I was working on a series of biblical color plates and had
just finished ‘David and Bathsheba’.
David fell in love with her, so he sent her husband to die in battle,
then he married her himself. In this
illustration, Bathsheba bathes on the roof while David watches from the domed
tower at top right .
Just as David watches Bathsheba, our contributors watch
their poets of choice from their own domed towers, becoming enamored of what is
beautiful in ourselves and in others.
- DRAW BLOOD OR GO HOME -
___________________________________________
CONTRIBUTORS
Crag Hill Reviewing ?
Geof Huth Reviewing Troy Lloyd
Nico Vassilakis Reviewing Anneke Baeten
Bill DiMichele Reviewing Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Bobbi Lurie Reviewing Mark Young
Joel Chace Reviewing Hank Lazer
Karl Kempton Reviewing Before Concrete From Early 1900s
___________________________________________Nico Vassilakis Reviewing Anneke Baeten
Bill DiMichele Reviewing Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Bobbi Lurie Reviewing Mark Young
Joel Chace Reviewing Hank Lazer
Karl Kempton Reviewing Before Concrete From Early 1900s
Crag Hill Reviewing ?
I am thinking about a visual poem I have not yet seen composed
by a visual poet I have not yet met and may never meet.
I am thinking about a visual poem that may never be
composed.
I am thinking about a visual poem I will not see in my
lifetime.
The visual poem has tones and colors not yet invented
arrayed in forms—lines, shades, shapes—not yet created.
The visual poem has no colors, no forms, because those are
no longer necessary in our two-, three-, or four- dimensional worlds.
The visual poem can be read from all directions at once,
inside and outside, inside out, near and far.
The visual poem, a blank slate, cannot be read from any
direction.
The visual poem can be now and future and past and
designations of time our linear species cannot yet fathom.
The visual poem can be no time at all.
I am seeing this visual poem as I have never seen a poem
before.
This visual poem grows in eyes I do not yet possess.
This visual poem is the seeing that is the poem.
This visual poem does not see.
I reach out to the visual poem with arms and hands and
fingers I did not know I could wield.
This visual poem in arms and hands and fingers is at first
awkward then embracing.
I push this visual poem away as it pushes me away.
I breathe it in but it does not want to be air.
I taste it yet it moves and revolves in spaces without
tongues—in spaces with no need for tongues.
When I first encountered this visual poem I shuddered.
When I encountered it again I unshuttered my obsolescence,
my arrogance, my reticence.
I built a new wall of windows.
I tore down the wall of the poem.
This visual poem, I believe, will create the language to
render coherent all languages heretofore incoherent.
This visual poem will give voice to silence.
I can believe in this visual poem.
I can have faith in it though I will die before it implodes
into existence for others.
This is the genesis, the exodus, the revelation.
This is the palm to palm, the song the sun sang before it knew
it would be sung.
This is the visual poem.
Geof Huth Reviewing Troy Lloyd
Troy Lloyd Unalloyed
Troy Lloyd, blankit (endless ribbon) (2009-04-12)
In the end, Troy Lloyd may be merely a meteor shower, yet
the most vibrant we have ever seen, remarkably diverse sprays of light against
the inert reality of atmospheric friction. He didn’t produce and present work
for that many years, but in the work he presented there was everything: a mind
constantly in motion, an eye always seeing and often seeing what we missed
right before us, a hand in a perpetual state of making, an imagination always
searching.
He appeared to be inspired by everything mixed, myriad,
messy, and beautiful, and he made work of all kinds along these lines. Poetry
(visual and otherwise), drawings, photographs, comics, painting, constructions,
thoughts—he accumulated and promulgated it all. And, although he was a young
man of Georgia, he made things in his own style. His signature was graceful,
effortless disorder, but not quite disorder—something closer to the
presentation of living in the real world. He repeated the shapes of the world,
with its messiness and dirtiness, but through the two bright lenses of his
eyes. We can see the beauty in things by seeing them with his eyes, by
perceiving them as made by his hands.
His means and methods were so various that I sometimes could
not tell how they were made. Was that
asemic text made of shadow or of ink on cloth or both? I might ask myself.
And he made work so effortlessly within forms that it was impossible to
determine, for sure, what he meant the work to be. Was it an abstract comic or and asemic visual poem? Did he draw all
those careful swooping lines by hand or did he use a computer?
And, yet, I believe he rarely used a computer. Few pieces
showed signs of that possibility, and he engaged with the materiality of the
earth, even when using machines to make. His hands, in their infinite
malleability, intervened against the substances of the planet to force them
into miraculous structures of shape and meaning and seeing. All of these were
somehow organic, as if they had always been part of the world, as if they were
living structures of thought that would replicate their often already
replicating internal supporting infrastructures.
Mania engages the mind and the hand in Troy’s work (and also
in his life for all I know—and I say this realizing he was one of the gentlest
people I’ve ever in my life met). He
created at what seemed like great speed, and much of his handwork was a
perfected scrawl. Even when attaching metal to metal to make a (probably
temporary) sculpture, he could embody the piece with a sense of scrawledness.
Or maybe it is all a sign of his sprawlingness. His work seemed to sprawl
across every inch of any space it inhabited.
Or maybe I was tricked by the presentation of most of his
work, which most frequently appeared on his blog, wrd.wthiin.woord,
and only in tiny photographs that sometimes did not contain the entire work—or those
fragments represented the true work. His camera was always more an instrument
of creation than one of simple capture. Lighting, focus, framing were always
issues at hand, things that changed, not a simple flat means of documenting. In
this way, we were forced to see his work by looking into the end of his own
telescope. Only then, could we see the huge size and detail of the tiny things
before us but still so far away.
He remade the earth, collaged it back into imagination. He
gave the eye the pure gift of confusion. He reused text and image. He made text
and image. He lived in a copy culture, where his mind and hand were as much the
copy machine as the original text. He made poems in toilet bowls, poems with
the typewriter as the machine making and the binding holding the poem, poems
that were collages, sculptures, scrawls. A typed poem of his could become a
sculpture via photograph.
He made the world alive.
And then he disappeared into his real life, where he may
still be making. And making us wait.
Nico Vassilakis Reviewing Anneke Baeten
Anneke Baeten's Code for
Interpretation
Unwritten markings rest on an
unsaid surface. What to make of this asemic writing?
Newly scribed documents resist an
old foe – the predictable. Whatever it takes to leave behind behind. Meaning
ain't nothing but a thing.
There is hybrid in the air.
Applying another to another. A thing won't last unless it attaches to the next.
I wrote this once - I think asemic writing/poetry is the
ratcheted up magnification of parts of letters, the parts that no longer resemble
and cannot be traced back to the original and so have determined to make a go
of it on their own. It will be interesting to see where all the threads arrive.
Hasn't taken long for a result to materialize.
Anneke is doing. She is mixing facets and excavating.
Future aboriginal thrusts into the void. To write ahead of legible thinking.
She grabs at paint and she photographs how asemic writings
merge with it. The black and white has attitude, makes it pointed. There's a
seriousness in her work.
Here is a possible rosetta stoneage object. Certain texts,
un-meaninged descriptives, assigned to specific brush strokes. Symbols, the
undertaker presents, revisit how language transfers the audible to visual
signage.
As each painted brush stroke is unique...
She says she's “attempting a code for interpretation.”
For each difference there is an adjoining asemic
representation.
Creating an image using just these 24 brush strokes should
produce an asemic translation. And conversely, a surface holding these 24
asemic stanzas, phrases and punctuations should be translatable visually.
This piece is from the ongoing series, “Translating
Paint”.
Anneke wields a sharp eye that steadies her compositions.
Her balance is sure. The series itself, “Translating Paint”, shows her ability
to keep a photographer's sensibilities and a painterly hand alongside her
visible language inclinations.
A key, a genome, a periodic table showing how paint
translates into writing and how writing is visual and gets traced into even
further visuals and shifts into newly altered meaning.
This piece, and its early building blocks, steers you to a
future alphabet, near ready and able to propel you through thought and a
capability to document experience.
She further explains, “It's all
about interpreting the paint, and finishing their sentences, showing their
potential, their unspoken power or their assumed softness and how, when they
speak, they can surprise as sometimes they could be speaking the opposite.”
This piece is the first fold of a
dictionary waiting to bloom.
