Asemic Front 2 Review: "Light Pours In" by Amy Rodriguez (Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series)

 

Light Pours In by Amy Rodriguez. Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series 2024

Curated by Carol Lynne Knight. Series Editor Kristine Snodgrass

Light Pours In: Poems & Images 

by Amy Rodriguez

 

Tallahassee: Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series 

 

34 pages   5.5 X 8.5 inches   2024

 

Review by De Villo Sloan

 

This has been a year of successful launches for the Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series. For their inaugural chapbook, series editor Kristine Snodgrass selected Light Pours In by emerging artist and visual poet, Amy Rodriquez. Anhinga Co-Director Carol Lynne Knight collaborated with Rodriguez to produce a book of exceptional quality. 

I reviewed Rodriquez’ Asemic Poetica: Volume 1 (2021) with much enthusiasm. Light Pours In, for me, is a continuation of the vision she first presents in Asemic Poetica.

The new book shows maturity and increasing creative skill. In particular, the conventional poems in the book are beautifully crafted lyrics; some of the finest I have seen among current visual poets. 

From Light Pours In by Amy Rodriguez (Anhinga 2024)

   

In a previous review, I praised the Anhinga vispo editors for providing so much helpful supporting material as a part of the visual poetry series books.

The new visual poetries – rooted in conceptual art and post-structuralist theory among other areas - can seem daunting to those who are attracted but still unsure how to engage with new art and writing. (Actually engaging with avant and postavant art requires no prior knowledge, and contrary to popular opinion: It can be fun as well as a journey into human expression!)

In Light Pours In by Amy Rodriguez, Anhinga Co-Director Carol Lynne Knight shares her experience working with Amy:

“Delicate, energetic, bold – the asemic lines in Amy Rodriquez’ images are assured yet at times wild. While her images use the ‘grammar’ of asemics, the aesthetics are pure and mature, a painterly and spontaneous flow of ink and pen.” I have no better words of my own. My heartfelt congratulations go to Carol and Amy on the completion of this wonderful collaboration.

From Light Pours In by Amy Rodriguez (Anhinga 2024)

Locating trends in the Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series might be premature. All the same, I will close with an observation involving Amy's Light Pours In and Andrew Brenza's Colorways: both published in the series.

These books use a structure of alternating text-based lyric poems and asemic visual poetry. Placed in the context of the New Concrete Poetry where similar trends can be found, I conclude that the use of Ekphrasis can be a vital tool in the composition of contemporary visual poetry.

Light Pours In by Amy Rodriguez is a significant work by a gifted emerging artist and poet.

(De Villo Sloan is a visual poet and reviewer of post-avant art and literature. He is director of the Winifred and De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.)

Asemic Front 2 Review: "Wars" by Angela Caporaso (above/ground press 2024)

 

Cover of Wars by Angela Caporaso (Caserta, Italy) 

published by above/ground press (Canada 2024)

Wars by Angela Caporaso

above/

        /ground press (2024)

2423 alta vista drive

ottawa, ontario klh 7m9

24 pages (7 x 9 inches)

Review by De Villo Sloan

Visual artist Angela Caporaso (Caserta, Italy) has been exploring visual poetry. Rob McLennan’s above/ground press in Ottawa, Canada, has given us a chapbook of this recent work.

I am set at ease when exploring Wars by the no-frills approach of above/ground press that highlights the work and makes a soft allusion to the gritty, underground visual poetry that took shape in the formerly industrial Great Lakes cities of the USA and Canada.

Caporaso’s emphasis on language materiality, dimensionality and cut-up makes her text an ideal match for McLennan’s editorial eye.    

By Angela Caporaso in Wars

In Wars, Caporaso tells us the visual poems in the edition are inspired by "some short poems by Wystan Hugh Auden." Contemporary visual poets seem to enjoy anchoring their new work to older literary tradition. 

The repetition of cut-up/concrete forms, shifting in constructs of opposing dark and light, suggests to me various configurations of battling armies, military maps. I find myself considering the phenomenon of binary opposition in nature and the human compulsion to warfare. Wars can be read as a visual-linguistic anti-war sequence. The book has much more to offer as well. 

