots, and the rains from which
issues . . . it. Probably more validly, its full text makes a haiku of
a person deepening through thought into something that is to
thought as thought is to reality (yes, Im peeling rather far beyond
whats there, but causing that is one of the principal values of this
kind of minimalism), while outside it is raining. Ordinary existence
persists. Even reduced to its most direct but least meaning, it
paints a Scrabble-ludic day extremely inside rain. And I keep
reading against in the set-up of rains and it because of the
ainst normal reading produces. A raining against zen thought,
or zen thought raining against . . . it. Murk of a grey day yet also
potential of rebirth. To sum up: a thought-centered thought-
producing serenely playful gadgetand something close to
conceptual art, as much visual poetry is.
Speaking of Bennett, Id like to turn to him nowbecause most
of his works in the collection are at this spot on my continuum.
But I want to treat a number of his works at once, somewhat
ignoring the continuum while I do so. It makes good sense to stick
with Bennett for a while for several reasons, aside from the fact
that his work is as certain to one day be considered major by the
estabniks (i.e., the professors and the like I mentioned before
who completely ignore visio-textual art) as any other poet
of his generation. One is that what he is as a curator has
a lot to do with what he is as a poet, so investigation of his
poetry should help illuminate the nature of all the pieces hes
gathered here. That would include a lot of his own poetry
here, too, since his oeuvre is one of some half dozen such
contemporary oeuvres held by the library, which makes it a
signicantly identifying element of said collection. A second
is that his work is interestingly multifarious. It may be that
it more that any other artists work exemplies the range of
visio-textual art.
Found My Sock (24) is fairly typical of one cartoony
strand of Bennetts work. He may be the inventor-for-
contemporary-poetry of the (expressively partnering)
framing found in this and many of his pieces. Within the
frame is the simple declaration, I found my sock. Due to its
Bennettian sub-demotic scrawl, this text by itself is a visual
poem, for that scrawl tells us loudly how much its speaker
struggled to nd his sockin the process (underconsciously)
nding his cock (repeated by the upward-pointing screws
above the text). And what a struggle it wasinside, it would
appear, a furnace. Surrounded by teeth, no, by fangs. A joke,
of course: some lout with a third of a brain, if that, has gotten
his quotidian day right (and exultantly regained his manhood).
Or, one of us, reduced by the agony of a missing sock to
such a lout (and I say that seriously remembering how trivial
things can genuinely upset one, make one think God or the
equivalent is not in his heaven), has become, through his
own efforts, whole again. Yow!
Found My Sock by John M. Bennett
The Farm (120), by Scott Helmes, has only one graphic
element, a rubber-stamped picture of a generic cow. Under it
are rubber-stamped captions for it, each absurd; it seems to
be an attempt to list the kinds of cows there are. I found it a
funny but silly dada exercise when I rst saw it, and several
times afterwards. The idea of a street cow versus a house cow
struck me as quite droll, though. The work succeeded as a
sort of satire on Sternly Serious Illustrated Instruction, but not
very much more. Until I attended rather than just allowed the
entrance of its title. The Farm. As happens to me boringly often,
I suddenly belatedly understood something obvious: we didnt
have a list of ve kinds of cowsor, better, we did have a list
of kinds of cows but it was an undermeaning; the foreburden
of the piece was a farm scene containing 10 nouns. A square
with a cow on it, a house with a cow next to it, the sky with a
cow in front of it. A swing with a cow behind it. A street with
a cow near it. (Oralso, I would put ita square house, blue
swing, and street plus cow, cow, cow, cow, cow.) A full scene
but with cows dominant: everything says cow. The technique
is close to that of Stein in rose is a rose is a rose, to return to
that: repetition where not expected, to almost drill an image of
cow to life. With this understanding, I saw how visual the piece
is. It presents a stack of cows, to begin witha manyness, that
is. It visually shows us the house in the square with the swing
and the street in front of it as numerically equal, and implicitly
equal in other ways, to the ve cows. The cows, too, are
rubber-stampedly prolic. Then theres the graphic image of
the cow, not just an illustration but an icon, high above a chant
in homage to it. Avenued up to it.

Portrait (204A), by Sheila E. Murphy, seems a simple design
in a box, a design whose elements resemble hieroglyphics,
with a label, portrait, announcing what the design is three
timesabove it, it would seem, and off to the right. With per-
sistence, one can nd English letters in the stack of hieroglyph-
icsin fact, SELF is spelled three times downward rather
than left to right. Ergo, the phrase, self portrait, occurs three
times. Simple seeming, with its background its only slightly
non-textual element once one deciphers the instances of
self, but so much is going on in it. The letters of self wave
like 12 ags on a pole, somewhat exhibitionistically. At the
same time, the word they spell withdraws into the difculty of
its decoding, and the modestly hand-drawn undressiness of its
letters. It also seems neurotically stretched. On the other
hand, it is paradingly repeating itself up the picture frame.
Contradictions. Each self is subtly different from the other
two; the person depicted is not consistent. Each, too, is
rectilinear, crudely logical, or trying for a kind of conformity.
In short, here is no mere word for self, but a patient for a
psychologist, while announcement of the record of it slips
sideways out of existence as the selves continue indenitely
alteringly ascending up and eventually out of the psychologists
viewing frame, which is capable of revealing only the minutest
portions of the full self on view.
Murphys Orchids (206) seems similarly simple: boxes with
words in some of them. Nice choice of colors. Beyond that,
though, note the greys framing my orchids (and consider the
choice of orchids as the owers in this poem) followed by the
downward plunge of nested boxes to a yellow onea plunge
that, for me, represents suffering. Inwardness is strongly
suggested. The orchids just about have to be code for me.
The rest of the text seems to me the outside worldits outside
the nested boxes, and in somewhat more cheerful colors,
and the attitude is fully outside the rest of the picture. Indeed,
it may be the cause of the rectangular prison the rest of the
poem is in.
What really grabbed me, however, was the way the plaintive,
yellow hopefulness of wont you touch me? drops from the
narrative (into a rectangle below the other rectangles holding
texts). The result is a wonderful psychological study, a genuine
poem and an appealing graphic design, all interacting. That is,
the text is not labeling but fullling the design, the design not
decorating the text but fullling the text.
Orchids by Sheila E. Murphy
With Ilse Garniers Bee (102)
we come back to the portion of
my continuum for poems mainly
verbal but with graphics added. It
consists of texts inside something
laid out like a hopscotch game. What those texts say are similarly
playful. A capital B ascendantly occupies the highest of the
squares in the game. Meanwhile, a lower case b has own
from the alphabet in the lowest of the squares to the square
furthest to the right, uttering punfully into fullest life as a bee.
With, perhaps, a pause in the square to the left of that to create
a bloom (blume being German for bloom) having petals of
light (lume). Certainly the b as both upper and lower case
on the stem in the grey square support that reading. Im unclear
about the meaning of the word or words in the square furthest
to the left, but I know aime strongy suggests friendship and
love. Visually, of course, the me here rhymes with the three
instances of me in the square blume is in.
If one were to nd F.A. Nettelbecks book The Killer Elite left
behind in a library by someone, say, he would consider its
contents an odd collection of jottingspossibly a nutcases.
By simply presenting it as a work of art, though, Nettelbeck,
completely alters it into . . . Something Important. Something to
take seriously because it has been made public, not just as pages
in a notebook but as something we should pay special, sensitive
attention to. There are many points of interest in the pages shown
here (209). The spelling of civilization, for instance, makes the
notebook a glimpse into an outsider. A primitive, to an extent
as the writing is in a combination of upper- and lower-case print.
The correction of Denoted to denotingwhich means the
noise rst seeming to have denoted civilization is still denoting
it. This is all in a set-apart poem: ears soft tunnels/ (a noise
denoting civilazation)/ we stayed in the car. Safe from civilaza-
tion, I presume. Once we decide the texts are part of an artwork,
and attend sufciently to it, it begins to cohere into a unity con-
cerned with a decaying city. Note how the start, A caller,
is picked up late in the two pages by killer; kicking the
dead/ teacher is an image representative, in Wasteland-
jump-cut-style, of the decaying city.
The comic, comically emphasized YOU BET makes
consonances with eat, elite, street, and meat.
The last two rhyming words are part of another set-apart
poem, this one ending the piece.
That these two pages are from a notebook suggests copious
notes on the phenomenon discussed. Notebookness is what
makes the work a visual poembecause it is something
visual that adds signicant metaphorical imagery and feeling
to it. The writing helps make the work a visual poem, too, but
being jotting, or spontaneous responses to an environment.
The notebook is highly personal, toohandled.
Chapbooks form an important portion of the collection. A
representative one is by Michael Basinski whose proper title
consists of three occurrences of the astrological sign for
Aquarius with one instance of the astrological sign for Aries
under it. For reference books, its called [un nome]. Its
poems consist of words mildly jostled by graphics, or so
one might think on a rst encounter with it. The top line of
the sample poem (10) reproduced in this catalogue seems
an unconventional decoration, nothing more, though
somewhat appealing as sideways Us or backward cs
pointing, it would seem, to a rectangle, and further, to a circle
I take for the moon (because of its appearance, but also
because I am familiar with Basinski as a habitual poet of the
moon). The sideways Us are half rectangles, half circles,
so the line works as a tune of sorts, the half&halfs turning
to a thin perimetered rectanglethat in turn becomes its
arrestingly opposite, a circle. Meanwhile, abstractionsthe
half&halfs and the rectanglegain a kind of life as a moon
(high in the sky) above for ER fest rueor what infraver-
bally mainly says forest: to me. It also hints of forever,
for-ness, or state of being for someone, with fest explicit,
but rue, as well, slivering the experience, perhaps, like the
slight moon overhead. But rue is also the completion of the
word, true.
b ee
by IIse Garnier
In another crazy poem of Bennetts, Kok (30), the text is minimal, the graphic component entirely
fused with it (except for one word)and the penis back again, this time dominant. But it is far from
all that is in the poem. First of allor maybe last of all, who knowswe have a denite ok. Thats
afrmation, folks. If you look carefully at the piece, youll nd a scrawled b. That makes the letters
spell (and in infraverbal works like this, one is loosened into all sorts of extra spellings) bokks, for
there is also a scrawl that might well be an s. Or: box. Slang for vagina. The union of a kok
with a bokks is ok. And, behold, the thing says that that is just whats there: kok and bokks, incorpo-
rated. As a burning collision, I might add.
Needless to say, the INCORPORATED adds a tone of absurdity to the piecea fuck as a formal
commercial enterprise. I nd a lyrical metaphoricality in this, howeverof human joy and animality
glorixplosively triumphing over (and out of) Money-Making Enterprise.
