A special and final issue of Tip of the Knife celebrating the Visual Poetry of Bill DiMichele, editor of TOK for 10 years
4th Dimensional Self Portrait
Tributes
Both Dave and Scott have not only honored Bill, but truly captured his spirit and his very essence and therefore his work.
Dave Columbus (TOK, Issue 29) - Organism Art
"So what I am doing is recreating some of the very first pieces I saw that Bill had done after he started at Bucknell. It's from his "Organism Art" series (circa very early 1970s). It was with that set of canvases that I knew he was indeed a very serious artist. My attempt is to recreate one of his pieces on a smaller scale. This is how I'd like to remember him."
Bill in his Basement
Scott Davenport (TOK, Issue 33)
"I have been thinking about Bill a lot over the past few months and I want to let you know how much he meant to me. He was my art teacher in middle school and reached me in a way that no other teacher has. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to spend time with him and learn from him and to have corresponded through email and share our love of poetry and art. It meant a lot to be included in the recent issue of tip of the knife. My thoughts go out to you and his family and I just wanted to reach out and share how important he was in my life along with this poem that I wrote recently."
For Mr. D
the piercing eyes of my
seventh grade art teacher Bill
were a simulacrum of ancient religion
screaming zaroastrian colors across
rooftops of SF and Berkeley
shadows assigned in tempura on paper
shipping xerox poems via usps
birthing vision of clear light and
freedom for expressive potential
i was 13 and fog settled in among
ancient oaks in the mornings
below mount diablo and i
loved my dog and skateboarding
we always talked about music and art
and I always looked forward to it
those memories come back
in light reflected off of objects
in the silence of my home
i think he followed the same
california myth that now holds me
hinted at in poems and rocks
dirt trails and coastline
weird beliefs, individuals and phrases
and i’m left to follow trails of photocopies
where my own path of mythology
converges with him and the poem
hills of language transmission
blank ink stretched on paper
flashing Science terms in thick brush
in the green gray 3am of the
santa monica mountains where
photosynthesis waits quietly for light and
his suite of aleister crowley cutups
is my Puma concolar perched in
Quercus agrifolia above a dry creek
replayed in my mind from photos
that mountain lion i saw a month ago
paused and looked at me ghostlike
and disappeared after crossing between
las flores canyon and tuna canyon
just before dawn, i was so moved
my body hummed and vibrated and sang
while energy moved freely through
the pathways of history and myth
now 20 years later and further south
the poem pours out as fog settles
among the oaks down in dicks canyon
below saddle peak - october midmorning
Selected Works
Burnhole Excerpts
Reading by Crag Hill of the first 1 1/4 pages accompanied by Will DiMichele on bass guitar:
Introduction
"Burnhole is a personal journal of my experiments in conscious dreaming, astral travel, coexisting realities, higher centers, and other related subjects.
I began the experiments in earnest during the winter of 1982 and continued through 1986, when I started consolidating information with the intention of publishing an account of my activities. However, the formal, 'scientific' tone of my notes did nothing to convey the wonder I felt during the experiments themselves.
Meanwhile, concurrent with my psychic endeavors, I had also been working with variations on literary collage techniques, and I found these writing methods to be the most effective vehicles for translating the ineffable states I was experiencing, and for creating the sense of dislocation and discovery in the reader that was my objective."
Burnhole p. 1
Burnhole p. 2-3
Score 1
Score 11
Score 11 Cover
Score 12: Hermes' Tablet
9s
Bilocations
Bilocations 2
Bilocations 1
Bilocations 4
Bilocations 56
Bilocations 3
Bilocations 5
Blocks
Capacity X - Part 2
Chem Collab
Circles
Compositions
 |
Flight
March of the Elephants
Nuclear Weapons
Gathering Gladioli
Gladiola 3
Gathering Hyacinths
Hyacinth 6
Gathering Lilacs
Lilac 4
Gathering Roses
Rose 17
Graffiti - Part 2
Graffiti 6
Mute
Mylar
Netherworld
Netherworld 1
Netherworld 14
Netherworld 20
Netherworld 26
Netherworld 27
Piers Ploughman
Piers Ploughman/Plowman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections or steps called passus. The poem is a mix of theological allegory and social satire that concerns the narrator's/dreamer's quest for the true Christian life in the
context of medieval Catholicism. This journey takes place within a series of dream-visions;
the dreamer seeks, among other things, the allegorical characters Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"),
and Dobest ("Do-Best").
Piers Ploughman 2
Piers Ploughman 8
Spectrum
Spectrum 1
Spectrum 7
Spectrum 8
Spectrum 9
Spectrum 10
Spectrum 11
Spectrum 12
Spectrum 20
Spectrum 22
The Wire
The Wire 1
The Wire 3
Through the Looking Glass
Through the Looking Glass 1
Through the Looking Glass 4
Through the Looking Glass 5
Through the Looking Glass 7
Trilocations
Trilocations 17
Trilocations 29
Links to More Art, Writing, and Music
First edition published in 1985. This book as the title suggests is one set of writing passing over another set of writing. Some is cryptic, some is like the best of concrete poetry. Is this a sound text? A co-editor of Score, an experimental publisher in California.
A study of the four-dimensional face of Humanity, a conjuring of higher functions, a practical mono-myth, Gurdjieff-Ouspensky influenced, told in Xerolage style.
Music
Batang Frisco (meaning San Francisco kids) is a spiritual journey that begins in San Francisco's center of commerce where cheap magic is practiced and ends at the ocean, where magic is no longer necessary. This trip is a Gurdjieffian-Ouspensky inspired mono-myth that, when completed, will raise our level of consciousness and afford a new and true view of the world.
The songs, performed in a minimal synth style, serve to forward the chronicle. Each song lends its particular color to the story both lyrically and musically.