To explore the series, feel free
to click the link - http://ferretsinmyhead.com/translating-paint
Bill DiMichele Reviewing Marilyn R. Rosenberg
Anonymous Card Catalog
ACC 109-126 1999, smaller image
ACC verso 156-144 1999 smaller
According to
Greek mythology, Pandora (meaning ‘all giving’) was the first woman, created by
Hephestus as Zeus’ gift for Epimetheus. Pandora’s curiosity got the better of her, and
when she opened the box all the ills flew out to plague the world. However, there was one more item in the box:
‘elpis’ (hope).
Now, in
light of all this, let’s look at Marilyn R. Rosenberg’s box: frightening,
inviting, amazing, gorgeous. It also is ‘all
giving’. The outside is adorned with letters
and words from forbidden languages, with indecipherable glyphs as beautiful as
any visual poetry I’ve ever seen. Marilyn’s box has a purple/black glaze, a
magical sheen making it seem otherworldly. And compelling.
The
difference between Pandora and Marilyn is that Marilyn is able, through her
creative power/skill, to control what her box does, what goes in it, and what comes
out of it. Like a great adept, she
summons a mythological act, transcending and transmuting it, creating a
supernova of illumination that appears as the 200 cards the box contains. The front sides of her cards are a wide open
take on visual poetry, on her amazing display of connections and contrasts, on
the fractured sentences spread out through the cards. There are rhyming images, pockets
of black and orange, text commenting in exotic ways and a number of overarching
schemes. On the back, Rosenberg pays
homage to the women she admires. One example is the work of Amy Lowell:
“The perfume of your souls is vague
and suffering
With the pungency of sealed spice
jars.”
The
interesting and seemingly coincidental point here is that in Greek, sometimes
‘box’ is translated as ‘jar’ (pithos).
The box
itself is fascinating for another completely different reason. Maybe this is
just me but it looks like it opens up into the backdrop for a Greek play,
characters/cards encompassing hopes and fears, strength and hubris. Her multimedia approach at first feels like a
shotgun blast, but as the smoke clears, process begins to make itself known
like planets forming from stardust, dazzling to the eye. I call Marilyn a
postmodern Pandora because she has superseded the impulses of her ancient
counterpart as she becomes conscious of herself, her role and the world. And we totally don’t need any more ills. We need ‘elpis’. Help us out Marilyn!
Women have
come far from passive roles, from holding out the martini to their husbands
after work, from wearing pearls while vacuuming the living room, from playing
the ‘duh’ role of dumb blonde in second rate television shows. Today women choose their futures in
government, science or the arts. Pandora, in her weakness, had no control. Marilyn’s work is strong, bold, eye opening
and created from inspiration and control.
There is one
more Greek word about Marilyn R. Rosenberg I’m going to drop on you:
Eunola! (beautiful thinking)
Bobbi Lurie Reviewing Mark Young
Envelope Artifact
“Art Is
The Gap”
I looked up and saw a man who looked exactly like Marcel Duchamp.
I didn’t want to stare at him so I pointed to the word “artifact”
on the strange chessboard he was holding.
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes
thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the
chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem …
“
“Oh,” I
said, “and
w-what d-did you mean when you said “a-art is the gap”?
“What art is, in reality, in this missing link, not the links
which exist. It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.”
“I-i-is there a gap with chess?”
“ …
the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of
artists. These people are completely cloudy …
the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn’t,
in general. Madmen …”
“I-I d-don’t understand,” I
said.
“… I
have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess
players, all chess players are artists.”
“What do you mean?”
“What am I? Do I
know? I am a man: quite simply, a ‘breather.’"
“You are a breather …. ” I tried to sense
the meaning of his words.
He balanced the chessboard on his hip and pointed to the word “once.”
We were immersed in shimmering space.
“Since a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow,
we should be able to imagine the unknown four-dimensional object whose shadow
we are.”
“I’m confused,” I
said, staring into his gray face.
“In my life chess and art stand at opposite poles, but do not be
deceived. Chess is not merely a mechanical function. It is plastic, so to
speak. Each time I make a movement of the pawns on the board, I create a new form,
a new pattern, and in this way I am satisfied by the always changing contour.”
I pointed at the word “perhaps”
on the chessboard.
“ …
as soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and
sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use
it because I have to, but I don’t put
any trust in it. We never understand each other.”
Perhaps he was right. Language has always been problematic for
me.
I hope this man is real. I need a friend like him.
I pointed to the words “Thing
of beauty.”
“Chess … has all the beauty of
art — and much more.”
He
pulled a cloth handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his face, took a few deep
breaths, then continued his soliloquy. “The hardest was when I told myself ‘Marcel no more
painting, go get a job.’ I
looked for a job in order to get enough time to paint “for myself.”
He
called himself Marcel.
“W-w-what d-d-d-id
you do?”
“I got a job as a
librarian in Paris in the Bibliotheque St Genevieve,” he said. “It was a wonderful
job because I had so many hours to myself. There are two kinds of artist: the
artist that deals with society, is integrated into society; and the other
artist, the completely freelance artist, who has no obligations…I didn’t
want to depend upon my painting for a living.”
This man who looked so much like Marcel Duchamp, who called
himself “Marcel,” was leaning against The Remainder’s
Table of the last bookstore standing in my city. I wanted to take out my cell
phone and snap a picture but I feared he would vanish.
“People get the wrong idea about my not painting,”
said Duchamp. “It’s true and it’s not
true at the same time. But I did not take a vow. That’s all nonsense…Yes a myth. I’m ready to paint if I
have an idea. But it’s the
idea that counts.”
I took a deep breath and looked into Marcel’s
face. “I look at myself from above," he said, "I see every
action like a chess move – an
endgame.”
I
had no words to say.
“If you wish,” said
Marcel, “my art would be that of living: each second, each breath is a
work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral.”
He pulled a cigar out of his pocket; it was lit.
If he could conceal light from the lit, if he could smoke, he
had to be real …
Marcel puffed on his cigar, blowing smoke in my face.
I pointed to the word “recluse.”
“It’s very important for me
not to be engaged with any group. I want to be free, I want to be free from
myself, almost.”
I felt an urge to hug him; I didn’t.
“And,” he added, “I
have never felt a pressing need to express myself…
morning, noon and
night.”
I looked down at my hands.
“Instead of spending my life creating works of art in the form of
paintings or sculptures,” he said.
“I now believe that you can quite readily treat your life, the
way you breathe, act, interact with other people, as a picture, a tableau
vivant or a film scene, so to speak. These are my conclusions now: I never set
out to do this when I was 20 or 15, but I realize, after many years, that this
was fundamentally what I was aiming to do.”
He blew smoke rings in the air.
This reverie was interrupted by a cashier. “You
can’t do that! Stop! That’s
illegal!! Smoking is not allowed here!!!!
“B-b-b-ut h-h-h-h-he’s M-M-M-M-ar-c-c-c-el
Du-du-du-,” I was stuttering again, after years of being able to pretend.
The stuttering was choking me; I tried to grab hold of The Remainders Table.
A woman with long gray hair put her arms around me and lead me
to a chair. “Breathe
deep, breathe deep,” she said.
I wished Marcel Duchamp had come to my rescue instead of her…
why didn’t he?
… the old woman handed me
a bottle of water. “Drink this,” she
said.
“N-n-n-o … no …
w-w-w-w-a-a-a-ater,”
I said, choking on my words.
When
I finally caught my breath, I could not find Marcel.
“Marcel Duchamp! Marcel
Duchamp! Please don’t leave me!! Please don’t.”
“All this twaddle …
are pieces of a chess
game called language.”
I heard his voice but could not see his face.
“And they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with
'winning or losing this game of chess.”
Those were the last words I heard him say.
Joel Chace Reviewing Hank Lazer
N18P6
N18P20
Joel: Hank,
congratulations on the achievement of your N 18 (Complete), published in
2012 by Singing Horse Press. I'd like to focus on two of those
hand-written, "shape poems," as you call them. The first of
those pieces is the sixth page of this notebook. In the collection's
preface, you write about your method of "seeing" the page – “the shape
of the writing" – before you begin composing. So, for this
sixth page, did you envision the shape of the Pleiades (which you reference in
the poem) before writing?
Hank: First,
thanks, Joel, for initiating this conversation.
Honestly, Joel, it will be difficult to remember exactly what I was
thinking and envisioning when I wrote any specific page in N18, since the writing was done five years ago. But the page that you’ve selected does
provoke a range of observations. Yes,
the Pleaides figure into this page of writing, but no, I’m sure that I did not
envision the Pleaides before I wrote.