Bugs and (19) is a completely typical Bennett framed visual poem. His frame this time acts as a
fence around a backyard with bugs and stool snapping in the wind, but the frame also speaks
of the windas a gust that tugs. Spelled in a rectangle with multiple repeated letters enfran-
chises the engagent to spell out August, too, to make the odd-looking thing a full lyric of a serene
if breezy super-normal midsummer day, with bugs scrawled windily, lazily askew through it.
An untitled collaboration (233) between Bennett and Rea Nikonova is another good example of his
collaborative efforts. Its text is visually framed, in a highly unconventional way. Lust and luster
become sets of musical notes due to the staff they are onwhile infraverbally disconcealing the
light that cometh from lustand the uster, if we notice the f scrawled against the left side
of the staff. An extra R providing the staffs right side allows err to be disconcealed, which ts
with lust. For moralists, but also for anyone holding that emotions usually work against reason.
bake my is close to warm my, and gland can loosely be, in this context, and in the drawing
with its dangling thing between two sort of round things, a testicle. sHip as an anagram for Hips
would support this reading. So, come to think of it, does bake, a form of creation, as well as part
of a slang term for getting a woman pregnant. The Blaze (168), a piece Bennett collaborated with
Jake Berry and Jim Leftwich on seemed at rst asemic to mebut turned out to be straightforward.
The rst line, for instance, spells, language. Lots of sophisticated chatter about poetry here, with
The Blaze coarsely and . . . blazingly summing it all up.
Cover of K (227), to nish with Bennett, brilliantly represents collaboration at its best, and a possi-
bly unique artform I would call infraverbal illumagery. The work, a collaboration between Bennett
and Serge Segay, has no semantic meaning that I can nd, but works comically/lyrically/seriously
with punctuation, which is where, besides the interior of words, that infraverbalism acts. The yow
here is produced by punctuation marks larger than the letters theyre among, the reverse of the
expected. I.e., commas are kings here, lording it over the Russian and English textual matter. Except
for two large burning or otherwise disintegrating Ks. Perhaps, Im wrong, now that I reect on the
presence of the Ks. This piece may be a poem saying, OK. It certainly feels to me okay and bet-
ter. From one point of view, its a pair of algebraic expressions, which always indicate, to me, some
problematic portion of life rendered orderly, or negotiablesafe, in the better sense of that term.
An important value of the over-sized commas is that they almost demand that one take the heart
as a second punctuation mark. That draws one into fertile reections on just what it would do as a
punctuation mark. The top comma seems part of an eyeball overseeing everything else thats going
on. All is plussed, all is adding up (in exuberant color, I need to add)!
12
Some Things Never Change (225 and 226). The opener of
Some Things Never Change is a pure visual poemwords in
a trash heap/bonre that shout, rattle, growl in synch with their
colors that the world is a mess and will stay that way. A fascinat-
ing mix of bluntness and aesthetic sophistication, annoyance,
and beauty. Part two of the set shows the scene subsiding in a
sharp reversal of the rst, for this time the word SURE hugely
takes up the middle of the page to sarcastically sneer, Sure,
things never change, while at the bottom of the page, two
instances of NEVER from Part 1 sandwich the word SAY to
result in NEVER SAY NEVER. All seems much more stable, too.
The question is, what have things changed to?
Space time llers seems a scrap heap of the wood used to
make the letters of the set I just commented on. There may be
no intended relation between it and the set, but it struck me as
an image of all the hectic changes that lled time and space
dismantled of meaningwith a few skeletons of clock faces
mixed inand an embedded title at the top (about to break up,
too, Im certain). Apart from whatever it may be saying verbally,
or semi-verbally, the work is a masterpiece of designalmost an
arch-lesson in how to deploy simple small and large rectangles
and circles to give the eye substantially more than a glances
worth of adventure.
I nd my continuum to arrive in signicantly new territory with
works such as Ficus strangulensiss In a very real sense,
Dickens (87): collagic visio-textual art. Strangulensis weaves
fairly consecutive, carefully chosen short passages from a text
about Dickens through similarly close-to-consecutive, carefully
chosen passages from a text that seems about a hard-boiled
detective. The result is such drollery as Dickens bullet drilled
a neat hole through his forehead while giving a fresh direction
and a rie popularize many aspects of the vest, and lifted the
window drape to peer into seasonal drinks. I consider this work,
despite its use of a landscape of some sort with an evergreen in
it as a background, to be decoratively visual only. The strips of
texts, and the two kinds of font, jiggle the engagent appropriately
awry, and enhance ones sense of unreality, of being in two
books, and time periods, and styles, etc., but they second the text
rather than combine with it. (Which is what they are intended
to do, and in no way makes them inferior to cut-outs used more
graphically. Role players: necessary, effective role players.)
Another cut-out-text work by strangulensis is one (truth)
pretension (92). It consists of four-inch lines from John M.
Bennetts poetry, carefully pasted together to form a neat
rectangle. Here, the dark lines between the lines of text
remind us to expect abrupt, probably preposterous jump-
cutsto set up the thrill of their making a poetic kind of
sense (when they do) as with ockets bulge with summer/
inside my lunch with you/ dream jaguar. Its the thrill good
found poetry causesa sudden sense that the universe is
orderly however we fuck it up. But funny, tooin both main
senses of the term.
With the work of poets such as the inimitable Joel Lipman,
we move along the continuum from purely textual collages to
collages of text and graphicwitness his Chemistry (186),
from a program for a poetry reading. Lipman is a master at the
splicing together of supercially incongruous visual images
and texts that drolly and provocatively, but also insightfully
investigate society. Here he whirls us into the forwards
and backwards RATADATADATADATA (several of the Ds
getting sufciently truncated to suggest Rs) of the conict
confusion vigilance adventure sensuality . . . chemistry of the
poetry reading that is its subject.
Another important American visual poet represented in the
collection is the collagist, Guy R. Beining. His Plumb (13) is
characteristic of his most frequent forays into visual poetry,
the word-play of plumb/ plume/ Plumm-/ et leading (via at
as and) to voice/noice, all combining with cut-outs and
drawing dexterously, if more than semi-wackily, to form a
design that would work as a superior illumage even if it were
not also speech. (Is that a horn or mouth the noice is curving
out of?) Connotativeness at its most extreme.
Some visio-textual collages, such as Spencer Selbys If the
moon is not high in the sky (236), Id call resonatingly non-
sequitirical cartoons. In this one, a girl is depicted deeply
walled inbecause, it is my guess, of the worlds insufcient
supply of poetry, as represented by a moon high in the sky.
But the cartoon participates, with its use of a generic 50s
instruction-guide face for the girl, in the ambience of Serious
Manuals for schools or the patrons of government agencies,
so we have the drollery of such a manual being distributed
to help people like the girl depicted come to terms with exis-
tences sometimes lack of beauty. It may be a found poem
that is, Selby may have found the drawing with the text
already with it, but I assume he added the text. I cant see the
text as anything more than a (great) cartoon caption, so have
trouble taxonomizing it as a visual poetry. (As if that matters.)
15
The fourth line makes this poem, for me, a love poemdue to
the heart and the E, O, and V of love beginning it
nuttily, as love generally is; strangely/mysteriously, too, as
love can be. With oooing (which has to suggest coooing,
I should think), whose os unletter visually as a full moon.
The little er in between lines two and four repeat the er
in line two, emphasizing erring/errant, as forests and love are,
and this poem. But I now hear it, too, as her, the object of
this poem.
The graphics gradually ambiance the situation as a tremble in
and out of words, mere words not being able to hold it by them-
selves. But the nal four lines are all words. Actually, they are
as much sounds as words now, the work becoming fully a trio
of the verbal, the visual, and the auditory. We have a shipwreck,
normally a disaster, but here something highly romantic. In fact,
its not a shipwreck, but something a ship wreaks. Better, its
something a shipwreak wreaks, which I imagine to be treasure
spilling onto a shore, the wreack becoming a wreath reminding
us that we are in a fest. Flowing free of any kind of strict sense,
we may remember the moon in the shape of the wreathand
the ringlets and mushroom that moonroom brings to mind
as it vibrates into its near-opposite, making me conclude that
the love-object of the poem is the moon. And repeats the rue
of the second line, as had marooning.
The other poems in the book interact with this one the same
lyrically wonderful way its lines interact with each other, and
fuse the verbal, visual, and auditory. The books last words are
rking of mushrrruemoons.
Another book in the library is a copy of K.S. Ernsts
Sequencing. Time On My Hands (74), one of its
characteristic pieces, consists of block letters precisely laid
out on graph paper, all of which emphasize the rectinlinear,
methodical, irreversible, tiny-square-by-tiny-square sadism of
Time distributing signs of ageing. Meanwhile, it makes a game
of deciphering its message, which makes it a fun poem as it
also slows down the read to allow the wry sadness the poem
expresses to seep more deeply into the engagent, and the ne
lines of the hands depicted to show themselves more vividly.
The game it plays also condenses its text down to its absolute
essentials, always a primary goal of the best poetry. In short,
Time On My Hands is a minimalistic gem, and entirely
characteristic of Ernsts charming sequencings.
I want to mention my own chapbook, An April Poem (107),
which is at the library, more as an example of sequential poetry
than any other reason, such poetry being common among
visio-textual artists. Actually, An April Poem is an example of
what Id term hyper-sequential poetry because it advances in
frames that vary only slightly from the ones just before them.
Hence, they very decidedly say, this is a sequence. Each
of its 16 pages contains just the word rainexcept for an
ephemeral text in a tiny font that escapes like a scent or smoke
from the dot of the i in rain several frames into the sequence.
The dot had begun black, the way all the other letters of rain
are, but gradually lightened until it was entirely whiteor
open. That is where the text, our dry spot within forsythia,
years ago, then delicately curls out of it in a manner intended
to suggest a memory, with something of the tone of a haiku. It
is present only for a page, whereupon the o gradually closes,
the rain continuing.
That this poem is also a book whose story happens with
the turning of pages is worth mention, too. The engagent is
more physically on a trip with it than he would be if it were on
one page, or in 16 frames all hung on a wall. I consider this
consequential. Many other visual poetry sequences share this
feature; conventional poetry does not, however many pages
one turns in reading them, for the engagent reads through
the turn of pages, and is hardly aware of it. The engagent of
a poem like mine, however, looks, then turns the page. Each
page releases a step of the work discretely.
