Yes I No by Robin Tomens. Designed
and printed by Robin Tomens. 64 pages
https://rtomens.blogspot.com/2020/08/vispoconcrete-poetry-book-yes-i-no.html
by De Villo Sloan
Literature written in plague years amounts to a genre for the morbid. The notorious plague year of 2020 produced an astonishing amount of visual poetry.
British visual poet Robin Tomens published two volumes during this grim time. One of these, Yes I No, is presented for your consideration here at Asemic Front 2.
Yes I No is a sturdy, substantial and well-printed volume.
Tomens designed and oversaw the book’s production and thus receives additional
kudos from AF2 .
In an announcement of the publication,
Tomens explains that his dual-role enabled him to establish an overall concept
for the production. This post-avant approach guides the reader to an awareness
of the book’s materiality, the object poem concept, the artist’s book and the DIY ethos.
Tomen’s involvement in jazz, fanzines, and Punk (especially the anti-art stance) all conspire to establish an aesthetic for Yes I No, albeit very subtle. This is a tempered volume. Adolescent rage and shock techniques are absent or at least restrained, suggesting visual poetry has matured.
However, some pages of Tomens' book contain raw, dissonant Kerouacian "gone" typing that can hold its owns alongside raw, industrial-era vispo. In fact, if there is a dissonant "double" lurking within Yes I No, Tomens might have exerted less control and allowed a different version of the book to reveal itself. But reviews are yet another manifestation of the necessity of dealing with what is before us rather than what we wish were before us. Tomens' constraints most likely allow greater accessibility to readers.
What remains is fairly brilliant work
rooted in (but moving substantially beyond) classic concrete poetry and an
improvisational style rooted in jazz.
Yes I No is a fine collection of language-centered Neo-Concrete
(or New Concrete) compositions in a volume that requires touch and direct
contact rather than scans flickering on a tiny screen.
The red and black compositions that constitute the majority of the volume will likely be the main attraction for the reader. However, the book begins with what appear to be serial image-text poems in black and white (pages 1 – 15, my measure). They are gritty and organic, generating movement, fading in and out of coherences, producing moments of lucidity then fading in deconstructed language (similar to the effect of asemics).
This series seems to want to become a much longer and more ambitious composition transcending the lyric. This reviewer wonders if we are yet to see a much more ambitious work by Tomens.
In the meantime, Yes I No belongs in
every personal visual poetry library.
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