(If you look at the Pleaides, you’ll see what I mean: they are somewhat
blurry, and, quite wonderfully, they are seen most clearly [by the naked eye],
or at least more clearly, by not
looking directly at them. You will
actually see more by looking slightly away from them.)
A major formal commitment in the
notebooks generally and in N18 was to
be sure that each page differed considerably in appearance from the prior
page. For this particular page, I
probably began by seeing an image that is a mixed suggestion: somewhat like the
shapes we make with a hand for a shadow figure; and this figure is somewhat
suggestive of rabbit ears (perhaps the rabbit shape being one of the first that
children learn to make for shadow figures).
But what still holds my interest
with this particular page is that I was already struggling with the awareness
that this shape writing creates an almost magnetic attraction (for the reader)
to the shape or visual image of the page.
Of course, these pages are (for me, anyway) still “poems,” that is,
locations for highly specific, compressed language. My fears, expectations, and observations were
that these pages in the notebooks would actually obscure or draw attention away
from the words themselves by virtue of being shaped. That’s why this page – a kind of meta-page or
meta-thinking on how to read these pages – constitutes a kind of warning or
directive or caution against becoming too fixated on the visual nature of the
page. A sort of semi-didactic (though
also somewhat humorously so, because, after all, what the hell did I expect
would happen when writing in shapes?!) address to the reader. The advice is akin to how best to look at the
Pleaides. Find a way to look slightly
off to the side.
Joel: The
page’s meta-meaning is definitely one element that made me want to focus on
this piece for our discussion. So I
appreciate your bringing that up. And
you saved me a question by alluding to the shadow, which strikes me as entirely
appropriate and brilliant, given the role your hand plays in the creation of
these poems.
Now, let’s shift to the eighteenth
page and a piece that is more complex, visually. Page six is, arguably, one continuous
shape. But I can make the case that page
eighteen is a combination of six or seven separate component shapes.
Do you remember where your
hand/eyes/mind began, literally, on this page, and why that might have
happened?
Hank:
Unfortunately, I can’t really
remember (after 5+ years) exactly how the poem/page began. Probably it began with the writing at the top
of the page, with some foreseen sense of the circle atop the column (which to
my mind, is much like a golf ball on a tee), as well as some desire to have
some of the writing take place upside down or in other directions.
I agree with your sense that this
page consists of multiple components – voices, shapes, registers of
language. Thus, there would be many ways for such a page to be
performed/read out loud. My preference
would be for multiple voices to be involved, with some phrases or sections
being voiced simultaneously. (One
example of this multiple voice approach is posted in the current issue of Drunken Boat – three soundings, making
use of nine different voices, of N27P51: http://www.drunkenboat.com/db22/poetry/hank-lazer )
As I return now to N18P20 (which is
page 28 in the Singing Horse Press publication), I enjoy the range of different
languages. I’m a golfer, and 8/29 would
be during the time of year when I would be playing quite a bit, and the phrase
“striping it” is golf-slang (for hitting the ball hard, for nailing it), which
probably is how the central image – two quotations from Levinas’ Otherwise Than Being – becomes a ball on
a tee, which admittedly is an odd way to tee up metaphysics… My own writing on this page strikes me as
deliberately flat. The brief narrative –
totally true – about my conversation with my Grandma Fanya when I learned I
would be moving to Alabama is for me the segment that re-opens the page for
me. It gives me a specific context for
what amounts to a somewhat scattered meditation on time and its hazy role in
the making of a self. Another way to
hear the page is as a collision of different senses of time.
And of course the page itself, with
its heavy reliance on quotation, is indeed “clothed with purely borrowed
being.”
Karl Kempton Reviewing Before Concrete From Early 1900s
Academia link to complete PDF, which includes reference links to bibliography:
Before concrete poetry as a movement
was founded separately on three occasions 60 years ago, a segment of the new
modern artists and poets initiated an expansion into visual text art 110 years
ago exploring the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for their acoustic and visual
characteristics. Previous to these moments, other individuals have been
suggested as forerunners. Some point to Stephane Mallarme’s Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard
(A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish
Chance) published in 1897. Others, including an English concrete poetry
anthology (being the exception to the concrete exclusiveness rule) and visual
poetry anthologists, point further back to the 1865 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll) shaped poem in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Others, such as myself, point further back to 1788 when William Blake began his
hand-scripted colored etchings of poems and illuminated books as forecaster of
the many collaborations of handwritten and illuminated lithographically
produced books by Russian Futurist visual poets and word painters by 125 years.
During the period between the early 1900s onward into the 1920s, several new
types of visual text art were coined or first expressed by form. Among these and
their associated movements, three by Americans, are Poeme Simultané (Barzun),
Orphism (Barzun), Wordless Poem (Morgenstern), Parole in Libertá (Marinetti),
Psychotype/Cubist Portraiture (Zayas), Word Portrait (Hartley), Ideogramme
(Italian Futurists), Word Painting (Carra), Calligramme (Huidobro), Kalogramas
(Palomar), Neo-primitivism (Russian avant-garde), Zaum (Burliuk [credited by
Kruchenykh]), Suprematist (Malevich), Machine Portraiture (Picabia), Dada,
Surreal Poem, Precisionism, and Poster Portrait (Demuth).
The American visual poem was
influenced, but only partially, by Apollinaire’s ideogrammes in 1915. This
event was forgotten or disappeared. While his work was reintroduced decades
later in the context of concrete poetry, a fertile environment had been
prepared in America before his work arrived in print. Alfred Stieglitz and his
circle of writers, poets, artists, sculptors and photographers were attempting
to form a nativistic American modern art vision at Stieglitz’s insistence, or
quoting William Carlos Williams’ summation of this clarion call, a member of
the circle, “in the American grain.” Stieglitz was in the forefront pushing and
pulling the photograph into the field of modern art. His Camera Work magazine spanned the years 1903 to 1917. The period of
his gallery Photo-Secession/291 Gallery was 1905 to 1908/1908 to 1917. Members
and associates of his circle included Anne Brigman, Charles Caffin, Stuart
Davis, Arthur Dove, Waldo Frank, Marsden Hartley, Gertrude Käsebier, John
Barrett Kerfoot, Mina Loy, John Marin, Alfred Maurer, Agnes Meyer, Georgia
O'Keeffe, Francis Picabia, Katharine Nash Rhoades, Paul Rosenfeld, Pamela
Colman Smith,[i] Edward Steichen, Paul
Strand, Abraham Walkowitz, Max Weber, William Carlos Williams and Marius de
Zayas. The number of individuals associated with the circle expand when
including contributors to Camera Work,
magazine 291, in which various visual
text art types were published, and exhibitors in his gallery. Gertrude Stein
was helpful to him and members of his circle during their trips or prolonged
stays in Europe, for example. The young E E Cummings was aware of the group and
publications; later, he became a good friend of Stuart Davis who became the pop
of Pop Art.
Stieglitz began publishing modern
art works in his magazine and exhibiting modern art in his gallery in 1907.
Here is a small sample of written material.[ii]
Max Weber, perhaps the pinnacle of American cubism, wrote an article in 1910
for Camera Work 31, "The Fourth
Dimension from a Plastic Point of View." The article spread four
dimensional ideas into the New York avant-garde scene and beyond to the wider
readership.[iii] Max Weber acted at times
on behalf of Stiegliz in Paris shepherding modern art paintings to him,
including Rousseau (Weber was responsible of his first American exhibit, at
291) and Picasso, among others.[iv] Excerpts from Kandinsky’s
1911 book, Concerning the Spiritual in
Art, appeared in issue 39 due to Marsden Hartley move to Germany, his
friendship with Kandinsky, and his interest in mysticism. Camera Work, issue 39 Special, August 1912, published Gertrude
Stein’s cubist word portraits of Picasso and Matisse, her first appearance in
an American magazine. American visual text art works were
first exhibited and published by him. Psychotypes by Zaya, exhibited at 291 in 1913, were published in issue 46.
Between 1915 and 1916 in ten issues of 291
under the editorial leadership of Zayas, ideogrammes, calligrammes, psychotype
and machine portraitures, visual poems and a forerunner of concrete poetry were
published. The magazines Camera Work and 291 and 291 gallery were, if not the American avant-garde focal
point, certainly the most important to the field of modern visual text art.