Marilyn R. Rosenberg, a master of sequencing, has three
pieces in the Ohio State collection that come close to summing
up the visio-textual art continuum. Two comprise a set called
[un nome] by Michael Basinski
The works text seems part of one of the two trails the other
shapes in the picture make. It also hangs in about the same
direction of the rest of the picture mostly does. So: the black of
the graphic portion of the work achieving verbal expressiveness?
Theres something in it of text as quotidianjust something there
with a small worlds other sloppy arbitrary shapes. The thing
forces the engagentme, at any rateto read the text into the
graphics, and see the graphics into the text. A mystery that wont
nally declare itself, but avoids irritating by being utterly, serenely
all curves except where the tiny letters make their sharp angles,
and by being pleasantly balanced (note, for instance, the rhyme
the bottom of the vertical shape at the far
left makes with its top). Im not sure where
this piece should go on my continuum.
I nd it an A-1 illumage with a text that
prevents it from staying for long in the
visual cells of ones brain. Strictly
speaking, its not a collage, but close
enough to put among the other more
legitimate collages on the continuum.
Among the works from the master of
rubbings, David Baptiste Chirot, is a visio-
textual collage-like page from Xerolage 32
(42) that resonantly depicts a man, or an
identity. I think of the latter because the
head resembles a ngerprint, the standard
mark of identity. Hints of ID numbers form
part of the image and letters. The word
on the head, Openone wonders if it
describes and commands. The head also can be thought of as
radiating SOME EVIL, those words, or something like them,
being spelled down it. Is the gure victim or victimizer? An entity
to reckon with, no matter which.
While in this part of my continuum murkily inhabited by collages
and strange mixes of text and text, or text and graphic, Id like
to point out my own Frame 2 from Dividing Poetry (108). A
combination of text and graphic, it is unusual in being also
mathematicalnot for containing numbers or mathematical
symbols or terms but in carrying out a mathematical operation:
long division. In it, a version of the word, words, which is
wearing away, is divided into poetry. A quotient thats a
distorted upside-down version of words, with a remainder of
(port) is the result. Two of the terms are mildly manipulated
visually to by themselves make the poem as a whole mildly
a visual poem. But the product of those two terms is, here,
wholly visual. A squaring of words, to put it roughly, yields
something full of color and hints of words, but no words
(unless one views the piece in context, in which case
certain words like rain would become evident).
The remainder, by the way, is intended to suggest that the
scene under poetry, the subdivided product, needs a
port, or something for the engagent to harbor in, in order to
become poetry. But the port should be subtly, parenthetically,
in it. Moreover, the port ought to be
verbalto increase the verbality of
the graphic.
More mixing (or collaging) of
expressive modalities including
the mathematical occurs with Alan
Sondheims equilibrium-upsetting
graph (239). In this, a text (and its
author) are mathematically located
on a sheet of standard graph paper.
A pluraesthetic, and pluraconcep-
tual, adventure, for sure!
Prominent theorist of avant garde
poetry, Steve McCaffery has a
quietly cerebral piece called
Land (204) in the collection that
also seems mathematical to me.
I take it to be a tribute to Gertrude Stein, for its message
can be interpreted as land is land is land. But it goes
further than Steins rose is a rose is a rose with its graphic
elements: layers of what seem to be blueprints of houses.
Or of lots, on top of the piece, in unfaded black ink, seems
what all the layers hope to attaina plot of land manfully
bounded, set apart, owned. It is also an island for the implied
protagonist of the piece, the one saying, I land. I also see
the piece as a sort of ow chart starting in a long ago large-
ness of indistinct possible land, ending after many haltingly
remembered turns in the small plot of the topmost layer.
An intriguing piece. Explicit labels that form a narrative,
a text genuinely fused with the graphic accompanying it
on the page to form a visual poem. In short, many are the
expressive modalities these pieces employ to connote.
From Re by David Baptiste Chirot
His Wife (16), by Bennetts wife, Cathy, has only two wordsits title, in fact. Is it not
just a graphic, with an embedded title, as I believe the previous work I discussed is?
Not that what we categorize an artwork matters as much as point oh oh two percent
as much as how much we enjoy it, but my answer here, after quite a bit of thinking,
and blank-mindedly owing with the piece, is, no. That the two words are clearly
concrete things oating above the rest of the work is verbally importantfor giving
the work an extra layer, an extra layer that contrasts vividly with the layer under it
as symbolic/ethereal/explicit versus concrete/earth-bound/connotative. It is visually
highly effective, too, for aiming the engagent (or viewer) at the same center of focus
that visual elements of the picture do, and as crisp formality versus the uncivilized
nature of the averbal elements of the work, but also picking up the thick darkness of
the wiry things in the work.
Of much greater importance, Ive come to believe, is the way the placement of the
two words disconnects them, makes them two words each to be considered by itself.
Ergo, taken in a context of the junkyard the graphic elements can connote, one can
interpret his as that which is his on a collision course with wife. I see a stick of
dynamite right where theyll meet, too! Rubble. To the right, a scribble of barbed wire.
Some wife this is. But wait. I made the previous comments while viewing a black and
white reproduction of the picture. The delicate oranges, yellows, and greens looked
grimily, grimly unpleasant there. But after seeing the full-color version, with those
colors, the yellows hinting of roses, Ive decided that the collision may be a happy
one. Certainly, I learned how much color can change the connotational quality of a
work. Whatever interpretation one leaves the piece with, one has to agree that it is
visually gorgeous. Art reminiscent of Rothko and Motherwellwith maybe a touch
of Renoir!
The text of Gyorgy Kostritskiis (152) is of/, is of/ Has a/ And goes, is a conundrum.
Something that is of something, possesses something . . . and goes. Is of, or is part
of something else, makes up something larger than itself. Words shorn of connec-
tivity like this, and in a nothingness or confusedness, force an engagent to either
leave quickly or seep into thoughts like these. And perhaps the idea of And going,
or connections being made. The blots declare themselves an illustration of this text
but clearly at the same time connect in no way with it other than geographically (by
sharing a page with it). The scene is primordial: the most basic of words in black
and white. Geography? I keep wanting to take the scene as a beach. Whatever it is,
it seems to enclose the textbut has an entrance, or exit, for it or other texts, at its
top. The highmost blob is difcult not to take as the sun, which makes little sense, but
gives the work a feel of archetypality that I also get from similar works of Adolph
Gottlieb. Can the text be considered the color of this picture?
His Wife by C. Mehrl Bennett
While most of the pieces reproduced in this book are recent, it includes a historic piece of
visual poetry from the 60s, by d.a.levy, Notice (183), which is likewise an example of what
Ive been calling overlappetry, something levy pioneered in. It beautifully connotes the see-
through fragility of the text of his life, and its nervousness, and fragmentariness, as well as his
surrealistic, lyrical undauntedness on behalf of its best aspects.
Helmess The Void Enters (119) has recognizable words. Its also highly, importantly, and
vibrantly visualillumagistic, in fact. But . . . is the broken-off text, the void enters without the
recognition or centering of, a comment on the proceedings or part of the proceedings?
Without the recognition or centering of what? A rational minds planning? Reason? Art? Love?
Whatever, I accept the text as part of the proceedings. My take on the work is that the strips of
illumagery represent the chaos of the cosmos, the white space the cracks opening up between
strips reveals is the voidlabeled. I have a problem here: this void is expressing itself, but a
void should be incapable of that. The illumagistic strips cant be the void because theyre
obviously material, complex, dense, inhabited, rich, etc. (The work is monochromatic,
incidentally.) I have to confess that I cant understand this piece. But something wonderfully
creative is occurringdeeply into the archementality which is the origin of art everywhere.
Seattle visual poet, Nico Vassilakis, is, among other things, a wizard who often works in the
region of my continuum were now in, the one moving consequentially out of verbality toward
pure graphics, commonly constructing sequences. An example is the latter in the group of
four pieces from his book The Remington Vispoems (261). Each consists of nothing but letters.
The smallest letters form intersecting roads or tracks or seams that meet at or near larger
letters that beg to be readthe W N T R, for instance, saying written to me (as well as
suggesting points of the compass. At another intersection is the more exact anagram of POV,
or point of view, with YES. POEM AX is almost at a third, with CODE slightly suggested at
the fourth. These interpretations may seem over-strained, but its hard not to nd something at
such zzily centering loci. Which connotativeness is the point of such works.
In an untitled piece (176) by Jim Leftwich, we have archetypality, in my view: the Styx, glaciers,
50 million something. The deepening of knowing. A background explosionfrom whence the
mushroom seems to have shot up. A shape that looks to me like, among other probably equal
possibilities, half a mushroom. Also a maw upchucking or about to swallow. Something of a
whale is in it, too. In any case, there are hints in the piece of Carroll, LSD, Jonah, expeditions
to the South Pole.
I forgot to mention that this piece is a specimen of treated page. The identity of the book its
from would no doubt help us interpret it. Treatment of a page (or book, which one has to consider
most treatments of individual pages whether the artist has treated other pages of the book,
or all of them) adds something of importance. Theres something destructive involved, even
sacrilegious. But, when successful, like an archeological excavation. Theres also the interest
of combining the new with the known, the latter being the text on the page treated. Compare to
the blotted page previously discussed which looks roughly like this one, but has (apparently) a
newly composed text rather than a previously published text in it.
19
Thomas L. Taylor, one of several visual poets with work in this
collection who is a rst-rate photographer, tends mostly to
do captioned illumages like Selbys If the moon. Two ne
examples are wheres foldate-tore and thus no outer
doubts (251 and 254) from his Hermetic Series. But in the rst
of these, the non-representationality of the caption is so
similar (for me) to the non-representationality of the graphic
it shares a page with, that I consider it, in effect, overlap-
ping it (or being overlapped by it). Two moods interfusing to
form a third mood. This sets up, or is set up by, thus no outer
doubts, which has a representational image of a very ordinary
backyard view of neighboring backyards. This image overlaps
the non-representational one of wheres foldate-tore that
the memory carries over, thus becoming much more vividly
representational. Or, if we view the two works in the opposite
order, it is the non-representational image that becomes more
chargedly what it is. In either case, the fact that each work is
part of a series is vitally important. The captions team up to
smash the realities out of the representational images in the
series. The aesthengagent is left ooler in your mists or/ musk
(where) no outer is, according to wheres foldate-tore. That
is, he is pleasurably (it would seem) deposited in a kind of pure
subjectivity, the kind the best non-representational texts and
illumages can deposit one in because they provide plenty of
clues to soothingly sufcient coherences. Note well the hand-
printed addition to the text just quoted of and. That there is
more than the musk and the absence of outer, and so forth,
should not be forgotten. Bottom line: another singular
example of connota-
tionality taken to the
limit from the collection.
