T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S

P O E T R Y

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Visual Poetry in the
Avant Writing Collection

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L I B R A R I E S

V
Visual Poetry in the

U N I V E R S I T Y
Avant Writing Collection
Edited, with an Introduction, by John M. Bennett

S T A T E
With Additional Introductions by
Bob Grumman

O H I O
and
Dr. Marvin A. Sackner

T H E
The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
The Ohio State University Libraries

2008

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P O E T R Y
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T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N

Introduction
by John M. Bennett

“Como de costumbre, para ser futurista solo había

que ir lo más lejos possible al pasado.”
—Augusto Monterroso
­

visual poetry All poetry is visual poetry. This idea, along with its corollary that all poetry is also

aural, has become clearer and clearer to me as I have worked with the extremely

varied materials in The Ohio State University Libraries’ Avant Writing Collection. Visuality in poetry starts with

the simple fact that there are blank spaces at the ends of lines, which is perhaps the most consistent factor that

distinguishes poetry from prose. (A prose poem is poetry in the fact that the blank spaces are present by implication;

present in their absence, you might say.) That blank space then extends to an almost infinite variety of forms and

procedures, from typographic variance to three-dimensional constructions, from shaped poems to “classical”

concrete poems, from recognizable words and phrases arranged in patterns to asemic scrawls and letter-forms and

to purely graphic elements arranged in a “poem-like” manner. With respect to orality, it is safe to say that there is

not a poem in existence that could not be performed aloud in some way. Even the most illegible asemic scrawl can

be used as a script for the voice, and often is by many of the poets in this collection and in the traditions from which

the work in it has sprung. It may well be that poetry began before writing as a mnemonic social context for stories,