Copies of its issues were read by most of the American avant-garde and its
admirers. Copies of 291 were also
part of the American avant-garde reading and viewing materials.
Marius de Zayas came with his family
to America because of the Mexican civil war in 1907. An artist and caricaturist
of great skill, Stieglitz gave Zayas his first one man exhibition in 1909 after
establishing his American caricaturist reputation.[v]
Zayas, as a representative of the gallery, traveled twice to Europe, late 1910
through early 1911 and 1914, where he met and became friends with numerous avant-garde
writers and artists. He was the first American to publish an in-depth article
on Picasso and was instrumental in Picasso’s first American exhibit (291
Gallery). From his exposure to cubism and its deeper theories directly
expressed to him in Spanish by Picasso, he invented a cubist abstract
caricature expression, Psychotypes. He
rendered individuals as geometrical, ideogrammatic or pictogramic forms with
mathematical symbols or formulas representing the trajectory of intelligence
and character of the individual caricatured. Nine of these works were exhibited
at 291 Gallery in April 1913. This new style influenced Picabia, other pre-dada
artists and a few painters of the circle who would move along their own
pathways in symbolic portraiture. See the Appendix for links. Stieglitz played
a major role, though behind the scenes, in the famous 1913 Armory exhibition
introducing modern art to Americans. He had no interest in participating in the
modern art commercialization zoo he saw on the horizon.
During his 1914 European trip, Zayas
met Apollinaire. They became immediate friends and colleagues. Apollinaire,
born in Italy, fluent in French and Italian, moved to France at 18. He
eventually became a central figure among the European avant-garde as a writer,
critique and poet. Several years of working closely with avant-garde friends,
acquaintances, exposure to avant-garde theories and writing and promoting
avant-garde painting, literature and movements in newspapers, magazines and
books provided him a unique access and opportunity to move his poetics into the
same arena. Apollinaire was among the first who successfully promoted Cubism
and other avant-garde expressions and gained wide notoriety as a result.
The last two months of 1912,
Apollinaire lived with Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Sonia Delaunay (Russian
immigrant) was collaborating with Blaise Cendars on what they would call a Simultaneist
book, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la
Petite Jehanne de France. Considered a colorful masterwork and a milestone
for book art, it was published as a six-foot vertical panel in 1913.[vi] Earlier in 1912, the
Delaunays and Apollinaire had distanced themselves from Henri-Martin Barzun,
originator of Simultaneism and Orphism, contending
that he was moving Simultaneism and Orphism in the wrong direction despite the
fact they were his ideas; as early as 1906 his idea caught the imagination of
the soon to be founder of Futurism, Marinetti. They, the Delaunays and
Apollinaire, appropriated the terms Simultaneist
and Orphism from Barzun shifting the Simultaneist concept to a simultaneous
experience of the words on paper or canvas and a new form of abstract, brightly
colored geometric painting and Orphism to a pure art and poetry as a clear
lyricism.[vii] Barzun and his cubist painter colleague,
Gleizes, were large scale creators who challenged themselves to capture the
epic scale, the macro. Apollinaire and others turned these expansive terms into
an expression of objects on the micro scale. The Simultaneist ideas proposed by
Barzun were reduced to a revised Simultaneist idea of entering the page or
canvas through simultaneous viewing and reading routes. This reductionist
rewrite found its way into the American avant-garde.
In 1912, Barzun and Apollinaire each
founded a magazine to represent their views. Brazun established Poème et Drame and Apollinaire, Les Soirées de Paris. In Poème et Drame, Barzun called for a
poetry exhibiting the essence of an orchestrated
Orphic
lyricism with multiple, simultaneous voices. His poetic type, Poeme Simultané,
was formulated and composed before the Italian and Russian parallel expressions
inspired by his creation. Before his major opus, L’Orphride, Universel Poeme: An Epic Journey in Seven Episodes,
1913, he published La Terrestre Tragedi,
1907 and Hymne des Forces, 1912.[viii]
Henri-Martin Barzun, if mentioned
during a discussion concerning Apollinaire and avant-garde history, usually
remains, at least among American and English writing, either a figure glossed
over as an aside, a figure inhabiting the world of footnotes or an unfavorable
and thus dismissible figure regarding the controversy of the founding of both
Simultaneism and Orphism holding
neither the halo of fame nor the aura of a premature demise. At times a
reference blurs him to a fast moving shadow of little or no consequence.
Digging deeper, materials available outside those predisposed towards
Apollinaire underscore his obvious importance as a maker of, shaper of and
influencer of 1906 to WW1 visual poetry and illuminated language theories,
approaches and works.
Barzun directly influenced Italian
Futurism when introducing Poeme
Simultané /Simultaneism to Marinetti during his visits to Abbaye de Creteil
(1906-1908). Many other writers and artists visited the commune as word spread
through Europe, including Russia. With the painter Albert Gleizes and others,
Barzun co-founded the idealistic art commune for writers and artists. He
rejected the single voiced poem as a form to adequately capture modern, hectic
urban life with all its voices and noise. The single voice implied a limited
awareness and experience, no matter how large or deep, against the backdrop of
the new dynamics of the 20th century. Only with Poeme Simultané, simultaneous,
multiple voices through choral chanting, Barzun proposed, was it plausible to
express the multi pointedness reality of the new burgeoning and bustling city
energies. His poems became visual scores for performance; his first book
applying his theory was published in 1908, L’Hymne
des Forces (The Hymn of forces).
Barzun with Gleizes and others of
the Abbaye de Creteil group worked on a new integrative form, an arc spanning
all the arts under the idea of Orphism. It
followed that Orphism would be fully integrated with a new form of society. In
their eyes Orphism required a group effort to form its theory given the
vastness and complexity of the project which was to create a new art for a new
social program for the future, a Futurism before the Futurists and closer to
what their Russian peers were to gravitate towards as opposed to the Italian
forthcoming model eventually merging with state fascism. As a part of this arc,
Gleizes developed his cubism with a larger vision in mind, large scale scenes
in contrast to the still life forms of Picasso, Barque and Gris (their study of
form), again, in general, closer to the forthcoming Russian interests.
Abbaye de Creteil ceased to exist as
a formal group in 1908 having pinned its self-sufficient future on publishing
ventures that failed to meet its financial requirements. After its demise, the
individuals with other writers and artists formed a larger circle around which
Apollinaire, as an outsider, orbited, as he did with many groups. He was
influenced by their theories and practices as illustrated in his book on Cubism (that was published later in 1912)
presenting views closely associated with the epic views found in the art,
writings and theories of Abbaye de Creteil.[ix]
Robert Delaunay, who with his wife,
Sonia, later became an ally with Apollinaire in the controversy, came into the
circle around the same time. His cubist paintings followed the theories first
proposed by Barzun and Gleizes that the wider group embraced. By painting
within this field of theories, both Gleizes and Delaunay easily made the step
into abstract.[x] Daniel Roberts points to the
Delaunay painting influences from both Gleizes and Barzun. He points to, for
example, Delaunay’s “Simultaneous
Discs” of 1912 sourced from Barzun’s poems.
Though scheduled, Delaunay’s “City
of Paris” was so large it could not displayed at the 1913 Armory Show in New
York City. Roberts points out that the painting contained many of the ideas
Gleizes honed and a Barzun long poem from which Delaunay sourced.[xi] In the same year, Delaunay
painted his break away simultaneous discs, “Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and
Moon.” Roberts points to a 1907 Barzun poem of identical subject content.[xii] I am not critical of
Delaunay’s and Apollinaire’s inspiration sourced from the Abbaye de Creteil
founders but am critical of their usurping Simultaneism and Orphism as their
own formulations while at the same time sourcing work from those they
discredited and that literary and art historians perpetuate(d) the
theft/distortion.
Ezra Pound aficionados may be familiar
with Barzun, at least by name, through comments in Poetry, Volume 3, 1913, New
Age, Vlo VIII, No.25, 1913, New
Directions, 1946, Annual #9 and the Pisan
Cantos:
Henri-Martin
Barzun stands apart from the rest and preaches "Simultaneity," which
is to say, he wishes us to write our poems for a dozen voices at once as they
write an orchestral score. M. Jammes has done something like this in Le Triomphe de la Vie. M. Barzun's ideas, as expressed in L'Ere
du Drame, are interesting, and L'Hymne
des Forces moved me by its content and
underlying force rather than by its execution. The proletariat would seem to be
getting something like a coherent speech. This seems to me significant. Ezra
Pound[xiii]
Barzun’s
“Hymne des Forces” moved me, although I thought it rhetorical.
