Asemic Front 2: Concrete Poetry Meets Random Number Generator in "experiment in o" by Rebecca Resinski

experiment in o by Rebecca Resinski (Cuckoo Grey 2020)

Rebecca Resinski (Arkansas, USA) has contributed her work faithfully to Asemic Front 2. During the time she has participated in the project, she has published notable work steadily here & at other venues.

Resinski is increasingly recognized as one of the "Neo-Concrete" or "New Concrete" poets in addition to her other writing & art, which (as I have written before here at AF2) is to me a very original merging of the postavant & the Classical. She has been of particular importance to the AF2 goal of exploring relationships between concrete poetry & asemics.

Rebecca Resinski also effortlessly combines the practical materialism of a concretiste with the abstraction of a conceptualist. In experiments in o she displays her talent for weaving intricate & precise structures of "pattern poetry" (see Dick Higgins' extraordinary book).

In experiment in o, Resinski uses a random number generator to make crucial decisions determining the changing visual appearance of the 18 squares that define the structure of the series.

Certainly concrete poetry requires the same commitment to constraint as Oulipo, a kind of hyper-formalism. This might help explain a resurgence in conventional concrete poetry among the same new writers & artists who are flocking to the sometimes obsessive-compulsive confines of Oulipo. (And as a deconstructive thread: I think experiment in o offers more promise for psycho-analytic interpretation than her previous books.)

Resinski's collection has a total of six panels, each bearing three squares. By introducing the notion of absence, Resinski focuses experiment in o on - in a philosophical sense - the relationship of the sign to absence or nothingness (rather than the relationship of the sign to other signs). In fact, Resinski reduces her arsenal of signs to one = o, which hovers dangerously close to "signifying nothing."

In his recent writing - some posted here at AF2 - Jim Leftwich has explained that an authentic asemic writing could only signify nothing, endlessly & might not even be possible from a linguistic standpoint. Terms such as indeterminate & pansemic are far more useful; we have many.

Yet currently across the globe numerous individuals are fascinated - held in thrall - with the "asemic" concept of signs that express nothing or are devoid of meaning wholly. Asemic consciousness, apparently, requires the initiate to float in a state of paradox & contradiction like the rigors of Buddhist meditation. More on this later with proper cites & considerations.

In the meantime, Rebecca Resinski has released a new book that explores with originality & innovation the borderlands & miraged wastes of textual nothingness.

- De Villo Sloan