But a connotationality
prevented from going
wholly bonkers by the
careful rectangles and
obviously good crafts-
manship of the printing,
photography, and design
of the series. That is,
the works connote like
crazy, but from an
orderly elegance.
Scott Macleod has a series of wryly illustrated coined words
such as Lucifection (196), which has to do, Im sure, with
Lucifers res coming up through some kind of grate. To infect?
I consider these dada captioned illustrations, so appropriate in
this region of my continuum although not collages . . . perhaps
under or over the continuum.
Selbys Now What (237) breaks into a form of collagic visual
poetry I call overlappetry, which is one of most fertile types of
visio-textual poetry. Whereas conventional poets are sensitive
to the effects of one words two-dimensional propinquity to
another, overlappetrists can exploit a third layer, as well as
weld two or more words fully together. Selby, probably our
countrys leading exponent of the form, generally works, as
here, with two layers, one graphic, one verbal. The graphic
is usually something banal from some kind of how-to booklet,
as the one in Now What seems to be. The text is usually
from who-knows-where, and has no (conventional) connec-
tion to the graphic. In this one, some obviously ambitious but
ineffective man wanting to be bright, more intelligent has
succeeded in turning on the light bulb that his life is. What he
will go on to do with it as a result provides the punch line to
what is surely intended as a satire on earnest mediocrity. On
conformity, as wellon conscientiously doing what our society
deems the right thing, and achieving the good job, and the
other things our society reveres.
Derek Whites Scales of Evolution (266) is another
indenitely connotational specimen of overlappetry.
A side caption says the work depicts the Scales of
Evolution. We see that it goes from DEAD to E, for
energy, I take it, the opposite of deadness. Archeologi-
cal layering, references to Ancient Egypt, most tellingly,
sarcophagus. Something of the periodic chart of
elements is in it, and a strong avor of science, the
two, and other forms of reason, doing their best to
pattern history into coherence.
Whites Hoof Product (267) is somehow similar,
although the patterning attempting to bound it (or,
maybe, peg it) is a sloppy/silly word game, with
one non-word (or very unconventional word, if lue
is a word, at all). Intriguingly hued, with all kinds of
connotations drawing one to explore it.
Hoof Product by Derek White
One of Crag Hills most interesting recent mostly asemic works
is a sequence called, directions, two frames of which are
shown here (137). Each frame forms a square with four square
cut-outs from magazines and the like, with occasional addi-
tions such as the hand-printed fragment in the piece to the left
of this set. Readable text is presentbut seems to represent
language rather than act as language. Hills squares work the
way all (good) collages do: they combine unconnected images
into visually potent designs that are also full of textual/textual
or textual/graphic accidents or seeming accidents that expose
unexpected meanings from matter incongruously adjoining.
The transformationally fresh touch here, though, is the
scientizing of the collages: Hill has made each a map, and a
four-quadrant analytical geometry graph. So, we have the
vitality of the tension between abstract order and sensual
verbal and visual imagery wildly decontextualized and
mismatched. Each frame of Hills sequence thus acts as a
metaphor for science: the imposition of an abstract, wonderfully
revelatory scheme on life and the near-life that even stones
can be said to represent (due to all the chemistry and physics
going on within them) . . . that nonetheless leaves their mystery
ultimately untouched. What actually happens is what happens
in Hills squares: the Mystery is enriched and domesticated
enough to prevent our being overwhelmed by it, but endures.
Peter Ganicks ds mu (97) is a collage mainly of cut-up texts
and what appears to be black paper to form a fascinating
collection of partial understandings uniting in the shape of . . .
a tree? Cursive and print suggesting a variety of voices. Close
to asemic although much of it can be read.
Sonata I, (143) by the late Bill Keith is entirely averbal, which
is odd, for he made a point of being verbal in his visio-textual
art. I would call it a linguiconceptual-visiopoetic impression of
what visual poetry is: music, order (the score being ordered),
text, focus and magnication, visual drama. . . . On reection,
I suddenly wonder if the work be considered semantic. How?
Well, its musical notation species objects in the world
musical tones of a certain duration. The notation is thus in
effect verbal. I withdraw the idea, but dont delete it, for it
suggests, I think, the subtleties and adventures of the many-
wheres visio-textual art can enter.
Equally averbal, but linguiconceptual is an untitled piece
of resonant primitivism from Hartmut Andryczuk (4). That
it is white on black makes it seem especially interestingly
backward, out of nightalso blackboard writing out of child-
hood. For one not knowing the works language, it is entirely
averbalwith language making paths through some kind of
jungle swamp.
Similar to the Andryczuk work is an untitled piece (232) by Rea
Nikonova, an interesting design using the letter Pand E,
with the P also standing in for bs, ds, and qs. Under
all this, with something resembling a thought balloon coming
out of it and enclosing gland is a box containing the word
trueplus a possible r to make eeling into reeling.
The r looks somewhat like an f, too, feeling, especially
right after true, is implied. Heeling, or obeying (ones
lustful instincts) is there, too, of course, as is healing.
directions by Crag Hill
The still water in the pieces text seems to me the text on the
page treated. Theres something here of a page as a seed that
has blossomed into the treated page.
The thrill of an effective found text is here, too. To repeat one
of my standard ideas yet again, theres something reassuring
about nding some new orderliness in a text that has been in
an accidentintimations that the universe may make sense,
after all.
Needless to say, deletional disconcealments are frequent in
treated textsi.e., procedures that hide or remove parts of
words to free words inside themas a jut of black exposes the
we read in we dread. And the black graphic as a whole
isolates still water above it to allow, almost force, us to read,
still water we read. And narrows the text to rivers, glaciation,
waterand knowing. Ergo, Im coming to nd this (in good
part) a celebration of full-scale, generational (over centuries)
deepening, partially dream-propelled knowing owing out of
Final Darkness (i.e., Stygian darkness) into some exalted
still center.
I think my nal point about this work and other works like it is
that they lend themselves to such tripping as Ive just indulged
in. Connotativeness in spades.
A piece by jwcurry, ll in (56), seems to depict failed
language. Theres pathos in it, but its also a joke. It makes no
easy sense. Frankly, I cant make sense of it, at all. But note the
emphasis on TAR, which the writer (using a rubber stamp,
so wanting to communicate, because the rubber stamp makes
very legible, accessible letters, probably to many people,
because the rubber stamp can stamp out letters fast, and is as-
sociated with mass-production) deems important to get across.
Finally, the author circles his messagethis is something you
must take heed of! So, its all text except the circling, which
is a kind of typography, but its visual elements, including the
charged change of color with the introduction of TAR, are
providing most of its emotional content, begging us to read,
and act upon what weve read.
Two untitled pieces (49 and 50) by John Crouse clearly go
together, one being the basis of the second. The rst suggests
words, but not sufciently for me to think of it as a poem. It is
three sets of letters emerging from who knows what smudge,
or torn therefrom, with the barest hint of a fourth piece of
something textual at its very bottom. What seems to me
cellophane strips covers much of the not-yet-words, so may-
be these letters have been captured from somewhere. Not a
nally satisfying piece, I dont think, but provocative. As the
rst layer of the other piece, it comes into its own, however.
As a visual poem, for it becomes words. REE becomes
TREE or STREET due to the context, which now includes
a full word, AM, to set the scene (now rightside up, by the
way). Ones and tones and stones can be reason-
ably straight-forwardly if xeno-directionally spelled out
near the bottom of the textual part of the work, and I found
THOUGHT, more arbitrarily using the GHT above the
others. The work lends itself to much such nding. And its
place as the second of a two-parter intimates that more will
grow out of it. For me, the AM unies it as an appropriately
unclear clearing eld of who-knows-exactly-what, some of
it more prominent than others, with enough visual interest as
an arrangement of letters to make it pleasurably more than
a mere list of words, however susceptible to image-building
they are.
Another piece (51) by Crouse is mostly an exercise in the
infraverbal placement of spaces in fused words like pure
and erotic, which are rendered (on a bumpy page-as-
eld) as pu r e rot i c to highlight rot, and add I see
and icy to the line. The line itself ratatats from erotic
through erratic and erosive to errata to form a kind of
commentary of eroticor any of the other three words.
Above the text some kind of square tilted at a 45-degree
angle points downward weirdly. To illustrate the caption?
I havent worked it out yet. The square does seem eroding
into the eld its in.
Many works in the collection are illumages created out of
typography or other textual materials but are not verbal, or
signicantly verbal. To call them poetry may seem strange,
but a good argument can be made that they deal with
language too deeply to be called anything else. I term them
linguiconceptual visual poems and place them toward
the visual end of my continuum. One such work here is by
bp Nichol, one of the four or ve with work here who were
importantly visio-poetical in the sixties. His aaBaaa (214)
seems to me to depict a column in the early stages of its
constructionand in the early stages of the alphabet it will
eventually result in. It verbalizes nothing, but conceptually
(and metaphorically), it suggests things about the formation,
the building, of a language.
In another untitled piece by Jim Leftwich (166) I can, if I push myself, nd two es
and an n and a v in it. Even? Its more than suggestive enough of cursive writing,
though, to qualify as possibly linguiconceptual visual poetry. I nd the way it curves
into a single plane as it narrows to form its beginning e, if thats what it is, visually ap-
pealing. Wait. I more logically now see it as an e that thickens out of the plane it was
in as it ends. Out of what it thickens into a thin-lined upside-down v leaps toward us.
An e buds off it to the left while most of an upside-down n crosses it a little higher
up to nish itself. Letters at play. A pre-semic language garden with Eve in it? Arbitrary
lettering can certainly be twisted into messages, and thats one of the signicant virtues
of this kind of art.
Andrew Topel and John M. Bennett have a wonderful piece of abstract expressionism
(256) at this end of my continuum. It has a few letters in it, but the letters are all vowels,
which are the only pronounceable letters, so I, for one, can almost hear the piece trying
(and failing) to speak to us, out of an agony whelming outward.
An untitled piece (162) by Leftwich we leave linguiconceptual visual poetry for what I
call textually enhanced illumagery, for what textual matter it has is fragmental. There is
no apparent reason (that I can nd) for the hints of lettering; they are decorative noise
giving what theyre in the wrongness that makes them aesthetically effective.
Carol Stetsers sequence, On the Road (241), consists, altogether, of 18 cards in a
folding plastic holder with a ribbon attached you can use to hang the holder on the
wall, if you want to (and as I have). It made me realize how such cards could be used
to tell a story.
I nd them visually appealing as a purely illumagistic sequence, but I take them
as hieroglyphically visio-textual. Why? I think only because I know of Carol as
primarily a visual poet. Hence, I recognize the pre-language they can be taken as.
