Asemic Concrete Text by John McConnochie

 

By John McConnochie (Queensland, Australia)

Asemic Front 2 Review: An Asemic Sentimental Education by Adam Roussopoulos

 

 

Cover of Lost Love Letters - a mail art book by Adam Roussopoulos (Minnesota, USA) (2020)

Asemic Front 2 is extremely supportive of the Eternal Network (international mail art network) as a historic and ongoing, welcoming home to concrete poetry, visual poetry & now asemic writing. 

Mail art and asemics are intertwined in the 21st century. I believe an accurate narrative of asemics cannot be assembled without both areas - mail art and asemics - considered together.

So I am glad to be able to step back from following the dizzying evolution of contemporary asemics for a sub-semic particle of a moment. I share this modest review of a very extra-ordinary, limited-edition book by mail artist Adam Roussopoulos. 

I believe it is important to include in vispo books noted from this era. Roussopoulos shows promising skills in what he reports are first-time experiments with asemics. 

Adam Roussopoulos thoughtfully includes an introduction explaining the particulars of Lost Love Letters (next in this blog). Since he produced only 12 copies total, I will forego the purchase, publisher information included in standard reviews and give you the "gold standard" in mail art. His address:

Adam Roussopolous

249 Cherita Drive

Chaska, MN 55318 USA

A mail artist lives for mail, so do not be shy. He might have some remaining copies. Deepest thanks to Adam Roussopolous. (I am left wondering who received the other copies? An archival treasure!)

- De Villo Sloan

By Adam Roussopoulos from Lost Love Letters (2020) (Minnesota, USA)

By Adam Roussopoulos from Lost Love Letters (2020) (Minnesota, USA)

By Adam Roussopoulos from Lost Love Letters (2020) (Minnesota, USA)

By Adam Roussopoulos from Lost Love Letters (2020) (Minnesota, USA)

(Note Neo-Concrete/New Concrete elements)

AF2 Meta-Review: Karla Van Vliet's Asemic "She Speaks Tongues" Praised in the Boston Globe

Proof cover of She Speaks Tongues by Karla Van Vliet (Anhinga 2021) 

(Photo courtesy of Asemic Front 2 Archives)

A review of Karla Van Vliet's new book She Speaks Tongues (SST) (Anhinga 2021) appeared in the Boston Globe (December 2, 2021). 

Entitled "Shapely Verse," the thoughtful article by Nina McLaughlin does a great service to the visual poetry and asemic communities by providing an accessible explanation of asemics to a wider audience, in addition to apt praise for Van Vliet. 

Anhinga Press and super-editor Kristine Snodgrass - an AF2 mainstay - receive repeat kudos here for selecting the book and guiding it, with such care, through production: 

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/02/arts/collection-asemic-writing-poetry-by-karla-van-vliet-an-exhibit-work-by-kadir-nelson/

The work in She Speaks Tongues - Van Vliet's asemic forms, her traditionally rooted verse, her expressive calligraphy, among other features - is an ideal vehicle to share the pleasures of asemics with a wider audience. The editorial mix in SST makes it an ideal introduction for readers interested in postavant and experimental lit.

I designate SSL an AF2 "Instant Classic," of course. With pride, I want to take just a smidget of non-linear time here to remind the incredible AF2 audience. "You heard it here first, folks!"

In July 2021 AF2 announced, based on the proof we obtained, that She Speaks Tongue was, by our estimation, an asemic masterpiece:

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2021/07/anhinga-press-announces-forthcoming.html

Congratulations and thanks to Karla Van Vliet, Kristine Snodgrass and reviewer Nina McLaughlin.

- De Villo Sloan

. 

AF2 Commentary: To Rank or Not to Rank? Kristine Snodgrass in the Garden of Asemic Infrastructures

  

Cover of RANK (glitch infrastructures)  by Kristine Snodgrass (Jackleg Press 2021)

Asemic Front 2 Commentary: To Rank or Not to Rank? Kristine Snodgrass in the Garden of Asemic Infrastructures

 

RANK (glitch infrastructures) by Kristine Snodgrass; Florida, USA; JackLeg Press; 2021; 112 pages

https://www.amazon.com/Rank-Kristine-Snodgrass/dp/1737330776

 

By De Villo Sloan

I am both sad and beaming to report in my opening disclosure that my collab partner and an Asemic Front mainstay much beloved by readers – Kristine Snodgrass – has dedicated her recent book, RANK, to me!

I am honored and very happy to have such a wonderful memento of our partnership during the pandemic: A once in a lifetime event we shared as writers and documented in our book Whistle (2020).

Unfortunately, my regard and affection for Kristine Snodgrass might cloud – even unconsciously – the most sincere intention of this reviewer to be “fair,” “impartial,” and “objective” (given human failings).

So let us walk together, Camerado, (as Walt Whitman said) and agree this installment of AF2 is a “thought piece” or an “opinion” piece (“commentary”) in which I try to state briefly a convoluted (as always) and abstract “idea” I have been formulating about the place of RANK in the (sometimes) contentious evolution of the asemic writing movement.

