I don't think I saw that listing that described my poetry as "concrete" (and I'm not sure which recent book it was referring to), but none of my recent books could be called "concrete" no matter how far you stretched that term... rOlling COMBers has some visual poems in it, and some poems with "visual" elements, but they ain't concrete, which is a pretty specific type of visual poetry.
I suppose there is no such thing as a "purely" abstract "linguistic artifact", which is an abstract concept, tautologically speaking, but some work comes closer. Expository prose, for example, or maybe this discussion, in which the language is much more of a medium for ideas, thought, etc. The other extreme would be concrete and visual poetry, in which, as you say, language is "treated as visual material for its own sake". Or as I said, becomes totemic or talismanic.
Onword,
John
At 02:38 PM 6/26/01 -0400, you wrote:
> <blockquote type=cite cite>Pedro et al:<br>
> Sorry to take so long to respond further to this matter - I've been on a
> retreat (during which I took a field trip to the Sackner Archive of
> Concrete and Visual Poetry in /Miami Beach) - but as to defining What
> visual poetry is, that's a tough one. I tend to think of it as
> anything in which there is a visual element to the work (that is, SEEING
> it is part of the experience). That, however, could well include
John, you have to SEE the text of a novel also. Of course your eye
movements
are rather restricted, but still... the most important thing about visual
poetry
for me, and this is quite subjective, is that it calls for a different kind
of reading (reader). Alternative eye movements and page scanning are often
required. One has to decide where to start and where to go next and how to
scan the poem. Visual poetry often allows for multiple readings (and here we
arrive at your ambiguity again though it is more a graphic ambiguity than a
semantic one).
What I found interesting was a recent post about your new book on the
poetry list
which called your poetry "concrete". Really? I mean the line by line
oriented
things are read like conventional poetry right to left etc. and your visual
pieces
with the repeated rubberstamp borders and the calligraphy don't seem to me
to
be particularly concrete. On the contrary they seem very abstract- not
poetry
where language-qua-language is presented for its own sake...
> almost all poetry, so I think it also includes a quality of the work
> which makes it in one way or another totemic and/or talismanic.
> That is, its physical presence is part of the thing; it's not just
> "abstract" like a purely linguistic artifact
Could you define or make clear what you mean by a "linguistic artifact"?
And "absract". So what you're saying is that in visual poetry language
is treated as visual material for its own sake, i.e. it tends toward
the concrete...
> That's useful, yet doesn't cut much out.<br>
> It seems that most "non-visual poetry" could be experienced
> aurally<br>
> and not visually without losing too much.<br>
> Would you agree with that?<br>
There is some visual poetry which is BOTH visual and aural but it is so
difficult to do that it happens rarely. Since this is FLUXLIST I would like
to point out that visual poetry is intermedia- the area between visual
art and poetry in the same way that sound poetry is the intermedium between
music and poetry and Alan Bowman's hexidecimal poems are the intermedium
between computer programming and poetry. I find looking at visual poetry
using Dick Higgins' poetry intermedia chart amazingly clarifying in an
area which is theory and criticism-impoverished.
RA
Oh, apologies to John Held and his family and friends for "trashing" John
in
my last posting.
--- Reed Altemus
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