It seemed to me significant that the voice of the mass should have come SO near
to being coherent. M. Barzun is nowhere near being content with the book
above-mentioned. The polyphonic method will be justified when a great work is
presented through it. In the meantime there is no use blinding oneself to the
fact that the next great work may be written in this manner. It is not an
impossibility, and M. Barzun is not altogether an imbecile. Ezra Pound[xiv]
there
are in fact several course expressions used in the
army
and Monsieur Barzun had, indubitably, an idea, about amo
domini
1910 but I do not know what he has done with it
(Ezra Pound, Canto LXXVII Cantos, 492)
Barzun’s
writings on Orphic Art span a number of years in various incarnations under
different but parallel American self-published titles that currently are
unavailable rare books except in a few libraries or for a hefty collectable
book price. In his Orpheus: A World
Chorus, he describes L’Ophéide composed of 750 pages mounted in
12 atlases and when open containing double pages 20x59 in visual spread; over
100 pages later, a photograph documents the 12 volumes.[i]
At this time only a few images are available on the web.[ii]
He undoubtedly is someone whose works need immediate attention, republication
of older texts and the publication of his major 12 volume opus, L’Orphride, Universel Poeme.
The assumption by many that Chinese
and Japanese ideograms were pictorial not phonetic systems lead to an approach
of the visualization of poetry based on this error. The thread of this mistaken
assumption moved into early Brazilian concrete poetry and seems to have
remained among some in San Paulo and among some Americans promoting San Paulo
concrete above other visual poetic centers, groups or individuals. From this
error that the ideogram was mainly pictorial not phonetic, came the invention
of the visual poem type, the ideogramme, that soon became coined as the
calligramme, that was composed of words forming images. The American English
speaker’s inclination to compress words into their shortest form, the imported
Asian short poem forms, especially haiku, and the American short poem that grew
out of Emily Dickinson and the Imagists, all, I suggest, inclined those in
American concrete poetry to ignore, forget or erase the wider spectrum of American
painters and poets composing and painting visual text or its parts before the
1960s in order to promote their work as new and unique. Thus, Apollinaire’s
ideogrammes/calligrammes became and remain a vital energetic influence
especially in English language visual poetry. His calligrammes have become, as
a form, either a rallying point as an example for use of pictograph-like
approaches or an example to be purged in a contemporary mustering call for
purity of typography without a visual image. As such, other forms rarely enter
the discussion despite their strength and beauty.
Surrounded by works and theories,
Apollinaire developed his ideogrammes that became the calligrammes. Apparently,
it was Zayas who informed and thereby extended for Apollinaire his linkage to a
larger ideograme context. At that time the ideogram was associated with Chinese
and Japanese writing; Zayas expanded Apollinaire‘s horizon to include the Mayan
and Aztec ideograms.
Apollinaire published his first
‘formal’ ideogramme, “Lettre-Ocean,” in his magazine, Soirees de Paris, August 1914.[iii] It was republished in 291 in 1915.[iv] This ideogramme is
considered the most Futurist-like or Futurist influenced of his
ideogrammes/calligrammes and his longest, a two page composition. Apollinaire’s
“L'Antitradition Futuriste, Manifeste=Synthese” (August 1913), may be his first
published ideogramme.[v] The psychotypes of Zayas greatly impressed Apollinaire.
Zayas created an Apollinaire psychotype which was published in both magazines.[vi] Apollinaire’s works from
1914 onward were reproduced by the newly invented photograme providing readers
and viewers the carefully composed hand scripted ideogrammes/calligrammes —
words freed from the bondage of type-setting requirements.[vii] He died from the influenza outbreak in 1918.
His collection, Calligrammes, was
published in 1919.[viii]
In France, a friend of Apollinaire,
Pierre Albert-Birot, edited Sic
(1916-1919), a magazine supporting Futurism and Cubism. Apollinaire’s famous
“Il Pleut” (It’s Raining) appeared in
the December 1916 issue. [ix] Albert-Birot composed
calligrammes, landscape, sign poems and other types of visual poems.[x] His work was later praised
by Lettriste Robert Sabatier, saying he was fifty years ahead of the
Lettristes.
Among those consciously or unconsciously
disappeared that must be returned to the historical commentary is the body of
work by Henry-Matin Barzun currently housed in the Columbia University Library
Rare Book Archives. That they were composed on non-archival typewriter and
graph paper further requires immediate attention. The acid is slowly
disintegrating these works unique among the European avant-garde
revisualization of their respective literatures and language on paper and
canvas. Another reason for publication and exhibition of these works is that he
is part of the French contribution to the American avant-garde: he first
arrived in American in 1917 on a diplomatic mission and moved and settled with
his family in 1919. He continued his efforts towards Orphism through teaching
and writing until his death. I was fortunate to have a request to visit these
works answered by Michael Winkler who took 239 photographs of a very small
portion of Barzun’s archived works. The beauty and complexity of these
100-85-years-old works, many in color, would stand out today within anthologies
and exhibitions.
The following are three digital
photographs of Barzun’s major opus by Michael Winkler and assisted by Karla
Nielson. These are part of the Henri-Martin Barzun archived work are the
Columbia University Rare Book Library. A thank you of considerable gratitude goes
out not only to Michael but also to Karla, librarian extraordinaire, who
facilitated Michael’s visit and photographing enabling him to capture over 230
images.
Pages 489-494
Page 494
Arrow of Destiny - Pages 459-470
Back
to the States, Zayas and the Stiegliz Circle.
PROTARCHUS: Once more, Socrates, I must
ask what you mean.
SOCRATES: My meaning is certainly not
obvious, and I will endeavour to be plainer. I do not mean by beauty of form
such beauty as that of animals or pictures, which the many would suppose to be
my meaning; but, says the argument, understand me to mean straight lines and
circles, and the plane or solid figures which are formed out of them by
turning-lathes and rulers and measurers of angles; for these I affirm to be not
only relatively beautiful, like other things, but they are eternally and
absolutely beautiful, and they have peculiar pleasures, quite unlike the
pleasures of scratching.
The above quote was sent to
Stieglitz during the 1910 Picasso show at Gallery 291. Reprinting it in his
book where he, Zayas while discussing Picasso, mentioned seeing this quote in
different translations over the following years.[i]
Various interpretations of Zaya’s psychotype “Portrait of Stieglitz,”[ii]
seemed to have overlooked the above quote by Plato as an additional layer of
meaning. Conceptual to their core at the same time capturing an intuitive
essence seen by Zaya, his psychotypes I see as, if not visual poems, at least
on the border of and by assuming a conceptual layering, the conceptual idea can
be read as a connector to the poetic layer. His psychotypes should be
considered part of a type of visual poetry or if not then within the wider
field of visual text art by expressing mathematical symbols as abstraction and
number scapes. His invention of abstract symbolic cubism portraiture had a wide
influence as others embraced the idea by folding its implications into their
individual directions.
Marius de Zayas’ psychotype, “Alfred Stieglitz” (Camera Work) 46, plate V
Marius de Zayas’ psychotype, “Francis Picabia” (Camera Work) 46, plate X
Marius
de Zayas along with Alfred Stieglitz, Agnes Ernest Meyer — its primary
financial backer — and Paul Haviland in 1915 and 1916 edited and published 12
issues with runs of 1000 copies of the Avant-garde magazine 291. On the pages of its short life,
several visual poems first appeared in an American magazine.[i] In the initial issue of
March 1915, he published one of Apollinaire’s ideogrammes, “Voyage,” before he
assigned the term calligramme to his works. Zayas had brought several
manuscripts by Apollinaire upon his return in 1914.[ii] In the second issue of April 1915, he
published the first known American English visual poem, “Mental Reactions,” a
collaboration with Agnes Ernest Meyer.[iii] Considering Agnes Meyer and Zayas co-composed
this work, it seems to be the first American collaborative modern visual poem,
in fact, a visual poem composed by two minorities in the arts. The third issue
contained his illustration of a long prose poem by Katharine N. Rhoades, his
poem-drawing, and “Woman” by Agnes Meyer. The issue also contains J. B.