Are they found illumages, illumages painted on asphalt or illumages of paintings or
oil slicks on asphalt? I dont know, but their foundness is part of what makes them
effective, Im sure. In any case, they seem about as far to the averbal end of my
continuum as any visio-textual pieces can be.
And Live Happily (194), by Carlos M. Luis, makes a tting piece with which to end this
survey, although Id place it smack in the center of my continuum. It sardonically de-
picts (for me) the last page of childhood as a splatteringly smashed-against-a-wall fairy
tale. The verbal part of the work identies what is being smashed, but also preambles
the textual mess, the incoherent insanity that follows EVER AFTER. That is, we have
a near-perfect fusion of destroyed book, destroyed text, destroyed life. AND LIVE
HAPPILY EVER AFTER is only a label, but it leads to the richly pessimistic visual poem
the fractured, scattered, dimmed text is, even without the purely graphic elements
augmenting it.
23
I nd what is portrayed something in progress, too
improvised. Hence the empty rectangle at the right. The thing
as a whole seems a pranka playful ow-chart joke on
Poetry-As-High-Art. The joke it plays is also on love poetry,
reducing it to an awkwardly diagrammable mechanism, as
well as verbally suggesting its basis in a gland. At the same
time, it seems to me a lyric celebration of the coarseness,
wackinessand lusterof love. In my subjective reading.
Sound Impressions of
Transpirator (229) by Serge
Segay, is another specimen of
linguiconceptual visual poetry,
an illumage whose subject is
textuality. It isnt language but a
device to reveal or comment on
language. To show it as coding,
and geological layering, and
paths, and in transit, with liquid
incursions. A suggestion of
a lmstrip is there, as well.
Scott Helmess ehk (116)
gives me a lot of trouble. As an
aesthgagent, I nd it terric; as an aesthcritic, I nd it
godawfully annoying. Its easy enough to pin down
taxonomically: its a linguiconceptual visual poem, or design
making conceptually important use of textual elements: by
treating letters in various ways in order to create (my best
guess is) some kind of primordial soup from whence meaningful
language, clarity, will emerge. The universe a few moments
after the big bang?
The piece is effectively centered at a square, and owsno,
zipsmasterfully through a wide range of shades and states
of completion. I nd it three-dimensional, which I generally
count as a virtue (and do so here). That it is pretty close to
entirely horizontal so far as its main elements, its letters, are
concerned (with its ss upside down at the bottom) seems
somewhat consequential. The letters attempt to be readily
readable? A hint of a constricting order in the universe
Helmes depicts?
A particularly arresting untitled linguiconceptual visual
poem (190) by Carlos M. Luis depicts symbols and fragments
of letters going down a shaft. Or falling between cliffs. Or
bourne down or up a river. So: the detritus of a societys
consciousness owing away? Or communication eking
through the darkness of existence? Language coming into
being, in the process forcing The Void to part? The possibility
of communication letting light in, or being brought in by light?
Bottom line: this is a another richly connotative picture of
language. What more can one
say about it?
Were now fully into the
asemic (or averbal) end of my
continuum, by the way. In this
region are such works as David
Fujinos Heartfelt (93), which
is a kind of non-representational
who-knows-what consisting
entirely of typography that
compels the aesthgagent
(i.e., person who engages an
artwork) to read it beyond what
it is as a graphic design, and
perhaps nd here its oh and/or Ooo, oating free of the
intersections the xs are, or/and the kisses they stand for
at the end of heartfelt letters. I nd something of mathematics
in the piece, too, but cant work out a reason for its being
there, unless to contrast with or balance the heartfeltness
of the piece. So, another simple but meaningful averbal
language composition.
Gustave Morins absorbingly stark silhouette (203)
dramatically illustrates how much symbolic power mere
letters in an illumage can generate, although not making
words. As does Reed Altemuss untitled quiet representation
image (2).
Bill Keiths Visual Poetry (144) is more explicitly an
illumagistic impression of what visual poetry is. A rigor
of typed letters married to crude improvisations using
white paint. But maybe the work is slightly a visual poem,
tooone whose subject is seeing from black to white,
and seize. In any case, letters are central to it. Ditto a
makeshift grid. Harmony.
ehk by Scott Helmes
And Live Happily
by Carlos M. Luis
2) Reed Altemus
[Visual Poem], 2003. From the Jim Leftwich Collection.
Photocopy.
25
Letters in Wind
1) Annalisa Alloatti &
Mirella Bentivoglio
Storia del Monumento, Roma: De Luca
Editore, 1968. Two leaves.
Storia del Monumento
24 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 27 27
4) Hartmut Andryczuk
System Fehler, Berlin:
Hybriden-Verlag, 2001.
Twelve prints in a portfolio.
System Fehler
5) Baron
Antigen, a 2005
collaboration with
Scott MacLeod and
John M. Bennett.
Digital print.
Antigen
26
3) mIEKAL aND
From his book, Automatic
Industrial Soothsaying:
A Languages [sic] [Sl:
sn, nd] First page.
Eternal Rovish Agile
29
8) Gary Barwin
r p s s h, from Whitewall of Sound, 33, Winter 2003,
Contemporary Canadian Concrete & Visual Poetry, guest edited
by Derek Beaulieu, published by Jim Clinefelter, Portland, OR,
as a CD-ROM, 2005, and as a set of photographs, 2003.
r p s s h
Whoa!
6) Baron
Leap Cut Bowl, a
2003 collaboration
with John M. Bennett
and Scott Helmes.
Digital print.
Leap Cut Bowl
28
7) Baron
Whoa!a 2006
collaboration with
John M. Bennett.
Digital print.
For ER
Anonka 1
10) Michael
Basinski
From his book,
[Un Nome], Port
Charlotte, FL:
Runaway Spoon Press,
1997.
11) Michael Basinski
Anonka 1, original word art, collage
and mixed media, 34 X 18.
9) Michael Basinski
From his book, Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor
Crashes in the Arizona Desert, Cleveland, OH: Burning Press,
2001. Illustrations by Wendy Collin Sorin.
Coda Bees
33
14) C. Mehrl Bennett
Air Fight, 2005. Drawing
and stamping; digital print.
Air Fight
Sog
Sog, 2005. Collaboration
with Melissa Gilbert and
John M. Bennett. Digital print.
12) Derek
Beaulieu
From his book, (PLOP),
A Manuscript, Calgary,
Alberta: House Press
[ca. 2000]. One of 16
copies printed.
Frog Plop
32
13) Guy R. Beining
From his book, Crossing the
Haiku Border, Fort Collins, CA:
Avantacular Press, 2005.
Plumb
Mad
17) Jesse Freeman and John M. Bennett
Mad, 2004. Mixed media.
35 35 A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
His Wife
His Wife, 2005. Manipulated digital photograph.
An Imprecation
21) John M. Bennett
An Imprecation, 1992. Calligraphic portrait; digital print.
37 A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
boine bugs and
Cleen 3
20) John M. Bennett
Cleen 3, 2002. Stamping and
calligraphy; digital print;
part of a series.
18) John M. Bennett
boine, 2005. Stamping and
calligraphy; digital print.
19) John M. Bennett
bugs and, 2003. Stamping and
Flag Rant Hose
I Found My Sock
24) John M. Bennett
I Found My Sock, 1987. Stamping
and calligraphy; digital print.
25) John M.
Bennett and
Jim Leftwich
From their book, Loud
Work, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 2003. Poem
by Bennett cut up and
reassembled by Leftwich
with additions. In 2008,
Scott MacLeod created a
new version by tearing
the book in half and
reassembling the pieces in
a different conguration.
Delice the Acid
Sooner Spread Than
22) John M. Bennett
Sooner Spread Than, 2004.
Calligraphy; digital print.
23) Suel, Lucien
Delice the Acid, from his book, Day-Sat, transducted from the French
by John M. Bennett, Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 1994. Calligraphic
transductions of stanzas from Suels Les Derives (cf. item no. 242).
Scratchings Head
29) John M. Bennett
Scratchings Head, 1991. Stamping and calligraphy; digital print.
Under the Bed a Moon
Devil Tongue Mask
Maya
28) John M.
Bennett
Maya, 1988. Mixed
media; digital print.
26) John M. Bennett
Under the Bed a Moon, 1987. Mixed media;
digital print.
27) Peter Huttinger
and John M. Bennett
Devil Tongue Mask [ca. 1999].
Mixed media. From the Peter
Huttinger Collection.
32) Jake Berry
From his book, Brambu Drezi: Book Two, Berkeley, CA: Pantograph Press, 1998.
From Brambu Drezi
Mud
Kok
31) Solamito Luigino and John M. Bennett
Mud, 2005. Digital print with stamping and calligraphy.
30) John M. Bennett
Kok, 2005. Stamping and
35) Julian Blaine
Point de posie, from his
book, Reprenons la punctuation
a zero (o), Paris: Editions
Nepe [ca. 1980].
Point de posie
Erivte
36) Jean-Franois Bory
Erivt, from his book, Made in
Machine, Milano: Edizioni Amodulo,
1972.
Once Again Drilled
37) Jean-Franois Bory
Once Again, New York: New Directions Books,
1968. Altered with drilling by Paul Lambert,
Portland, OR, 2004.
33) Bill Bissett
Feel the Flesh, from his book,
(Th) Gossamer Bed Pan, Vanvouver,
BC: Blewointment Press, 1974.
Feel the Flesh
the future uv salmon
34) Bill Bissett
the future uv salmon,
from his book, Scars on
the seehors, Burnaby, BC:
Talonbooks, 1999.
Pots herd
40) J. M. Calleja
e, from his book, Poemas
visuals, Barakaldo [Spain]:
La Caraba, Taller de Intentos
Culturales, 2001.
e
39) John Byrum
Pots herd, from his book, rIMAGE,
Vancouver, BC: Tsunami Editions, 1990.
41) David Baptiste Chirot
From his book, rubBEings: Visual Poetry,
Copy Art, Collage, LaFarge, WI: Xexoxial
Editions [nd].
Ray
Re
38) John Byrum
h ea, from his book,
Black Fire, Lakewood, OH:
Burning Press, 1995.
h ea
42) David Baptiste Chirot
From his book, rubBEings, op cit.
43) Bob Cobbing
From the book, Bob Cobbing,
Maurice Scully, Carlyle
Reedy, Buckfastleigh:
Etruscan Books, 1999.
48 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S 49 A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
Marvomvi
Off
CrustEructs
Pontaneous
44) Bob Cobbing
Pontaneous [England?: Bob
Cobbing, 1968]. A broadside,
signed on verso by author.
