Asemic visual poetry collaboration by Kristine Snodgrass
(Tallahassee, Florida, USA) & Lova Delis (Dayton, Ohio, USA)
One branch of asemic writing is aligned closely with abstract expressionism in the visual arts. Cy Twombly's work is frequently included in the evolving asemic canon, and I often include Jackson Pollock in my own writing.
Poet and Editor Kristine Snodgrass is an emerging visual poet and asemic writer whose work offers powerful emotional expression as opposed to a more theoretical - and some would say colder - approach to asemics that is dependent ultimately upon abstract linguistic models and semiotics.
The result of the latter (linguistics rooted approach) is to create a discourse devoid of conventional "meaning" that cannot be "read" in the traditional sense of "reading a poem" but instead tends to invite meditation on the nature of language: ultimately an intellectual exercise and one suited to offer logical connections to the late postmodern milieu. Thus the linguistic approach is inviting to many readers because a readymade theoretical apparatus already exists to explicate what is apparently inexplicable. (See Tom Hibbard's current applications of structuralism to visual poetry.)
In contrast, the work of Kristine Snodgrass expresses "meanings" - which, again, cannot be read as conventional text (crucially important to understanding asemics) - that do communicate emotional states similar to the way music expresses emotion or colors and shapes in painting. Responses to her work is likely deeply subjective and produces feelings beyond the realm of articulation. These are different than the traditional modes of lyric poetry, but the purpose of transmitting human experience remains intact (as well as the presence of a self outside language).
Asemics by Kristine Snodgrass offer the possibility of a new way of "reading" that thus far has only been partially mapped; the content of her work is an exploration of new depths of human experience. In this context, asemic writing becomes a new form and practice after the postmodern and into the brave new world of the post-literate.
Lova Delis is also an emerging visual poet and asemic writer of note as well. In particular, her collaborations with Chris Mudhead Reynolds - known in the contemporary mail art network and for his art in the spirit of Fluxus - are receiving attention and generating interest. Lova Delis solo pieces as well as her Chris Reynolds collabs also represent the abstract expressionist wing of asemics.
The collab featured here in Af2 is fascinating expressionism as well as the work of two newer visual poets. After several years of working extensively with collabs for the Asemic Front project, I have found that effective collaboration is not a product of chemistry as much as it is an alchemical transmutation. (Combinations you think will produce great results are more likely disappointing and marvels arise in what might have seemed the most ill-matched mixings.) Kristine Snodgrass and Lova Delis have - to resume the metaphor - produced gold in this piece. I am thrilled to be able to feature this work on Asemic Front 2.
- De Villo Sloan