Kerfoot’s calligramme; he contributed to Camera
Work and wrote book reviews for Life magazine. His “A Bunch of Keys” could
be considered the first American visual poem by an individual, excluding Zayas
if his psychotypes are discounted as visual poem material. Zayas continued his
collaborations with others including Picabia; “Femme” was published in issue 9
in November 1915.[iv]
Unraveling the Zaya and Picabia echo
chamber of mutual influence over the years presents a worthy probe for someone.
Picabia returned to New York in 1915 for a second time after participating in
the 1913 Armory Show and connecting with the 291 circle, especially it seems,
Zaya. He brought with him work for a planned exhibit at Photo-Secession. It was
during this time, between visits, that he “abandoned his former manner in
painting and started his pictures of machinery.”[v]
That is to say, he moved on from cubism to his machine inspired drawings with
text, works now called pre-dadaesque. The mechanical-like drawing portraits of
Stielgitz, Zayas and Haviland and Fantasy,[vi]
published in 291, seem, at least to
me, influenced by Zayas’ psychotypes begun after his meeting Picasso.
Picabia’s earliest work in the new
genre, “Mechanical Expression Through Our Own Mechanical Expression,” was
created in 1913.[vii] Upon returning to France
after his 1913 experience with the Armory Show and the Stielgitz circle, having
seen the new works and perhaps revisiting, in a new light, the older works of
Italian Futurists, the two Russian Futurists, Goncharova and Larionov, Legers
and what is more important, Duchamp, the shift away from cubism began.
Beginning in 1916, Picabia with others began publishing 391 magazine in
Barcelona. He also became an instigating force in the Ultraísmo (Ultraist
Movement). Barcelona, New York City
and Zurich were oases for artists and writers seeking refuge from the mayhem of
the war. Out of these three cities arose one of the next avant-garde movements,
Dadaism.
Max Weber remained outside the
Stiegliz circle after his falling out with Stiegliz. Two works by Weber were
painted during this time may be of interest. The second work of 1916,
conceptually, at least for me, that seems influenced by his interest in the 4th
dimension, bridges the physical and metaphysical spectrums or folds them into a
unit that leaps above, so to speak, the machine-based works of Duchamp and
Picabia whose works today are better known than Weber’s (See appendix).
For a more complete history of
American English visual poetry, the story of Marius de Zayas fully illuminated
with his works and his direct and indirect influence awaits. The materials
exist for this nearly ignored and important chapter of our country’s early
contribution to visual text arts in general and visual poetry in particular.[viii] Collections of small
literary magazines are now available online for analysis as well as books in
pdf format that can extend this history further. For example, there is the
relationship (touched on later) of the painter Stuart Davis with E E Cummings
and William Carlos Williams.
Two other Mexican artists spending
time in New York during this period also created visual text art work. Torres
Palomar, living in New York City, created intriguing visual letter works he
called Kalogramas. He defined a kalograma, as “the psychological portrait of an
individual expressed in color with the letters of his name.” As of this
writing, the earliest mention of him and his kalogramas was in The Craftsman, October 1914.[ix] He went unmentioned by Zaya
in his book and by others. His definition seems a bit more than a coincidence
given its closeness to Zayas’ earlier conceived psychotype. Nevertheless, he
exhibited a series of kalogramas in Gallery 291, December 1914-January 1915.
Jose Juan Tablada , the second
individual, composed several ideogrammes in 1915 while in New York City, five
of which later appeared in his 1920 book, Li
Po. Before fleeing Mexico and arriving in Texas in 1914 and then in New
York City, he had visited Japan twice. He had been writing the first Spanish
haikus and was instrumental in introducing this form into the Spanish language
long before the haiku worked its way into American poetics. He maintained the
spirit of haiku while not feeling or seeing the necessity to being bound by its
5x7x5 syllable structure. Open to the new, visually aware (his father was a
painter), it seems an easy step to compose visual forms, especially when one
considers his exposure to Japanese calligraphy associated with haiku. Exposure
to avant-garde forms in New York appears likely to have been the necessary
creative spark. Beginning with the ideogramme (obviously influenced by
calligrammes),[x] he followed his own
intuitive impulses expanding his visual compositional field.
Other pre-1920s American visual
poems are to be found in publications such as Picabia’s 391, Blindman, Others, The Ridgefiled Gazook, New York Dada (one issue 1921), Rongwrong, The Soil and TNT.[xi] These publications are a starting point for
the recovery of overlooked, forgotten and or disappeared visual text artists
and poets and their works. For example, Blindman
was a dada magazine published by Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and
Henri-Pierre Roché in New York in 1917. The poem, “Eyes” by Robert Carlton
Brown, a visual poem, not a calligramme, to me, foreshadows or anticipates the
humorous Paul Reps and Kenneth Patchen visual poems.[xii]
In its only issue, 1917, Rongwrong
published a ‘coded/anti symbol’ poem by H.F.(?), “Portrait de M. et R.
Ensemble,” anticipating many morse code, braille, strike over, abstract line
and wordless poems. Though to be historically accurate, as far as I know at
this writing the first such modern poem of this type appeared in 1906 composed
by Christian Morgensternin found in his book, Galgenlieder.[xiii] Below
on the same page, H.F’s (?) typed poem anticipated Cummings.[xiv]
In its only issue, 1919, TNT
published a visual poem, “ETYMONS” by Adon Lacroix, a pure concrete poem by the
concrete poetry movement’s definition and yet went unnoticed or ‘disappeared.'[xv] She was a painter and poet. Soon after coming
to America from Belgium, she moved in with Man Ray whom she married in 1915.
Another poem, a collaboration, “la logique assassine,” her poem, his design,
was composed also in 1919 (again, unnoticed or ‘disappeared’) but published
first in a small edition in 1920.[xvi] A 1919 piece by Picabia for the Zurich
magazine Dada, edited by Tristan
Tzara, is but one of countless intermedia/borderblurr works by Dadaists.[xvii] Note the reference to
Picabia’s 391 magazine.
Dada began before it was found, so
say the Dadaists Piciaba, Duchamp and Kandinsky. Dadaists pointed to
Kandinsky’s 1912 wood cut illustrated book of sound poems, Glange, as perhaps the earliest modern sound poem.[xviii] World War I had
scattered the avant-garde groups and individuals to various national pockets
cutting off exchanges until the war’s end. The exception was the Russian
avant-garde groups and individuals who returned to Russia either because of the
war or later the revolution. Not only were the Russians in many respects in the
earliest forefront of modern art developments, during the war and particularly
the revolution, they continued to evolve in various new and profound
directions. They are their own significant story of illumination for which
space limits me to just this note.
At the more or less calm center of
the world war hurricane, several individuals came together in Zurich and formed
the Dada Movement. Beginnings of Dada also occurred around 291 Gallery in New
York. Since materials for dada are easy to come by and much is available for
viewing and reading, I will pass quickly through this movement that grew to
become a major force throughout the twenties. Their form of visual language art
primarily was that of extending the college’s spectrum as a perceptive and in
many cases nonsensical statement. The photogram and montage were also widely
employed and extended. Language and symbol were fractured; its sound mainly
onomatopoeic. An important addition to the collage, montage and canvas was the
expression of language and symbol in the third dimension, a sculpturing.[xix] Throughout the 1920s and
onward design work continued to evolve.[xx]
The influence of the Stieglitz
Circle continued into the 1940s. While neither composing nor making visual
poems, the poet and doctor of medicine, William Carlos Williams, was deeply
influenced by the American avant-garde scene, first at Gallery 291, and later
by the broadening developments in little magazines and by painters. Many of the
relationships first developed at that time were maintained over the years as he
worked out the poetic of an American vision within the contexts of 1) image
first without philosophizing, the thing itself, and 2) “making it new” culled
from Stieglitz’s demands and the exhibited works of the painters of the
gallery.[xxi]
Stuart Davis was perhaps the
youngest artist to participate in the Armory Show. Davis and others of the
Stieglitz Circle wrestled with the trends they themselves formed after the
Armory Show. At the same time, they viewed with suspicion the machine based
works of Picabia, Duchamp, and the psychotypes of Zaya. Over-coming their
initial resistance and misgivings to those works and their implications, they
blended the seemingly contraries into what became labeled as Precisionism. Williams Carlos Williams selected a
painting by Davis, who had published artworks in small magazines and The Masses, for the cover of his 1920
book, Kora in Hell, Improvisations.
E E Cummings and Davis were friends.