Cobbing
45) Bob Cobbing
From his book, Kob Bok:
Selected Texts of Bob Cobbing,
1948-1999, Buckfastleigh, South
Devonshire: Etruscan Books,
1999. Originally published in
Realistic Private Parts [with
Lawrence Upton], [London]:
Writers Forum, 1996.
46) Bob Cobbing
From his book, Whisper Piece
[London: Writers Forum, 1969].
48
49) John Crouse
Ree, digital version with additions by
Jim Leftwich, ca. 2003 [cf. item 50].
48) Ira Cohen
Are You a Forest, from his Celestial Grafti, New York
City: The Ira Cohen Akashic Project, 2003 [CD-ROM].
Are You a Forest
Comb and Tape
Ree
51) John Crouse
pu r e rot, ca. 2003.
pu r e rot
Ree
50) John Crouse
Ree, original found text
with dirt and tape, ca. 2003
[cf. item 49].
47) John Crouse
[found object], ca. 2003.
Broken comb and tape with
a lettristic form.
52) Robin Crozier and Serge Segay
Page from their book, Zaum, Orillia, Ontario: ASFi Editions [nd].
52 52 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S 53 A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
Pins in Sleep
Cover of Screw Show
Chapter 23
53) Robin Crozier and
John M. Bennett
Front cover from their TLP, Screw Show,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 1996.
A TLP is a Tacky Little Pamphlet,
a technical term for a small booklet
cheaply produced.
ION
54) Robin Crozier
ION, from his book, Some Art
Objects: for Ulises Carrin,
Amsterdam: Robin Crozier, 1981.
55) Robin Crozier and
John M. Bennett
Chapter 23, from their book, The
Chapters: 1980-2001, Columbus, OH:
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2002.
58) David Daniels
Earlybogey, from his book,
Years, Berkeley, CA: David
Daniels, 2002.
Earlybogey
Sin Fan Says
59) David Daniels
Sin Fan Says, from his
book, Years, op cit.
56) j w curry
ll in [Sl]: Spider Plots in
Rat-Holes, 1985. Hand-stamped
postcard; edition of 60.
57) Steve
Dalachinsky
Conrmation, from Visual
Poetry, [introduction by]
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL:
Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
ll in
Conrmation
Dea END
62) Klaus Peter Dencker
From Renshi 2000-02, Berlin: Hybriden-Verlag, 2002.
In View
Sun with Marrow
60) David Daniels
Sun with Marrow, a rst
version (1974) of the poem
from his Years, op cit.
61) David
Daniels
In View, a last
version (no. 353) of the
poem in item 60 above,
from his Years, op cit.
65) K. S. Ernst and John M. Bennett
Slack and Tumble, 2001. Collage and calligraphy.
The
Slack and Tumble
66) K. S. Ernst
The [ca. 1986].
Mixed media.
63) Mirta
Dermisache
From her book, Libro
No. 1: 2003, Buenos
Aires/Marseille/
Montpellier: Xul/Mobil-
Home/Manglar, 2003.
64) Johanna
Drucker
Genetically
Distinct, from her
book, Through Light
and the Alphabet,
Berkeley, CA: [sn],
1986.
(untitled)
Genetically Distinct
Synesthesia: the Letter Me
Visual Poets Picnic
Virtue in Dreaming
73) K. S. Ernst
Virtue in Dreaming, 2005. Digital print.
71) K. S.
Ernst
Visual Poets
Picnic, 2001.
Large digital
print on canvas.
72) K. S. Ernst
Synesthesia: the Letter Me, 2000.
Digital print.
Bruce Looms Frog 9
Feeling Boxed In
Thinking Zen
70) K. S. Ernst and
David Cole
Thinking Zen, 2000. Mixed media.
67) K. S. Ernst
Bruce Looms, 2003. Crumpled and
stained paper; text is a collaborative
poem by John M. Bennett and Ernst.
68) K. S. Ernst
Frog 9, 2003. Crumpled and
stained paper.
69) K. S. Ernst
Feeling Boxed In, 1999. Mixed media.
Just Go
Inspiration 4
78) K. S. Ernst
Just Go, 2001.
Digital print.
Sequencing:
Time on My Hands
74) K. S. Ernst
Sequencing: Time on My
Hands, 1980. Original
manuscript; published in
Ernsts Sequencing, Madison,
WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1984.
Ancient Pages
76) K. S. Ernst
Ancient Pages, 2000.
Watercolor.
Isotrocal
75) K. S. Ernst and
John M. Bennett
Isotrocal, 2001. Mixed media.
77) K. S. Ernst
Inspiration 4, 1999.
Digital print.
Abracadabra
Charm all
Two Red Fish
83) K. S. Ernst
Charm All, 2005. Digital print.
82) K. S. Ernst
Two Red Fish, 2000. Digital print.
81) K. S. Ernst
Abracadabra, 2004.
Digital print.
M Spot
(Lets Get) Lost
80) K. S. Ernst
(Lets Get) Lost, 2000.
Watercolor on four sheets of gauze,
each letter on a separate sheet.
79) K. S. Ernst
M Spot, 1984. Mixed media.
88) Ficus
strangulensis
Nude stare [ca. 2000].
Digital transmogrication.
Nude stare
JMB Lips the Risk
In a Very Real Sense
89) Ficus
strangulensis
JMB Lips the Risk, 2001.
Photocopy of cut up and
collage of a poem by John
M. Bennett.
87) Ficus strangulensis
In a Very Real Sense [ca. 2001].
Cut up collage text.
Rose Poem
sil ver cat
Sequencing: Snakes
86) K. S. Ernst
sil ver cat, 1980. Original typescript.
85) K. S. Ernst
Sequencing: Snakes, 1980. Original
manuscript; published in Ernsts Sequencing,
Madison, WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1984.
84) K. S. Ernst
Rose Poem, 1969.
Original typescript.
95) Csar Figueiredo
and John M. Bennett
Fraude, Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte
Prods, 1997. Front cover of small
booklet of collaborative word art.
Cover of Fraude
94) Charles Henri Ford, Reepak
Shakya, and Indra Tamang
Handshakes from Heaven II, Paris:
Handshake Press, 1986.
Nothing Matters
93) David Fujino
Heartfelt, from Whitewall of Sound, 33,
Winter 2003, Contemporary Canadian Concrete &
Visual Poetry, guest edited by Derek Beaulieu,
published by Jim Clinefelter, Portland, OR: as a
CD-ROM, 2005, and as a set of photographs, 2003.
Heartfelt
Speedy Tough Girl
Behind Your Moony One (truth
with John M. Bennett
One (truth, 2000. Cut up collage
text; words from John M. Bennett poems.
Speedy Tough Girl, 2001. Collage.
91) Ficus strangulensis with
Baron and John M. Bennett
Behind Your Moony, 2001. Digital print;
words by John M. Bennett.
ds mu
97) Peter Ganick
ds mu, photocopied cut up text [ca. 2001].
96) John Furnival and
Jonathan Williams
Wallpaper for a Classical Passion-Pit Atop Mount
Parnassus, 1988, in their Letters to the Great Dead: A
Collaborative Work [Sl: sn, ca. 1989]. Portfolio of 11
large (16 X 24) broadsides of visual/concrete poems.
Wallpaper for a Classical
Passion-Pit Atop Mount Parnassus
103) Ilse and
Pierre Garnier
Le Blason de la Peste, from
their book, Le Spatialisme en
Chemins, op cit.
A Wave
b ee
Le Blason de la Peste
102) Ilse Garnier
b ee, from Ilse et Pierre Garnier,
Le Spatialisme en Chemins, Amiens:
Editions Corps Puce, 1990.
101) Pierre Garnier
A Wave, from his book, The
Words Are the World, Port
Charlotte, FL: The Runaway
Spoon Press, 1996.
Atriox MS
Page from Atriox
98) Peter
Ganick
page spread from Atriox
manuscript notebook,
1999. It was published
in 1999 as Atriox. Book
One [cf. item 99].
100) Peter Ganick
For Foreign Why, from his book, Poem-Book
One: Poems and Illustrations, Elwood, CT: Front
Pictures Artist Books, 2000. Copy 3 of 6 printed.
For Foreign Why 99) Peter Ganick
From his book, Atriox. Book One,
1999. This is the published version
of the left side of the manuscript
page spread above [item 98].
All Reective Surfaces
106) Martn Gubbins
From his book, Album 01.02>04.05,
Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Tcitas, 2005.
Ac Dentro
107) Bob Grumman
Page spread from his book, An April Poem, Port Charlotte, FL:
Runaway Spoon Press, 1989. Each page is identical, except for
the dot above the i, which has different content on each page.
105) Jesse Glass, Jr.
All Reective Surfaces, digital
print, ca. 2001.
Rain
et 1
et 2
104) Ilse Garnier
2 poems from her book, Rythmes et Silence: Pomes
Spatiaux, Paris: Editions Andr Silvaire [ca. 1980].
111) Davi
Det Hompson
ou hu, from his
book, Flat Ground: A
Film Script, Richmond,
VA: [Davi Det
Hompson], 1980.
ou hu
112) Scott Helmes
Original ink drawing, from
a sketchbook ca. 1976.
Drawing
Bub
113) Scott Helmes and
John M. Bennett
Bub, from Clunk [Columbus, OH]:
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2001.
Mathemaku for Robert Lax
Dividing Poetry
Seaside Mathemaku
110) Bob Grumman
Seaside Mathemaku, digital print,
ca. 2004.
108) Bob Grumman
Dividing Poetry, digital
print, ca. 2004.
109) Bob Grumman
Mathemaku for Robert Lax,
digital print, ca. 2004.
enters
eh
help
117) Scott Helmes
eh, ca. 1970. Oiginal rubber stamp drawing.
118) Scott Helmes
help, ca. 1970. Original rubber
stamp drawing.

119) Scott
Helmes
enters, ca. 1977?
Original rubber stamp
drawing and cut up.
j
ehk
Centering
114) Scott Helmes
j, from a sketchbook titled Ambiguous,
1976. Original stamping and drawing.
115) Scott Helmes
Centering, from a sketchbook titled
Ambiguous, 1976. Original stamping.
116) Scott Helmes
ehk, from a sketchbook titled Ambiguous, 1976.
Original stamping and drawing.
Passing into Night
the Words Vanish
When You Read
in Your Dreams
Zipper: Poem 1976
124) Scott Helmes
When You Read in Your
Dreams, from Poemes (Zehn)
Visibles [St. Paul, MN]:
Stamp Pad Press, 1998.
123) Scott Helmes
Passing into Night the
Words Vanish, 1978.
Original drawing.