From RANK by Kristine Snodgrass

First, RANK is beautifully printed and assembled, another gold star for JackLegPress. They also publish books by Snodgrass’s mentor, poet Maureen Seaton. The large-size format and eagle-eye color adjustments in RANK allow us easy access to the asemic realm. 

I am beginning to believe the attainment of an “asemic mind” or “asemic state” is essential to all seeking entrance into the asemic process of creation, distribution, reception, interpretation and feedback. As one encountering RANK right now, I feel – as I return to the book frequently – I am entering a renewing garden refuge.  

Dispersed among the predominate glitched vispo images in Rank are five prose poems that reveal Snodgrass’s talent (and further potential) as a “printed-word” poet. They also contribute to explorations of written- or spoken-word asemics (the possibility of reaching incoherence and/or the unintelligible via existing language signification). Here is a sample from RANK by Kristine Snodgrass:

Organica – the sea into which fractions are poured and then ripped selling states of repose – of sex. I am not here, cannot portend the infidel. You do not know how much I want to witness this stanza, a towering plow. She has become a saga a thousand eyes shifting and rushing. Toward the structure and its molten color. Just the repetition of a new life - betrayal and ghosts and howling.… (RANK 21)    

From RANK by Kristine Snodgrass

As for my original theme: A contingent within our asemic community is advancing the notion we are in a Post-Asemic cultural phase.

Asemic writers and artists are a tight group. Collabs and constant sharing of work produce rapid innovations, as they say, “lifting all boats” as well. I can, of course, only point to trends I believe I detect. Sounding inner depths and tracking personal growth must be a topic for another time.

Post-Asemics are represented via Michael Jacobson’s Post-Asemic Press and his various related projects including new sound poetry. I assume many AF2ers are familiar with MJ’s impressive work.

https://postasemicpress.wordpress.com/

Like so many others, Michael Jacobson’s notions of the post-literate have shaped my own work and thinking, profoundly. I have, however, not been quick to embrace a post-asemic condition yet.

We cannot simply resolve cultural tensions and contradictions by creating holding cells for people and art such as Post-Modernism, Post-Colonialism, Post-Fluxus, Post-literate, Post-Structuralism, etc. I am not convinced asemic writing has or will follow any predictable cultural cycle.

The pages of Rank do offer me, for the first time, a glimpse over the threshold of asemics’ birth (or pansemic!) to something beyond. Through the wreckage of deconstructions, decayed alphabets, interrogations and tantrums are fantastic forms & expressions. In this sense, I can read RANK as Post-Asemic.   

DKA Post Toasts "Asemic Gang" : Jim Leftwich, De Villo Sloan, Kerri Pullo, John M. Bennett, Kristine Snodgrass, Renee Gladman, Derek Beaulieu, Nancy Bell Scott, Stephen Nelson

 

Mail art by DKA Post (Darlene Altschul) received at AF2

First, pardon the lost time on this post. Mail art is not always, "News that stays news." 

All the same, I want to acknowledge Darlene Altschul's kind & supportive gesture.

Mail art & asemics have vital intersections. The existence of AF2 is one proof. Further, it might be helpful to consider, albeit a paradox, a pattern I have observed: (1) Some mail artists also make asemics & (2) some asemic writers also send mail art. 

I believe Darlene Atschul is acknowledging extraordinary (not me!) asemic writers she has encountered who have emerged from &/or are currently active in the Eternal Network. You might say, affectionately, she is "Network-centric." Mail art is always welcome at AF2.

Ron Silliman said, by now famously, he soon discovered in his career, "Poetry is a contact sport." I have compared asemic writing community relations to jello & mud wrestling. Perhaps a Road Warrior - "Two go in; one comes out!" - image is a more fitting comparison. 

All I can say for sure is that harmony reigned around, over & among the "Asemic Gang" on February 13, 2021. I am privileged to be in such company.

- De Villo Sloan

The Many Masks of 'Doc' Mortag

Outtake from "The Many Masks of 'Doc' Mortag" by Shawn McMurtagh & De Villo Sloan (Asemic Front Series #2)

The second book (first edition) in the Asemic Front Series has been released in digital form free on Scribd: 

https://www.scribd.com/document/538328322/The-Many-Masks-of-Doc-Mortag-by-Shawn-McMurtagh-De-Villo-Sloan-Edition-1-2021

"He do the Police in different voices" - An AF2 review of "Today" by David Chirot & Cheryl Penn

From Today, a collaborative book by David Chirot (Wisconsin, USA) 

& Cheryl Penn (Durban, South Africa)

Today by David Chirot & Cheryl Penn. Internet Archive (Collection: opensource, visual poetry, collaborative poetry). Published 11.06.2015. 17 pages. Free e-book & pdf

By De Villo Sloan

The sad passing of Wisconsin, USA, visual poet David Chirot (aka David-Baptiste Chirot aka D-BC) in June of 2021 has elicited international sympathy and sorrow. I am pleased we are seeing a concerted effort to locate, preserve and share Chirot’s work.

