Au Noir by May Bery. Timglaset Editions. Malmo, Sweden. 2019. 16
plates
There's No Telling What by Rosaire Appel. PressRappel. New York
City, USA. 2020. 54 pages
Fields by Rebecca Resinski. Cuckoo Grey. Conway, Arkansas,
USA. 2018. Four pages
OJIJETE by John M. Bennett. With prologues by Luis Bravo,
Ivan Arguelles and Juan Angel Italiano. Luna Bisonte Prods.
Columbus, Ohio, USA. 2020. 102 pages
When I selected these four publications to review for Asemic Front 2, I was unaware they shared an important commonality. These works of visual poetry and asemic writing are composed using the color constraints of traditional, textual print: black, white and grey. As I became more familiar with them, I realized the constraints - derived from technologies of the Age of Print - contribute to shared themes involving readability, textuality and visual expression.
From Au Noir by May Bery
Opening with a quote by Henri Michaux, May Bery's Au Noir
launches into a compelling dialogue between symbol and darkness (nothingness is a yielding interpretation in this case). Timglaset Editions in Malmo Sweden has done its reliably excellent job of creating a durable, accessible and utilitarian book.
Au Noir reverses our expectations of reading. The pages are black and the text is white; however, the symbols are asemic and thus unreadable in any conventional sense. As a reader I am drawn into the linear system of arcane and cryptic forms that propel Au Noir. They promise meaning just beyond my grasp, which is never fully revealed. They establish a rising and declining relationship with the blackness (rather than the usual whiteness) of the page.
I become engrossed in the search for meaning itself and the tenuous relationship of wavering symbols with a dominant nothingness. I believe this is one of the pleasures of exploring asemic texts and it certainly can be found in abundance in Au Noir.
From Au Noir by May Bery (detail)
Asemic Front 2 readers might be aware of my theory of "gothic asemic" texts. Even without reiteration of the theory, I believe you can easily find the tones and mystery in Au Noir that equate it to the literary gothic.
The book very successfully invokes the occult and subterranean. Even more specific, the use of the word "noir" in English is associated not only with the literary gothic but film noir, which relies on filmic equivalents to the gothic. May Bery's book with its oblong linearity and visual syntax has a cinematic quality as well and will keep producing discoveries and insights even after many readings.
There's No Telling What by Rosaire Appel
Like Au Noir, Rosaire Appel's collection There's No Telling What is composed in black and white and derives much of its energy from the meeting of these radical polarities as a unified whole.
Appel is well-known and much-appreciated in the visual poetry community for her mastery of asemic writing and the extraordinary artistic and emotional range of her expression. Indeed, I contend she has opened asemic writing to nuances rarely, if ever, achieved by other practitioners. For this reason I find There's No Telling What a particularly notable application of her skill. Here is a sample page:
By Rosaire Appel
Anyone seeking the Rosaire Appel who is the composer of subtle, meditative asemics will not find her in There's No Telling What. This book, almost joyous, is free-form jazz improv-noise music using distortion, decomposition, disruption and dissonance. (Although I do not detect the anger and rage that usually accompanies this genre.) Thus, I adore There's No Telling What and not only because I am a crispy survivor of Punk Era Xerox anti-art vispo or a male seeking hormonal sublimation via Antonin Artaud cultural ultraviolence.
I am pleased to see the aesthetics of copy art - so important in the evolution of global visual poetry - invoked by Appel and used with such extraordinary skill as a vehicle for contemporary vispo. I am thrilled to see a visual poet again confront the limitations of black and white, which defined the constraints for many concrete poets in the 20th century; she triumphs.
I am happy to see Rosaire Appel enter the milieu of the visual poets of the USA Great Lakes Region (aka Rust Belt): C. Mehrl and John M. Bennett, Diane Keys, Miekal And, David Baptiste-Chirot, and Matthew Stolte to name only a very few of the visual poets who have adopted a gritty, industrial aesthetic. They also have an important place in vispo history. In this volume, Appel shows herself to be a master in the USA postavant.
