"Asemous Affront Blues" by Jim Leftwich & De Villo Sloan (2015/2021)
Sunday, July 18, 2021
AF2 Collabs: "Asemous Affront Blues" & "Combustion Blues" by Jim Leftwich & De Villo Sloan
Saturday, July 17, 2021
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
experiment in o by Rebecca Resinski
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Epistemology 609: ORDEN I by Jim Leftwich & De Villo Sloan
"Epistemology 609: ORDEN I" by Jim Leftwich & De Villo Sloan (2015-2021)
"Epistemology 609: ORDEN I" by Jim Leftwich & De Villo Sloan (detail)
Recent Asemic Texts & Art by Kristine Snodgrass
"Red" by Kristine Snodgrass (2021)
(melted pastels) (2021)
Kristine Snodgrass portrait by Collin J Rae
Thursday, July 8, 2021
David-Baptiste Chirot @ Asemic Front (part 1)
The visual poetry & asemic writing communities are mourning the loss of David-Baptiste Chirot (aka David Chirot) in 2021.
Visual poet & theorist Tom Hibbard was there in Wisconsin to help usher D-B C through the darkest of times. Kudos to Tom to go through that rarest of melancholy: The death of a poet. Matthew Stolte was also there to help - deepest thanks. As far as I know, these were the last members of our community to see David.
Participants in the Asemic Front Project know David-Baptiste Chirot was a visual poet of great achievement. He has contributed to our theoretical foundation & artistic practice. Indeed, without the breakthroughs David made that pushed visual poetry to new levels of expression, AF could not exist. He has made significant contributions to the asemic writing movement as well.
David has been a longtime contributor to Asemic Front. So I am taking this sad event as an impetus to gather all his AF contributions & re-post them for all interested in his work. Feel free to copy, share.
The irony is that David & I discussed ways to find a central location for his work, which is voluminous & widely dispersed. Obviously, I had no solution. I hope in some small way that I can remain true to the belief he knows I have in his work.
- De Villo Sloan
At the Edge of & Outside of Language:
David Chirot on the origin of rubBEings
(originally published in Asemic Front, December 18, 2017)
When I first began creating rubBEings I had a vision - a kind of deep emotional, visual thinking, which I longed to convey. But I did not know if I would ever be able to realize it. I wanted to express that vision in a way that conveyed what I was experiencing at the edge of and outside of words, letters and language
I kept trying to realize that vision until
one day when I was making art working on a telephone pole. I was surrounded by
a street gang that later killed one of my friends. At the time various people were
living in a nearby building later condemned by the city. I lived on the top
floor that was reserved for homeless people and spent a whole winter there. Snow
came in the broken windows and killed mice, which terrified the psychotic
patients that shared the floor with the homeless.
I was working away on the telephone pole and suddenly making a stroke with a lumber crayon on cheap notebook paper I realized I was crossing a line. I was no longer just making markings but actually doing what I had envisioned but had not been sure I could achieve. Now I was achieving it. In that one stroke I changed from being a wanderer to having a vocation: visual poetry, writing, sound poetry – the rest of my existence here.
- David Chirot
By David-Baptiste Chirot
Inner pages of an asemic book by David Chirot
"For Bob Cobbing in the Snow" (remix) by David Chirot
Friday, June 4, 2021
Experimental Asemics: Two Pieces by Jeannette Geissler (Munich, Bavaria, Germany)
"Asemic Experiment # 1" by Jeanette Geissler Munich, Bavaria, Germany)
I am thrilled to welcome Jeanette Geissler to Asemic Front 2. She titled these two pieces experiments (& it might seem that way to her). To me, they are excellent & interesting examples of asemic vispo.
However, her titles were de-materialized & re-configured in a nano-second in my mind as "Experimental Asemics." I thus throw yet another shard of jargon into the porridge: Experimental Asemics.
Jeanette Geissler is a relatively new member of the ever-fertile Asemic Writing for Mail Artists group at IUOMA-Ning. Deepest thanks to Jeanette for these contributions & I look forward to sharing more at Asemic Front 2.
- De Villo Sloan
"Asemic Experiment # 2" by Jeanette Geissler Munich, Bavaria, Germany)
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Knot Fade Away: An Asemic Front 2 Review of "Is Knot" by John M. Bennett
Is Knot by John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte Prods 2021)
Is Knot by John M. Bennett, Luna Bisonte Prods. Columbus, Ohio, USA. 2021. 177 pages
Review by De Villo Sloan
Generalizations in vispo reviews can be misleading & manipulative. Sometimes they can be dangerous.