As E E Cummings was moving into his mature style, so too Davis whose works in
the 1920s took on a look and feel of what became concrete poetry but
large-scale and in color. Both were applying their own unique insights to the
poem or the painted word. At this time, as far as I know, little or no
commentary on what if any influence, echo or ripple effect, they had on each
other’s works and insights. Davis became the pop of Pop. Many of his works
could be accepted as concrete art.
The countless lyrical visual poems
by E E Cummings that influenced and continue to influence following generations
of visual language artists and poets is a large subject in itself. His first
book published in 1923, Tulips and
Chimneys, contained no ‘sustained’ visual stretches while numerous
instances of his new syntax and punctuation usages most probably “mused” from
Gertrude Stein are to be found throughout. Since he denies influence from
Apollinaire, the Armory Show and the Stieglitz Circle (all of which I find
difficult to swallow), I suggest Stein. Hints of what were to come in his next
collection, & (AND) in which his
visual poetics exhibited a full maturity are in 1) CHANSONS INNOCENTES, 2) in impression
III, 3) in impression V, 4) in
Portraits I, 5) in Portraits III, and
6) in Portraits VIII.[xxii] Line breaks in the first book were not new to
poetry by 1916.
Overlooked during this period was
Marius de Zayas’s unrecognized (or nearly erased) influence, his abstract and
symbolic portrait works, or psychotypes, on three of the Stieglitz circle of
painters — Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley. Space does not
permit a fleshing out of each painter’s story and works despite the importance
of their long ignored contribution to American visual text art. See the
Appendix for samples of their visual text art.
Afterwords
When visual poetry history was
written by the American concrete poets in the late 1960 and early 1970s,
nothing appeared regarding the Stieglitz Circle’s first American composed
visual poems published in 291, no
mention of works in other publications before 1950, no mention of any word
painter’s works into the late 1960s, no mention of the works of Patchen, Reps
and many others. At least they were
consistent. These histories and now some vispo poets, mostly for me
neo-concrete poets, continue to leave many individuals and visual text art
streams undiscussed; disguised lineage persists as history.
Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature by Dick Higgins is a superb and
worthwhile collection. Yet, he promotes one historical type to prop up the
geometrics of the concrete poem at the expense of the vast number of ignored
non-geometric types composed before 1900. While Higgins was and remains an
important poet-scholar, he, like many others living in New York City, ignored
or consciously disappeared from discussion available historical contributions
in public and private collections throughout the city. Perhaps his view of the
dadaist provides a clue when he dismissed all dadaists as mere symbolists. It
seems at his core he maintained his guardian status of concrete poetry at the
expense of the wider field of the visual text arts and their history of
development while claiming at the same time to be the multimedia defender and
expert. Thus, it appears he picked sides with the materialistic and
self-referential approach opposing those of the highly intuitive and mystical
sourcing. This is a divide whose demarcation line seems to be the response to
WW1 shattering the prognosis by modern artists, writers and poets of a coming
new age of enlightenment.[xxiii]
Most of the composed and painted
visual text art works remain contrary to orthodox concrete history. Efforts
continue to rewrite visual text art history by disappearing word painters and
much of visual poetry not only between the early 1900s and 1960s but also from
the early 1980s through the mid-1990s by some academics to enhance “the
acceptable” norms and maintain the narrower history.[xxiv]
One finds among this group many late 1990s and early 21st century attempts to
inflate the Brazilian Sao Paulo concrete poets as the primary birth group as
unsurpassable experimenters and even an extreme hubris overreach by calling
their poetry “heroic” although none of them were arrested by the Brazilian
fascist government when in power. Many Brazilian lexical and visual poets were
arrested, as were lexical and visual poets elsewhere in Latin America who were
also tortured or killed. Another weak argument points to Ezra Pound’s early
writing where he urged making it new: though “to make it new” was to make translation
new, current.[xxv] Making the calligramme
“new” came about by replacing pictogramic images of shaped language with
geometric word and letter patterning, in some cases mathematically precise
geometrics. While at the same time past avant-garde groups and individuals were
mentioned as predecessors (in practice these became casual reference points),
the calligramme was the focal point. Thus, concrete poetry made the ideogram
its foundation, not its phonetic resonance but the continued adherence to its
pictorial misconception. This is the primary creative source of the San Paulo’s
Noigandres Group and the North
Atlantic English speaking concrete of the 1950s into the present thereby moving
unwittingly into an exclusive cud de sac and echo chamber that maintains its
historical distance from egalitarian visual poetry, painted word and other
visual text arts.
Oceano
Ca
full
moon
October
2015
Appendix:
Visual
text art samples of early modern visual poems, painted word/symbol,
mathematical art and visual music scores, etc
Marius
de Zayas
• Portrait
of Stieglitz[i]
• Portrait
of Paul Haviland [ii]
• Portrait
of Theodore Roosevelt [iii]
• Two
Friends[iv]
• Portrait
of Mrs. Eugene Meyer [v]
• Portrait
of Francis Picabia.[vi]
• Portrait
of Katharine N. Rhoades[vii]
• Marion
Beckett[viii]
Jose Juan Tablada, Li Po
(includes 1915 dated ideogrames, NY)[ix]
Marsden Hartley
• Oriental
Symphony [x]
• Raptus[xi]
• Portrait
of a Lady[xii]
• Painting
Number 47[xiii]
• Painting
Number 48[xiv]
• Portrait
of a German Officer[xv]
• Morgenrot
(Dawn)[xvi]
• Lighthouse[xvii]
• Eight
Bells Folly Memorial to Hart Crane[xviii]
• Sustain
Comedy[xix]
Max
Weber
• Avoirdupois[xx]
• Slide
Lecture at the Metropolitan Museum[xxi]
Charles Demuth,
• Dove,
(Arthur Dove)[xxii]
• O’Keefe
(Georgia O'Keeffe)[xxiii]
• Duncan[xxiv]
• Business[xxv]
• I Saw
the Figure 5 in Gold (Portrait of Willima Carlos Williams)[xxvi]
• Love
Love Love (Portrait of Gertrude Stein)[xxvii]
Arthur Dove
• Portrait
of Ralph Dusenberry[i]
• Portrait
of Alfred Stieglitz[ii]
• The
Critic[iii]
• Grandmother[iv]
• The
Intellectual[v]
Francis Picabia
• Dada
Movement[vi]
• Construction[vii]
• Cover
drawing for 391[viii]
• Tamis
ou vent[ix]
• Le
Papa[x]
• ZEICHNUNG[xi]
• Portrait
de Jacques Hébertot[xii]
Stuart Davis
• Lucky
Strike[xiii]
• Odol[xiv]
• C
& W[xv]
• The
Mellow Pad (1945-1951)[xvi]
• Visa[xvii]
• Owh!
in San Pao[xviii]
• Report
from Rockport[xix]
• Salt
Shaker[xx]
Man Ray and Adon Lacroix, La
Logique Assassine (Murderous Logic)[xxi]
Man Ray
• poem[xxii]
• Rayograph[xxiii]
• Electricite
la Ville[xxiv]
• Ce qui
manque à nous tous (What We All Lack)[xxv]
• Pythagore[xxvi]
• Autoportrait[xxvii]
Mina Loy, Sketch for an
Alphabet [xxviii]
Smith’s
January, 1907 exhibition was a commercial success outselling Stieglitz’s
photographers. Later, her illustrations for the Waite tarot deck spread her
work, steeped in occult and mystical symbolism, wider than most modern artists.
Her mystical-visionary works’ direct and indirect influence on the Stieglitz
Circle members, especially the word and symbol painters and portraitists, is a
subject for exploration. As the Circle moved into modern art, she left the it.
Complete set
of Camera Work: http://library.brown.edu/cds/mjp/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=CameraWorkCollection
Oct 2015.
Weber had a
falling out with Stieglitz over the 1913 Armory Show. His work, as a result,
was not shown. That same year, Weber had the first one man exhibition at a
museum, thus becoming the first American modern artist to do so.
Good
reproduction: http://philamuseum.tumblr.com/post/69179806099/this-beautifully-laid-out-publication-prose-of
detail: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Delaunay#mediaviewer/File:Transsiberien.jpg
Oct 2015.
"The works of the orphic artist must
simultaneously give a pure aesthetic pleasure; a structure which is
self-evident; and a sublime meaning, that is, a subject. This is pure
art." Apollinaire.
Sound track
excerpt: https://soundcloud.com/kamaraka/martin-barzun-1913
image. Oct 2015.