This review is meant to shed light upon a relatively obscure but I think significant D-BC collab with South African visual artist and poet, Cheryl Penn. The resulting book, Today, was published digitally in 2015 at the Internet Archive. Penn writes Today was made for her publication An Encyclopedia of Everything – Expanded Version.

The book can be downloaded from the Internet Archive free of charge in a variety of forms. Cheryl Penn has made another version available on her collab blog. I strongly recommend image-text readers keep a personal library apart from the internet.

https://archive.org/details/Today_201511/page/n15/mode/2up

Cheryl Penn's Collaborative Poetry & Writing blog:

https://collaborativecanto.blogspot.com/2015/03/today-david-chirot-usacheryl-penn-south.html?fbclid=IwAR3VMSvLKwSK_yLu3LODlZg1bKnxfg4xaep4Js2ibZPSldQdG1Yv1a7WXss

The 17 pages of Today showcase (unfortunately for hardcore vispo fans) only four image-text pieces (2 X Chirot; 2 X Penn). “Correspondence with David began 14^th August 2014, and has not ended – it was just time to commit to the printed word,” writes Penn.

Both Penn & Chirot are much-admired in the Eternal Network (international mail art community). Perhaps Today is, albeit subconsciously, inspired by the “Correspondence Novel” theorized by postal artist, David Zack.

Polyphony - Polyvoiced

Today is a dialog between two (disembodied) voices. This rhetorical and literary form is ancient and well-tested, Plato being one, prime example (to whom Chirot & Penn allude in their dialog). In English language 19th century verse the dramatic monolog was a popular form (Browning) just prior to the rise of Modernism.

The dialog blossomed during 20th century Modernism into complex points of view and poly-voiced scores, mutating even further among the avant garde. A Pre-Modernist dialog with affinities to Today is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Colloquy of Monos & Una” (1850), which features discourse between the dead and the living.

Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) is widely acknowledged as having first applied the term “polyphony” from music to literature in an effort to describe tendencies he saw in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels. The “polyphony” or “polyvoice” concept was widely disseminated via its use by Pound and Eliot in “The Wasteland” (1922) and also via Woolf, Joyce, Stein and other Moderns. 

Bakhtin identified the “dialogic” (and the oppositional “monologic”). He located attributes unique to the modern dialogic: one is an emphasis on language and syntax. Bakhtin’s views were embraced in critical theory, especially by the Post-Structuralists (a branch of pomo critical theory sometimes called Deconstruction, although this interchange is contested in some quarters).

Some critics have analyzed polyvoiced works as a single voice and, conversely, others approach polyvoicing as multiple, fragmented voices in various time-space states of simultaneity. (I feel like a battered freedom fighter in The Terminator desperately trying to explain time travel and killer robots to an armed Los Angeles cop, but the critical theory has practical use in a realm such as this review, really.) 

Chirot & Penn – neither of whom I suspect would appreciate my designation – give us a fascinating example of a Postmodern dialog. Here in 2021, in the blazing disintegrating tail of pomo lit, this Chirot and Penn collab is part of genre evolution.

I believe Today is a complex text that can reveal its esoteric charms with concepts from critical theory, including the significance of silences. My goal is not to provide a package reading of Today but instead offer possibilities for those who wish to explore this text.

Neon lyricism - Defenses, Deflections, Silences

Much of the appeal for those who seek and ultimately read Today is likely curiosity about two writer-artists well known in the vispo & asemic communities. (I must clarify here Cheryl Penn is alive & thriving!)

Today will not disappoint on the the cult of personality level: Thanks to the font key provided you can try to identify the individual author of every word, line and stanza in Today (not as easy as it appears). The dialog is a maze of knots, tensions, insecurities, complex defenses, deflections, guilt and apologies. Here is an excerpt:

            Air in room cold, quiet, as leftover lamb

            Gnawing on the bones of awakening

            Odd found totemic objects emerge slowly

            Adjusting fading dyslexic eyesight

            New choreographies appear

            The singing of things

            Begins

            broken scattershot drumming

            Among the gathering muscles, nerves & bones 

The neon lyricism and film noir ghosts of Today’s early section (above) describe the construction of a sign-shifting wall in the poem that eventually disappears. Voice and tone shift, meander but unite solidly at the end of Today for a lyric crescendo. Read as polyphony, the poem becomes a montage of "poetic" moments:

            The violins are fine tuned, no party frocks in sight.

            Are you ok?

            I’m not supposed to say anything

            but someone broke into the library.

            Mingle please

            when all  humans are extinct

            start up a conversation

            you own all your remaining

minutes

            May I take a few

            seconds?

The passage above, an example of lyrical elegance, is less material realist and more focused on dialog. Subjectively, I envision an afternoon cocktail party, hushed conversations, whispered confessions. But neither narratives nor dreams persist for long in the Chirot-Penn collab. My quasi-Victorian scene is no more than a mirage. To borrow a term from Jim Leftwich, I have had a “pansemic” flash of temporal understanding. This, then, is one great pleasure of Today.

All in all, Today is an example of a quirky, literary B-Side – distant relative to the roman a clef – that is, essential material for our explorations deeper into the works of visual poets Cheryl Penn and David Chirot.