By Angela Caporaso in Wars

Recently John Richard McConnochie, the Australian visual poet and asemic writer, well-known for his diligent admin work at the great Facebook Post-literate group, has been using the term "neo-glyphic" to identify certain asemic forms that he is observing. This brings me to explain why I chose to place my review of Angela's book on Asemic Front2. 

Aspects of asemic writing are merging with the new concrete (or neo-concrete). In Angela Caporaso's War is a series of evolving neo-glyphs that move from binary oppositional structures to pieces that are far more non-binary.

Congratulation to Angela Caporaso and to Rob McLennan for his keen editorial eye recognizing this great book.

(De Villo Sloan is a visual poet and writes about post-avant lit. 

He is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund)

Mona Lisa Twitch: A Review of the Glitchy Womyn Anthology 2024

Cover of Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching

 2022-23. Cover image by Amy Rodriguez

Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching 2022-23

Edited by Kristine Snodgrass and Karla Van Vliet

Bristol, Vermont, USA, Van Vliet Gallery, 2024

114 pages, 8 x 10, full color

 

Review by De Villo Sloan

Kristine Snodgrass and Karla Van Vliet have combined talents again to bring us Glitchy Womyn: An anthology of women glitching 2022-23.

Produced in a beautiful, color edition by Van Vliet Gallery of Bristol, Vermont, this book provides an overview of recent developments in a burgeoning area of digital poetics. The anthology also serves as documentation of a fascinating moment in the evolution of global visual poetry.

Use of the glitch in various forms of digital art composition has been commonplace for years. The use of glitching in postavant textual disruption is newer and more esoteric. Fortunately, Glitchy Womyn includes a note from every contributor explaining her work. These statements are extremely thoughtful and will inform those in the audience who want to know what inspired the art. 

"The Spectacle of Bad Women" by Lova Delis 

from Glitchy Womyn

Kristine Snodgrass has experimented extensively with glitched text. Her selections (along with Karla Van Vliet's) are exceptional. Marco Giovenale, to the best of my knowledge, is the first poet to publish specifically about/within the glitch-text aesthetic in his book GLITCHASEMICS (2020) published by Post-Asemic Press with a forward by Michael Betancourt.

"Trying to resolve the dialectic" by Alexia Catenazzo in Glitchy Womyn

In Glitchy Women, the contemporary visual poetry audience will recognize writers and artists who are publishing actively and widely and also discover emerging talents: Amy Rodriguez, Terri Carrion, Carol Lynne Knight, Dixie Denman Junius, Lova Delis, Laura Kerr, Sue Scavo, Amanda Earl, Jennifer Weigel, Rosalie Gancie, Kristine Snodgrass, Karla Van Vliet, Terri Witek, Shloka Shankar, Alexia Catenazzo, Maria Damon, Sofia Nobre, Eileen Tabios, Alexis Fedorjaczenko, Rhonda Ananda and Kristen Szumyn. (On a personal note, I am thrilled to see some mail art friends were selected for the anthology.)

"Glitch II" by Kristen Szumyn in Glitchy Womyn

The pages of Glitchy Womyn reveal the depth and range of the new poetries: from the glitched Post-Lettrism of the “New Concrete” evidenced in work by Eileen Tabios to a neo-concrete, object poem approach in the highly original compositions by Terri Witek. While endless theoretical vispo battles rage online, factions form and positions harden, Glitchy Womyn opens - literally - a world of possibilities for artist and audience.

"Dismantled" by Terri Carrion in Glitchy Womyn

The WAAVE Global Gallery women’s collective and other related groups are contributing significantly to a new era of visual poetry. The vitality of this extended community is readily apparent in this new anthology. 

X7X by Eileen Tabios in Glitchy Womyn

(De Villo Sloan is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.)

AF2 Review: Andrew Brenza's Neoconcretist Ekphrasis

Colorways: Poems & Images

By Andrew Brenza

Tallahassee, Anhinga Press, 2024

Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series, Kristine Snodgrass, Curator

114 pages, 6 x 9, full color

 

Review by De Villo Sloan

For the second, full-length collection to be published in the newly established Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series, curator Kristine Snodgrass selected Colorways by Andrew Brenza. The book was officially released March 1, 2024.