122) Scott Helmes
Zipper: Poem 1976 [St. Paul, MN:
Scott Helmes], 2000. Edition of 100
printed on a computer mouse pad.
HN EF
The Farm
121) Scott Helmes
HN EF, from VI Visual Poems, Minneapolis:
Stamp Pad Press/Hermetic Press, 2003.
120) Scott
Helmes
The Farm, 1997.
Original rubber
stamp drawing.
Life Death Typtich
from Ra aR
129) Scott Helmes
Life Death Typtich, ca. 1977. Original rubber stamp
drawings. Published in Helmes [untitled], Vandergrift,
PA: Zelot Press, 1986.
130) Scott Helmes and John M. Bennett
Page spread from their book, Ra aR [St. Paul, MN/Columbus, OH: Scott
Helmes/John M. Bennett, 2003]. One-of-a-kind original artists book.
TS
p
theand
Light
125) Scott Helmes
theand, ca. 1975-1985. Original
rubber stamp text.
126) Scott Helmes
TS, ca. 1975-1985. Original
rubber stamp drawing.
128) Scott Helmes
p, ca. 1975-1985. Digital print.
127) Scott Helmes
Light, ca. 1975-1985. Original
mixed media drawing.
Cover of Sonatas, Piano, No. 2
Translation of a Poem
by Pedro Xisto
135 & 136) Dick Higgins
Sonatas, Piano, No. 2, Barrytown, NY: Printed Editions, 1983. Two
views of the cover with two of the included transparencies superimposed.
Cover of Sonatas, Piano, No. 2
134) Dick Higgins
Translation of a Poem by
Pedro Xisto, from his book
FOEW&OMBWHNW, New York: Something
Else Press, 1969.
Information
Zoom Poems
Visual Poem
131) Scott Helmes
Information, ca. 1977. Original
typoglyph poem.
132) Scott Helmes
Zoom Poems. Original collage; used as cover
of Helmes book Zoom Poems: Adventures Among
the Hyperchips [St. Paul, MN?]: Scott Helmes,
1992. Edition of 20 copies.
133) Scott Helmes
Visual poem, ca. 1977. Original mixed media.
141) jUStin katKO
Stampede, from his book Scheme!
[Oxford, OH: jUStin katKO, 2005].
Aga and Space
dis trust of
140) G. Huth
dis trust of, typewriter
poem manipulated through
photocopying. From his book
The Dreams of the Fishwife,
Madison, WI: Xexoxial Editions,
1989 [Xerolage #17].
Stampede
139) G. Huth
Aga and Space,
from his book, Dachau:
Afterwards, State
College, Pennsylvania:
IZEN, 1994.
138) August Highland
Clubloop #0001 [San Diego, CA: August
Highland, 2004]. Two views of a loose leaf
book in a wooden box with a visual poem
mounted in the lid.

137) Crag Hill
Centerfold from his book, Directions to the Primary: Maps
of Juxtaposition, Calgary, Alberta: Housepress [1999?].
from Directions to the Primary
Clubloop #0001
Visual Poetry
144) Bill Keith
Visual Poetry [nd]. Mixed media
collage photocopy print.
Sonata I
143) Bill Keith
Sonata I [nd]. Mixed
media photocopy print.
Sale
145) Bill Keith
Sale, from his book, Stalking
the Dinosaur: Selected Works,
New York: Koja Press, 2003.
142) Bill Keith and Arrigo Lora-Totino
Fuch me, pasifae, from their book, LAffaire du Labyrinthe,
New York-Torino: Edition des Auteurs, 2001.
Fuch me, pasifae
149) Karl Kempton
Charm, from his book, Rune: A Survey,
Kenosha, Wisconsin: Light and Dust Books,
Atticus Books, 1992.
Light Is the Man With No Words
148) Anna Korintz
Light Is the Man With No Words, from her
book, Axle [Fort Collins, CA]: Avantacular
Press, 2004.
150) Richard Kostelanetz
No Cave Rest, from his book, Dis/Sections [Monroe, NY]:
Aseidad [ca. 2003]. Book was designed by Michael Peters.
No Cave Rest
Charm
147) Peter Huttinger
My Dog He Has Become Mutted, from his artists
book, A Dog Lost But Not Forgotten, 1975.
for
My Dog He Has Become Mutted
146) Peter Huttinger
for, from his book, Little Ones
at Home [Cincinnati, Ohio]: Holmes
& Riordan, 2001. One-of-a-kind
original artists book.
echolalia
TT
153) Gyorgy
Kostritskii
echolalia, original
calligraphic painting
on typescript, 2003.
154) Gyorgy
Kostritskii
TT, original
calligraphic drawings
from a small sketchbook,
ca. 2003.
151) Gyorgy
Kostritskii
Coulore, original
calligraphic painting
on a page from the
Oxford English
Dictionary, 2003.
Coulore
is of
152) Gyorgy Kostritskii
is of, original calligraphic painting and typescript, 2003.
157) Jim Leftwich
From his artists book, Only Help,
2002. Original stamping and ink.
Cover of Death Text Book 3
Youll Never Know
158) Jim Leftwich
Front cover of his book, Death Text Book 3
[Charlottesville, VA]: Xtantbooks, 2003.
LI WR
159) Jim Leftwich
Mixed media work from a
notebook, 2003.
155) Cal Kowal
From his artists book,
Oxymoron: The Making of an
Original Photograph, OSU
Portfolio [Columbus, OH:
Cal Kowal], 2004.
Do You Have
156) Paul Thaddeus Lambert
From his book, Final Notice Before Service
Ends [Portland, OR: Paul Lambert, 2001].
The Babble
154A) Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
and John M. Bennett
DD, 2007. Digital print
DD
154B) Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
and John M. Bennett
OOO, 2006. Digital Print.
OOO
EM
164) Jim Leftwich and
John M. Bennett
imi, a collaborative visual
poem, 1996.
imi
Infamy
160) Jim Leftwich
From a series titled Newspaper Collages September
11, 2001. Original collage dated September 13, 2001.
Published on the cover of The June 30th Manifesto,
compiled by John M. Bennett and Scott Helmes,
Columbus, OH/St. Paul, MN: Luna Bisonte Prods/
StampPad Press, 2004.
Mo
161) Jim Leftwich
Original visual poem, December 2001.
Mixed media.
Drawing
162) Jim Leftwich
Original charcoal drawing, February 2001.
163) John M. Bennett
and Jim Leftwich
From their book, Loud Work, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 2003. Collaborative visual poem.
ob bod
169) Jim Leftwich
From an original series
titled Sublettered
Stencils, ca. 1998.
The Blaze
Militant
170) Jim Leftwich
Militant, from his artists
book, It Turns Out That the
Sample, ca. 2003.
168) John M.
Bennett, Jim
Leftwich, and
Jake Berry
The Blaze, a
collaborative visual
poem, 1997.
Drawing lhr
167) Jim Leftwich
Mixed media visual poem on a 3X5-inch card, ca. 2003.
166) Jim Leftwich
Charcoal asemic calligraphy,
ca. 1999.
ation
165) Jim Leftwich
ation, crumpled newspaper
from a series titled Sept. 11,
2001, made September 13, 2001.
Burroughs Modied
174) Jim Leftwich
First page of William S.
Burroughs A Thanksgiving
Prayer [from Mondo 2000
magazine], modied with text
and paint by Leftwich, ca. 1999.
Burroughs Modied
175) Jim Leftwich
Another page from item 174
referred to above.
Cover of HW#14
172) Jim Leftwich
Front cover of his book, HW#14
[Charlottesviller, VA]: Xtantbooks, 2001.
One-of-a-kind artists book.
Let Fall
171) Jim Leftwich
From an original series titled
Magnetic Word Poems, August 2001.
Page Spread
173) Jim
Leftwich
A page spread from his
one-of-a-kind artists
book, CDDDI, ca. 2003.
Among Knots
179) Ken Harris and Jim Leftwich
A collaborative poem, 2002.
Mark
177) Jim Leftwich
From a series titled Newspaper
Collages September 11,2001.
Original collage dated
September 13, 2001.
residential section
since the ice
176) Jim Leftwich
since the ice, paint on text,
May 2001.
178) Jim Leftwich
residential section, manipulated
photocopy text with paint, 2002.
184) Olchar E. Lindsann
From his The Bloodless Gut Anti-
Manifesto, in The Appropriated Press,
series 6, vol. 6, issue 5.5, 2003.
Notice
V
185) Ruhe Lcentezza
From his book Concrescent Poetry
[Charlottesville, VA]: Xtantbooks,
Institute for Study & Perception,
2003.
183) d. a. levy
From his book, Scarab Poems,
[England]: Writers Forum, 1978.
The piece was made in 1967.
I Demand
181) Jim Leftwich
Page from a construction-
paper pad, mixed media, 2001.
Asemic Word Art
acts re
Asemic Word Art
180) Jim Leftwich
and Marilyn Dammann
From their one-of-a-kind
artists book, Asemic Anti-War
Songs #5, 2002.
182) Jim Leftwich
acts re, folded text, 2002.
Afche
187) Carlos M. Luis
From the book, O, Vozque Pulp
[texts by Derek White; images by
Carlos M. Luis], New York, NY:
Calamari Press, 2004.
Ojo
188) Carlos M. Luis
Afche, mixed media, ca. 2005.
186) Joel Lipman
Art from the front cover of a program for a poetry reading,
Some Chemistry, Toledo, Ohio: Red Star Productions, Toledo Poets
Center Press, 1993.
Model
Para Comenzar
Las Osamentas
192) Carlos M. Luis
From his book, Disfunctional
Texts I-II: A Selection,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte
Prods, 2003.
193) Carlos M. Luis
From his book, Contraloquios y
Peritextos [Miami, FL: Carlos M.
Luis], 2002. Edition limited to
50 copies.
OBPU
+
E S.
189) Carlos M. Luis
E S., from his book, Texticles & Other
Texts [Miami, FL: Carlos M. Luis], 2004.
190) Carlos M. Luis
+ , from his book, Texticles
& Other Texts, op cit.
191) Carlos M. Luis
OBPU, from his book, Collages
[Miami, FL: Carlos M. Luis], 2004.
It Is
195) Eric Lunde
From his book, Aphasic
Machine [Bloomington, MN]:
Kanshiketsu Editions, 2003.
196) Scott MacLeod
Lucifection, from his pad of original
drawings titled Amygdala 1998-99.
Lucifection Imphulian
197) Scott MacLeod
Imphulian, from his pad of original
drawings titled Amygdala 1998-99.
And Live Happily
194) Carlos M. Luis
From his book, Si No Si Da Rio [Miami, FL]: Carlos M. Luis, 2002.