Daniel
Roberts, Albert Gleizes, 1881-1953 : a retrospective exhibition. The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 1964 pdf http://www.archive.org/details/albertgleizes1881robb
p16 Oct 2015..
Daniel
Roberts, pp 16-17.
Daniel
Roberts, p30; painting http://www.wikiart.org/en/robert-delaunay/the-city-of-paris
Oct 2015.
Daniel
Roberts, p 21; painting http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78302
Oct 2015.
Poetry, A
Magazine of Verse, Vol 3, No.1,1913 pdf http://modjourn.org/render.php?id=1201879426921875&view=mjp_object
p29. Oct 2015.
The New Age,
Vol13, No.25, Oct 16, 1913 pdf http://modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=116533289678125
p728 Oct 2015.
Henri MArtin
Barzun, Orpheus: A World Chorus. New
York: Liberal Press,, 1962 p23 & 135.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/293437731941154462/ http://bublog.upmf-grenoble.fr/2013/04/09/henri-martin-barzun-1881-1973-un-grenoblois-aux-avant-gardes/
This excerpt is part of the third episode of
Barzun's "Orhéide" written in 1913. https://soundcloud.com/kamaraka/martin-barzun-1913
3 pages http://www.ulu-late.com/english/visualpoetry/glossary/pictures/ico-eng.htm
pictures 149,150 & 151 Oct 2015.
Guillaume
Apollinaire, lettre-ocean http://www.pinterest.com/pin/339740365610021503/ Oct 2015.
Official
site, http://www.wiu.edu/Apollinaire/
Oct 2015.
Marcel Adema and
Michel Decaudin, APOLLINAIRE: Oeuvres poetiques, Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
Willard Bohn, THE AESTHETICS OF VISUAL POETRY,
1914-1928. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Ann Hyde Greet, trans, CALLIGRAMMES: Poems Of
Peace And War (1913-1916), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
291 issue 1,
p5 http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/291/1/pages/005.htm
Oct 2015.
L'Antitradition Futuriste, Manifeste=Synthese. Paris http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/futurism/
Oct 2015.
Portrait Guillaume
Apollinaire, 1914 Les Soirées de Paris http://www.lessoireesdeparis.com/2012/10/07/les-soirees-de-paris-fetent-duchamp-picabia-et-apollinaire/
Oct 2015.
Klaus Peter
Dencker, TEXT-BILDER: Visuelle Poesie International. Schaukberg, Germany: Verlag M. DuMont, 1972.
Calligrams
http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/text/Apollinaire_Calligrams.pdf
paintings of Guillaume Apollinaire by others http://www.wikiart.org/en/marc-chagall/homage-to-apollinaire-1912
http://www.wikiart.org/en/giorgio-de-chirico/portrait-of-guillaume-apollinaire-1914
http://www.wikiart.org/en/giorgio-de-chirico/the-nostalgia-of-the-poet-1914
Oct 2015.
https://tind.fr/articles/categorie/litte/39
http://litteratureprimaire.eklablog.com/rosace-pierre-andre-birot-a97900203
Oct 2015.
Marius de
Zayas, How, When And Why Modern Art Came To New York; ed., Francis M Naumann.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1996. p23.
http://www.francisnaumann.com/zayas/Zayas01.html http://www.francisnaumann.com/zayas/Zayas01.html Oct 2015.
291 issues: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/291/index.htm
Oct 2015.
Willard Bohn,
Apollinaire and the International Avant-garde. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1997
Willard Bohn, THE AESTHETICS OF VISUAL POETRY,
1914-1928. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. p50. 291 issue 2, p3 http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/291/2/index.htm
Oct 2015.
Marius de Zayas and Francis Picabia, FEMME! http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/291/9/index.htm
Oct 2015.
also 291 visual poems: see de Zayas, How,
When And Why Modern . . ., pp 74-74.
Ibid.
p 51.
Sarah
Greenough, , Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York
Galleries. New York: Bulfinch, 2001, p206; pdf Francis Picabia,
1915 - Department of Art History p 212 Oct 2015. p212 can be looked
upon as a portrait
Sarah
Greenough, p206; pdf Francis Picabia,
1915 - Department of Art History p 206 Oct 2015.
Marius de Zayas
Papers, http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078697/summary
Oct 2015.
Marius de Zayas ,
How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York. New York: MIT Press, 1996.
http://archive.org/stream/craftsman27newyuoft#page/96/mode/2up
http://alphabettenthletter.blogspot.com/2013/08/lettering-kalogramas-and-kalogram.html color http://www.artsandcraftscollector.com/show_and_tell/?page=10 Oct 2015.
http://www.geocities.ws/blguido/u/CyH/jjt.htm
http://siglo19uaslp.blogspot.com/2011/12/jose-juan-tablada-atisbo-de-la.html
http://sigloxxmexicana.blogspot.com/2012/11/jose-juan-tablada.html
Oct 2015.
391 http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/391/index.htm
The University of Iowa has a vast Dada downloadable collection Oct 2015.
“Fisches
Nachtgesang” (Night Song of the Fish) http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Morgenstern,+Christian/Gedichte/Galgenlieder/1./Fisches+Nachtgesang
Oct 2015.
See Apendix.
Rudolf E. Kuenzli, editor, NEW YORK DADA. New York: Willis Locker & Owens,
1986.
http://www.ieeff.org/dadashouted.htm Oct 2015.
http://www.shepherdgallery.com/pdf/manray.pdf
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/156148312050733169/
Oct 2015.
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/collection.html
and http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2011/08/chapter-44-dadaism-meeting-point-of-all.html
Oct 2015.
http://www.designishistory.com/
Oct 2015.
for more
details --Bram Dijkstra, Cubism, Stieglizt and the Early Poetry of William
Carlos William.Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1978.
E.E. Cummings,
COMPLETE POEMS. New York: Harourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. pp 24, 49, 51, 53,
55, and 60.
This suggests
for me a couple of topics I can only point to. The first being that this is the
same attitude carried by the Italian futurists who rejected all previous works
contrary to their manifestos beginning at the threads on their back. The second
being that the aesthetic fracture inherent within the avant-garde between the
materialists and mystics or those sourcing mystical and intuitive materials
intellectually, not experientially. The latter were influential before WW1;
after the war, the former attained dominance and remain so to this day. After
WW1, the mystic was treated much like the Catholics and Protestants view their
mystics: tolerated with disdain or shunned. Of course, exceptions of acceptance
and embrace exist to prove the rule.
Between
1976 and 1990 many avant-garde small
press magazines published concrete poems alongside visual poems. Countless mail
art shows displayed both concrete and visual poetry.
If Pound was
actually seriously probed as a supporting prop, his writings on Barzun should
have caught their attention. Barzun‘s works are remembered in France and Italy
to this day.
http://fuentes.csh.udg.mx/CUCSH/argos/antologi/tablada.htm
trans https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffuentes.csh.udg.mx%2FCUCSH%2Fargos%2Fantologi%2Ftablada.htm&edit-text=
Oct 2015.
http://www.wikiart.org/en/max-weber/avoirdupois
Jan 2105 Oct 2015.
http://www.wikiart.org/en/charles-demuth/poster-portrait-o-keefe-1924
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/460774605596412177/
Oct 2015.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/dove/dove_ralph_dusenberry.jpg.htmlhttp://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.70.36
Oct 2015.
1920 Oct 2015.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/davis/san-pao.jpg
http://whitney.org/Collection/StuartDavis/522/
Oct 2015.
http://welovetypography.com/post/7903
Oct 2015.
"We all come and go unknown."
Joni Mitchell, Hejira
We are accepting 3 more submissions for TOK, Issue 23. Send submissions by New Year's Day 2016 to julie-d@prodigy.net.
Most engaging. It serves to reconnect me with the series of Mesostics that I created some time ago. My books of handmade paper that I constructed as "living things"; which when sitting on its broad binding opened as a flower as its "pages" were segmented into four sections displaying the affixed mesostics within. I will be happy to offer images.
ReplyDeleteMost engaging. It serves to reconnect me with the series of Mesostics that I created some time ago. My books of handmade paper that I constructed as "living things"; which when sitting on its broad binding opened as a flower as its "pages" were segmented into four sections displaying the affixed mesostics within. I will be happy to offer images.
ReplyDeleteFillet Knife Reviews type job
ReplyDeleteNice post.
ReplyDeletehttps://marketplace.whmcs.com/user/manuelcruise8308