So I will begin with a generalization rooted in my subjectivity: During the previous plague year (2020) visual poets seemed compelled to present a position - even if subtle or cryptic - on asemic writing, which they wove into their books, which were released at a relatively frantic pace. Thus 2020 might have been the year of an asemic-vispo nascence: The year vispo appropriated asemic writing. Possibly.
John M. Bennett has little if nothing at all to do with current asemic vispo debates, even if he is the populist "Godfather of [Global] Vispo" & has been reigning for not years but decades. Bennett's newest book, Is Knot, is a collection of what I will call due to a need for mutual understanding "traditional [text-centered] lyric poetry." Is Knot is beautifully produced with book design by C Mehrl Bennett.
While newer & more general audiences will not quench their thirst for vispo novelty nor asemic authenticity in the pages of Is Knot, they will discover - & Bennett's longtime readers will again be affirmed - that he is a lyric poet fully equal in accomplishment to his most lauded contemporaries. Is Knot is a collection revealing John M. Bennett at his poetic best. The book includes writing in English, Spanish & vispo combinations thereof.
This is not (no pun intended) to suggest Is Knot is a book of only traditional lyric poetry. The collection contains a healthy representation of the image-text discourse ("visual writing" as critic Tom Hibbard calls it) Bennett has helped define & is known for, including his calligraphy (which others have classified as asemic) & composition with found material.
From Is Knot by John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte Prods 2021)
Is Knot showcases Bennett's hard-earned mastery & synthesis of Modernist poetics, especially Louis Zukofsky. (You also have triadic forms developed by William Carlos Williams.) Bennett is more often associated with DaDa & (of course) concrete poetry. His language-centered poems tend (again generalities are dangerous) toward the extreme precincts of non-linearity, disruption, wordplay & classic Brechtian alienation effects, among other tropes.
Is Knot offers new possibilities for the postavant pomo lyric, similar to Rae Armantrout's achievement in re-forging the meta-language chains of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E into highly individualized poems of great beauty & expression (another problematic idea in terms of the postavant). Poetically, I believe the most important contribution of Is Knot is within its lyric structures.
Pieces using a three-line stanza, sometimes in patterns of three, work very well in Is Knot & are similar to numerical & word-count forms Zukofsky invents in the later books of A. Using a relatively traditional form, even if it is of his own invention, serves Bennett well & he rises to the occasion. Here is a transcription of "bird" (167) by John M. Bennett from Is Knot:
bird
cheep leg or leap
be hhind thought
negck yr chow
der's soaked rope
walk on talk on
sees the clay yr
deep swallow
stays ,its foggy
thhroat stun fllaps
From Is Knot by John M. Bennett (Luna Bisonte Prods 2021)
bird (some notes)
cheep leg or leap (wordplay: chirp, cheap; rhyme)
be hhind thought
negck yr chow (chow/der = hinge line break)
der's soaked rope (rope = knot)
walk on talk on
sees the clay yr
deep swallow (deep = rhyme) (wordplay: bird swallow)
stays ,its foggy
thhroat stun fllaps
"bird" presents a high-degree of indeterminacy - no surprise in this mode of discourse. The Jim Leftwich term "pansemic" is, in fact, a useful descriptor when approaching Bennett's work. "bird" can be read as a classic lyric scenario of "the Poet" contemplating a bird in a foggy, lakeside or seaside location.
The classic Western subjective/object binary pattern emerges & receives serious contemplation & perceptual processing. Is Knot adds a new step in the evolution of the avant garde & post avant. The wordplay & image juxtapositions provide a depth of complexity.
In addition, to the tercets, Bennett includes a number of pieces using anaphora (repetition) & shows himself a master of the great Bardic poetics of Blake, Whitman & Ginsberg; in reality, this should come as no surprise). These poems, in terms of tone & imagery, are similar in achievement to work by Phillip Lamantia. Here is an excerpt from "headless form" (159) by John M. Bennett in Is Knot:
in the owl of the form a breast returns
in the heart of the form an eye returns
in the ash of the form a lung returns
in the ink of the form a rain returns
in the beast of the form a shoe returns
in the skin of the form a cave returns
in the face of the form a son returns....
In terms of disclosures, I have been reviewing John M. Bennett books for over a decade & I have been following his work since the 1980s. Also I am very familiar with the later works of
Robert Creeley where the poet begins working in form, many of theme similar or derived
from Zukofsky & related others.
So Bennett's similar uses in form are of interest to me & should be to others interested in these poetries. "Otherstream" lit has produced writing & art we are now only beginning to appreciate. Is Knot is an important contribution to this library.
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