201) Malok
Frozen Ass, original
collage, ca. 1995.
Frozen Ass
Frozen Hypnosis
202) Malok and Bern Porter
Frozen Hypnosis, original artists book,
ca. 2000. #7 on cover.
Followed
199) Scott MacLeod
Balloonhead, manuscript, ca. 1990s.
Also in his artists book, Metpo, ca.
1990s.
Balloonhead 200) Scott MacLeod
Front cover of his Culture and Society
Have Departed from the Sight of Men [Sl]:
Scott MacLeod, 1999. One of MacLeods
one-of-a-kind gathered paper books,
consisting of texts, found printed
matter, notes, and other material.
Cover of Culture and Society
198) Scott MacLeod
Followed, from his book, The
Trouble I Had, Charlottesville,
VA/Oysterville, WA: Anabasis/
Xtant, 2004.
204A) Sheila E. Murphy
Portrait, digital print, ca. 2003?
Flash Fiction
My Orchids
206) Sheila E. Murphy
My Orchids, digital print, 2005.
204) Steve McCaffery
Land, from his book, Melon
[Sl]: Gronk, [nd]. grOnk
Series 6, 4.
Land
Silhouette
203) Gustave Morin
Silhouette, from Whitewall
of Sound, 33, Winter 2003.
Contemporary Candian Concrete &
Visual Poetry, guest edited by
Derek Beaulieu, published by
Jim Clinefelter, Portland,
Oregon, as a CD-ROM, 2005; and
as a series of photographs, 2003.
205) Sheila E. Murphy
Flash Fiction, digital print, 2004.
Portrait
208) Keiichi Nakamura
and Rea Nikonova
mmclkgrlijij, from their book
of collaborations, The Tropic
of Cancer, Tokyo, Japan: Keiichi
Nakamura, 2001.
mmclkgrlijij
209) F. A. Nettelbeck
Page spread from a manuscript notebook titled Summer, 1981 (notes).
Contains notes made in California, Oregon, and possibly Texas.
A Caller
207) Musicmaster [AKA Thomas Cassidy]
Night Club, original mixed media, ca. 2004.
Night Club
Bremer Allegedly Fired Five Shots
Bremer Allegedly Fired Five Shots,
manuscript page, 1972. Note at
bottom: 1
st
attempted cut-up.
This text was used in his Bug Death,
cf. item 211 on previous page.
Your Bloody Organs, manuscript page,
ca. 1973. Nettelbecks note on this
sheet reads, Spontaneously typed
page with sections that later became
part of Bug Death, cf. item 211 on
previous page.
Your Bloody Organs
Articial Testicles, manuscript
page, ca. 1970s. Shows fragmented
structure used in his Bug Death,
cf. item 211 below.
Articial Testicles
Iris Wand came home
Iris Wand came home, sheet of
newspaper clippings used in his book
Bug Death, Santa Cruz, CA: Alcatraz
Editions, 1979.
AET Output
216) Stuart Pid
Sight, State College, PA: IZEN [nd]. This is
a small book (50mm X 12mm) consisting of the
word sight on the front cover, followed by
several leaves of clear plastic that, when
turned, gradually reveal the second word,
insight, on the inside back cover.
Sight
217) Bern Porter
Output, from his book, Found Poems,
Millertown, NY: Something Else Press, 1972.
218) Bern Porter
AET, from his book, Gee-Whizzels,
Rockland: Maine Coast Printers [1972?].
214) B. P. Nichol [bpNichol]
BBBaaa, from his book, KON 66 & 67: For
Jiri Valoch, Maxville, Ontario: Above/Ground
Press, 2002.
BBBaaa
215) Michael Peters
Braaaaakit, from Visual Poetry, [introduction by]
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL: Burban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
Braaaaakit
221) Marilyn R. Rosenberg
An Egg Case Escape Mechanism, broadside, 1994.
An Egg Case Escape Mechanism
219) Lanny Quarles
ZoEllum, from his CD book,
Trashpo, Portland, OR: Lanny
Quarles, ca. 2004.
Portrait
ZoEllum
220) Lanny Quarles
Portrait, from Visual Poetry,
[introduction by] Carlos M.
Luis, Miami, FL: Durban Segnini
Gallery, 2005.
Self-Portrait/Prole/Poem
Some Things Never Change (left) Some Things Never Change (right)
Left side of Some Things Never Change
Left, Right, broadside, 1983.
224) Marilyn R.
Rosenberg
Self-Portrait/Prole/
Poem, broadside on
transparent sheet, 1970.
No Parking
Wheelwork
222) Marilyn R.
Rosenberg
No Parking, broadside, 1994.
A page spread from her artists book, Wheelwork, 1986.
Right side of Some Things Never
Change Left, Right, broadside, 1983.
Visual Poem
230) Rea Nikonova
Letter to Robin Crozier [1995
version], from an untitled
manuscript, ca. 2001. In the
Jim Leftwich Collection.
Letter to Robin Crozier [1995 version]
Visual Poem
231) Rea Nikonova
Visual poem from a book titled, Serge Segay,
Rea Nikonova [Sl]: Anabasis/Xtant, 2003.
232) Rea Nikonova
Visual poem from an untitled manuscript,
ca. 2001. In the Jim Leftwich Collection.
Cover of K
dorm dorm
Sound Impressions of Transpirator
227) Serge Segay
and John M. Bennett
Cover art from their book, K,
John M. Bennett, Rea Nikonova,
Serge Segay, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 2005.
228) Serge Segay and
John M. Bennett
dome dorm, from their book, Baden
Where Foam, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 1997.
229) Serge Segay
Sound Impressions of Transpirator, from
his manuscript, Picto and Other Poems, ca.
2002. In the Jim Leftwich Collection.
237) Spencer Selby
Now What Be Brighter, from his book, Malleable
Cast, Mentor, OH: Generator Press, 1995.
Now What Be Brighter
If the Moon Is Not High
in the
238) Spencer Selby
in the, from his book, Problem
Pictures, Berkeley, CA: SINK
Press, 2003.
236) Spencer Selby
If the Moon Is Not High, from
his book, Stigma, Oakland, CA:
Score [1994?].
235) Rea Nikonova
ttutt, from an untitled
manuscript, ca. 2001. In the
Jim Leftwich Collection.
ttutt
234) Serge Segay
Visual poem from his manuscript,
Picto and Other Poems, ca. 2002.
In the Jim Leftwich Collection.
Visual Poem
233) Rea Nikonova and
John M. Bennett
Lust er, from their book, K, John M.
Bennett, Rea Nikonova, Serge Segay,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 2005.
Lust er
240) Carol Stetser
From her book, A Box of
Pandoras, [Sedona, AZ]: Carol
Stetser, 2002.
Lightbulb
241) Carol Stetser
From her artists book, On the Road:
The Calligraphic Tracings of Tar
Filling the Cracks in the Asphalt
Road, Sedona, AZ: Carol Stetser, 2004.
On the Road
239) Alan Sondheim
AAuthors LLocation, from his book, [an,ode,,
[Sl]: Burning Deck Press, 1968.
AAuthors LLocation
244) Thomas L. Taylor
What Comes Again, no. 46 from a
series of text and image pieces, 2002.
What Comes Again
Open This
Core
Core, original computer art printout, 1998.
Open This [nd]. One of a group
of approximately 63 original visual
poems on cards.
242) Lucien Suel
A page from his book, Les
Drives: Pome, Berquette,
France: Station Underground
dEmerveillant Littraire, 1995.
Cf. item 23 for a treatment of
other texts from this book.
Le Squelette
243) Hiroshi Tanabu
Sound, from his book, Vivid
Sound of Light, London: Writers
Forum, 1995.
Sound
Triumph to Song
Roman Hours
250) Thomas L.
Taylor
Triumph to Song, 1974.
From an original notebook
by Eagle.
Wheres Foldate, from his manuscript,
Hermetic Series, 1995. Original drawing
and printout.
Wheres Foldate
Roman Hours, from his manuscript,
Hermetic Series, 1995. Original
calligraphy and paint on printout.
Seemed Sort, 1997. Color photocopy with
original drawing and writing.
Seemed Sort
Mandala
Experienced As
from a 1974 drawing pad titled, The
Mating:Merging:Mandalas of Eagle & Seed,
Eagle is a pseudonym Taylor used for much
of his early work.
Experienced As, ca. 1070s. From a
group of exercise sheets Taylor gave to
the classes he was teaching.
256) Andrew Topel and
John M. Bennett
From their collaborative book, RO,
Columbus, OH/Ft. Collins, CO: Luna
Bisonte Prods/Avantacular Press, 2006.
Round Space
Two Magnetic Minds
oye
257) Andrew Topel
Round Space, from his book, Spheres,
Portland, ME: Tonerworks, ca. 2005.
258) Andrew Topel
Two Magnetic Minds, from
his book, Mystication [Sl]:
Thus No Outer Doubts
O, from his manuscript, Intentional Series, 1995.
Thus No Outer Doubts, from his manuscript,
Hermetic Series, 1995.
Wherein Split
Wherein Split, from his manuscript,
Hermetic Series, 1995.
O
Blak
261) Nico Vassilakis
TRNW, from his book, The
Remington Vispoems, Seattle: Nico
Vassilakis, 2005.
262) Elizabeth Was
Front cover (with window) of her
book, Compulsively, Spilled, Madison,
WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1991.
Cover of Compulsively, Spilled
TRNW
263) Elizabeth Was
Blak, from her book, Eye
Shadow, LaFarge, WI: Xexoxial
Editions, 1985
Sign Language
S Droplet
259) Andrew Topel and
John M. Bennett
S Droplet, from their collaborative
book, Manifesto, Fort Collins, CO:
260) Andrew Topel
A page from his book, Sign Language,
[Ft. Collins, CO]: Avantacular Press,
2005.
Scales of Evolution
Hoof Product
267) Derek White
Hoof Product, from Visual
Poetry, [introduction by]
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL:
Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
265) Irving Weiss
Horror Poem, a two-page work from
his book, Visual Voices: The Poem
as a Print Object, Port Charlotte,
FL: Runaway Spoon Press, 1994.
Gloss Twombly
Horror Poem
Horror Poem
264) Irving Weiss
Gloss Twombly, from Visual Poetry,
[introduction by] Carlos M. Luis, Miami,
FL: Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
266) Derek White
Scales of Evolution, from
his book, 23 Text Files,
New York, NY: Calamari
Press, 2003.
Second T
268) Reid Wood and Karl Young
Second T, from their collaborative CD, Collaborations,
[Oberlin, OH]: Reid Wood, 2004.
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Visual Poetry in The Avant Writing Collection

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