From There's No Telling What by Rosaire Appel
Another textual element vital in There's No Telling What is, of course, redaction. We are all too familiar with redacted texts in contemporary life. Appel explores their aesthetic qualities and the significance of their ominous presence. One of the few legible passages she includes states, "This book illuminates a condition that affects writing: redaction. It is a disease that attacks the skin while leaving the armature intact..." We are reminded that even if artists magically have made anti-art into something that can be be enjoyed, its roots in protest lurk beneath the surface.
There's No Telling What is an amazing structure of organic forms emerging (apparently) from a compost heap of found material language. Yet these forms and language itself are in a process of decomposition, captured in an the instant when the readable becomes unreadable and meaning is lost. Despite some dire intimations we would be wise not to ignore, Appel's book has the joy of a skilled guitarist cranking up the volume and the distortion and playing from the heart.
From There's No Telling What
by Rosaire Appel
Fields by Rebecca Resinski
Rebecca Resinski is quickly becoming a visual poet of consequence, and her highly professional and very limited edition Cuckoo Grey pamphlets are an ideal vehicle
for her work as well as, hopefully, the new concrete poetry that is becoming increasingly
evident in international currents.
Fields is relatively brief and Cuckoo Grey has no formal pricing or marketing system. Resinski circulates her visual poetry through the international mail art network and to other interested parties free of charge. This is a time-honored and still effective method in the avant (and now postavant) garde.
From Fields by Rebecca Resinski
Concrete poetry, visual poetry and now asemic writing have evolved and thrived for decades primarily through the "underground" conduit of mail art and micro-presses. Of course the digital realm has added extraordinary new possibilities, although the internet is losing much of its original promise in terms of artistic freedom. Furthermore, concrete poetry emphasizes materiality; forms such as the handmade, artist's book are thriving. The fascinating products of these artists, such as work by Rebecca Resinski, remain - as in the past - treasures for those building collections and engage in long-term study of the book.
OJIJETE by John M. Bennett
OJIJETE by John M. Bennett is a multi-lingual, post-Lettrist, post-Neo-Absurdist,
Postmodern poetic discourse - displaying numerous other influences as well no doubt
- synthesized into expansive, free-flowing image-text by undisputed vispo master John M. Bennett. OJIJETE is presented
attractively and accessibly in this edition published by the legendary Luna
Bisonte Prods, a world leader in avant and postavant publications. In short,
this is a must-have edition.
From OJIJETE by John M. Bennett
Visual poetry has departed from traditional verse to such an extent that it is not unusual for compositions to have no connection to text (written language); frequently they are constructs of visual images. In other instances, text is cut-up or
mutilated so as to be unrecognizable and we enter the realm of the asemic. Many awkward experiments are available displaying unconvincing attempts to wed image and text; brilliant approaches can be found as well, but less frequently.
OJIJETE is notable because it resolves some of these image-text issues lurking in
contemporary vispo. Bennett's book is primarily textual, or
"language-centered." OJIJETE uses the same black and white constraints I have explored in May Bery, Rosaire Appel and Rebecca Resinski in this review. As much as I am open to all experimentation in visual poetry; I must note - based on the success of the four books reviewed here - that vispo firmly anchored in language might yield the best results in the future.
OJIJETE can be "read" in a
conventional sense and also experienced strictly on the visual level. Bennett uses fonts, typography, tropes from concrete poetry and a minimal use of visual images to create one of the more effective image-texts that I have ever seen.
On a subjective level, I see in OJIJETE Ezra Pound's Cantos using ideograms, the fluidity of Paterson by William Carlos Williams and, of course, Charles Olson's Maximus. All these 20th century epics, among their other aims, seem to advance toward visual poetry and provide important elements in its formation without ever precisely achieving entrance into the genre.
John M. Bennett is one of the few visual poets today who has the knowledge and skills to use the lessons of literary Modernism (and errors) to create a 21st century vispo. OJIJETE is a shining example of his abilities.
- De Villo Sloan