Brenza’s Colorways is a sequence of minimalist, unpunctuated poems that alternate with extraordinary black & white and color visual poems.

Brenza uses a variant of Ekphrasis for the book’s structure. The text-image nature of the visual/concrete poems interact with the organic forms of the minimalist verse to create play and self-reflective lyricism.

From Colorways by Andrew Brenza

Colorways provides strong critical and interpretive prose support via an introduction by Snodgrass and a preface by Brenza. Kristine Snodgrass writes, “This work is… colorful and hopeful in the way it pairs the written words and digitally altered ‘new’ concrete poetry.”

Snodgrass writes, “[Brenza’s book] is what this Visual Poetry Series attempts to prove: that practitioners today, whether new to the field, or prolific producers, are expeditiously moving to break boundaries, gatekeeping and definitions.”

From Colorways by Andrew Brenza

In his preface, Brenza states Colorways is an attempt to answer the question: “How does one write a lyric poem adequate to this age?”

For this reader, Colorways is an instant neo-concrete classic opening the door to new possibilities of poetic form and genre. The use of Ekphrasis is so innovative in Brenza’s book that I recommend visual poets do their own explorations of this classic form.

(De Villo Sloan is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.)

From Colorways by Andrew Brenza

AF2 collab by Cathead (Chris Reynolds) & De Villo Sloan (completed March 16, 2024)

 

Collab by Cathead (Chris Reynolds) (Arizona USA) & De Villo Sloan (New York, USA) completed March 16, 2024

Asemic Front 2 Review: "Circling the Start" by Dixie Denman Junius

 

Circling the Start

By Dixie Denman Junius

Tallahassee - Anhinga Press 2023

Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series, Kristine Snodgrass, Editor

60 pages paper

9.5’ x 9’

Full color

Review by De Villo Sloan

Editor Kristine Snodgrass has launched the new Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series with a spectacular, full-length collection by emerging artist and asemic writer, Dixie Denman Junius.

The first half of Circling the Start is a powerful series based, ironically, on a readable symbol: The Enso. Junius enters her asemic realm from Asian traditions that engage with paradox and contradiction.

In her preface, Junius writes, “Enso is the Japanese word for circle and is strongly associated with Zen, symbolizing anything from a rice cake to eternity” (xiii).

Her readers will certainly recognize the Enso as an indeterminate signifier that invites meditations upon meaning and as Shakespeare said, “signifying nothing.”

Junius continues, “My expression of the Enso is an opening to reveal the wordless poems in my mind and heart – centering me in the infinite wisdom of the moment. Thus far, I have created over 100 imperfect circles and interpretations from the Enso.”

Circling the Start presents approximately 25 beautiful color prints arranged in a skillfully sequenced series that leads her audience to insights about the nature of signs and asemics. The Enso series presents a narrative of the deterioration or deconstruction of the sign.

The series highlights a binary structure. I note many of the neo-concrete poets today chafe against the constraints of binary structures. I tend to agree, yet in the case of Circling the Start, the emphasis on the binary is justified, even beneficial. For instance, the Enso mirrors the signifier-signified structure of the sign frequently appearing in semiotics.

The second section of the book is an eye-popping, color-drenched tour-de-force showcasing Junius’s asemics. Her existing audience now has an enduring collection of her work under one cover; a new audience will be exposed for the first time to her talent.

I also want to praise Anhinga Press for including important contextual elements in the book: The introduction by Kristine Snodgrass, the preface by Dixie Denman Junius and an afterword by Karla Van Vliet.

The genres in contemporary vispo such as neo-concrete and asemic are opening fields of uncharted territory that require new ways of reading to share the extraordinary vision of these artists.

If Circling the Start is any indication, we can look forward to new books in the Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series with excitement.

 De Villo Sloan is Director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund

News from the Anhinga Press Visual Poetry Series

 

Note: Please direct all queries to Anhinga Press (Tallahassee, Florida, USA) and Vispo Series Editor Kristine Snodgrass.