news, and myths and thus as an oral form, but as soon as it began to be written, it became a visual form as well.
2 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
Sweeping aside the sweeping generality above, however, it would be of some use to discuss at least some of what
it is that distinguishes the work in this anthology from standard textual poetry. Perhaps it simply has to do with the
fact that all the work here includes strongly visual dimensions that one cannot avoid including as an important
part of the experience of reading/seeing the work in question. Whereas in the case of textual poetry, the visual
dimension is to a large extent unconsciously perceived, or that it is at least possible to experience the work paying
little attention to its visual qualities.
There is also the question of the long and varied history of visual literature, which to a large extent forms its own
tradition or subculture, to which the work in this anthology so often refers. That history is distinct in numerous ways
from the history or subculture of more strictly textual poetry, and therefore is a distinguishing characteristic from it.
Another issue is the relationship of visual poetry to visual art, and the use of linguistic elements in what is generally
considered to be visual art. At what point does such art become visual poetry? I think it is more useful and enriching
to think of it as either or both, depending on the context of one’s discussion or appreciation. Just as, at the other
end of the continuum, it is most useful to think of poetry and visual poetry as either or both.
Underlying these considerations is the fact that inherent in Western Civilization, and probably in the human mind
itself (as in large part a creation of that civilization) is the need to categorize phenomena. This is certainly true
for visual poetry, which is generally regarded as a phenomenon separate in itself. In fact, however, as suggested
above, it is an aspect of all written language, and has been since written language came into existence. Being
inherently visual, written language must be seen to be apprehended (or, as in the case of Braille or other
technologies, in some way physically experienced—in the case of a blind person being read to, the reader must
see the text) and its very nature is founded on signs and symbols referring to things in the physical or mental world,
be they sounds, objects, or actions. In the case of poetry in particular, the usual modern poem, with its blank spaces
either at the ends of lines or surrounding the words, requires a visual experience to be fully known.
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 3
Visual poetry calls to mind doubts about the stability of meaning in language—that is, the strict relationship
between language and reality. Visual poetry, perhaps more than “normal” textual poetry, presenting or suggesting
meaning on several levels and through several processes of consciousness simultaneously, mirrors that doubt. Or
perhaps it is an attempt to do what language has always tried to do: capture “reality” and make it conscious. The
difference is that visual poetry perceives reality—or the world—as multiple, ambiguous, shifting, polyvalent, and
paradoxical. The opposites join into one total perception. The fact that different parts of the mind and/or mental
processes address visual experience and linguistic experience (and within linguistic experience itself there are
very different and separate processes for each functionality of language: speaking, thinking, writing, translating,
etc.) means that visual poetry is especially useful for dealing with and presenting this multivalent/multiconscious
experience of the world. I suspect that has something to do with why it is so often a field of endeavor that is
ignored in the genre-categorizing institutions of our society: those genres (visual art, literature, music, and so on)
are not only socially constructed, but present a much simpler and therefore more comforting vision of what the
world is. I suggest that that simple vision is limited and illusory, however. Clemente Padín, the great Uruguayan
visual and experimental poet, has discussed at some length how visual and experimental poetry stand in direct
opposition to the dominant socioeconomic paradigms of our day (see his essay in Signos corrosivos, Mexico:
Ediciones Literarias de Factor, 1987; translated by Harry Polkinhorn as Corrosive Signs, 1990).
Almost all the poets and writers in the Avant Writing Collection have worked in visual media and genres, and
this catalog is an attempt to showcase some of the highlights of that vein of creativity in the collection. I wish to
emphasize, however, that these works do not exist in a completely separate category, a “compartment” in which
the artist/writer works in isolation from his or her other work, but function on a continuum with all that other work.
Many of these works, for example, have also been treated as performance texts. As Michael Basinski has stated,
“A function of visuality is performance…a visual poem should be interpreted as a literary score…visual poets
should consider their pieces to be literary scores rather than purely literary, visual images” (in CORE: A Symposium
on Contemporary Visual Poetry, ed. By John Byrum & Crag Hill, Mentor, OH/Mill Valley, CA: Generator Press, c1993).
It is always difficult to select what pieces to exhibit in a catalog like this, when there are so many excellent
possibilities. I have tried to show the immense variety of styles and approaches that exist in the collection and
to pay special attention to those individuals’ works whose larger collections of papers and archives are at the
heart of what we have here. Visual poetry is a field of endeavor that is expanding exponentially just now, helped
immeasurably by the ease of distributing it through the Internet: web sites, blogs, e-mail, social networking sites,
and so on. I hope this sampling will inspire more such work.
Dr. John M. Bennett
August 2007
4 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y
Introduction
by Dr. Marvin A. Sackner
John M. Bennett, the editor/publisher/founder of the most important
and longest running contemporary experimental poetry magazine,
Lost and Found Times, 1975-2004, has put together an outstanding
collection of concrete and visual poems made from 1968 to 2006.
Eighty-nine poets from 11 countries were selected, with the majority
from the United States. The poems are diverse and follow no particular
theme. They reflect Bennett’s taste and experience, which is conditioned
by his reading and writing several thousand poems in his role with Lost and
Found Times. This book presents a wonderful selection of poetry on the same
level of “Bel Canto” arias.
Faced with 309 poems [these 309 poems, edited here down to 268, refer
to the original draft selection Dr. Sackner used to write his introduction—
the percentages he gives in what follows are based on that original
selection of 309 images] to review for this introduction, I relied on a
classification technique for my own collection, Sackner Archive of
Concrete and Visual
Poetry. This forced me to think about each poem and minimized
visual fatigue from merely looking without putting pen or “keyboard strokes”
to paper. Also, I was curious as to whether Bennett’s selected poems for
publication were based upon personal preferences since his style is rooted
in calligraphic handwriting and markings as well as collaborations with
other poets. Only 9% of the 309 poems are collaborations and 25% involve
handwritten texts but these totally differ from Bennett’s idiosyncratic style.
Thirty-nine percent of the poems are concrete (Kempton 149) and 61%
are visual (Dalachinsky 57) according to my definitions, although I
acknowledge that Bennett and his circle prefer to lump them together
as visual poems. I define concrete poems as those in which only letters
and/or words are utilized to form a visual image whereas
visual poems constitute those in which images are integrated into the text
of the poem. I counted picture poems as visual poems although in my own
collection, they fall into a separate category. Picture poems are
an evolution of Renaissance
“emblem poems” in which an image and a related
caption are printed together. They are a single-page “Livre d’Artiste” or an
illustrated book. The best “contemporary” examples are those composed
by Kenneth Patchen. Most picture poems in this book might be designated
quasi-picture poems since the captions are poems that do not strongly relate
to the accompanying images (Taylor 244) with rare exceptions (Ford 94).
L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 5
309 poems 11 countries 89 poets
Abstract markings subservient to texts and images are a common component of
visual poems that serve as ornament and are present in 107 out of a total of 309
poems (Kostritskii 151). Asemic writings, a specialized form of abstract markings,
are utilized in 26 poems (Leftwich 181, Dermisache 63). Asemic writing has no
semantic content. As Peter Gaze amplified, asemic texts, a term coined by
Jim Leftwich, have no writer-intended meaning. “If you the viewer perceive
a meaning, you’ve created that meaning yourself.” Text or marks formed by
handwriting is the second most common means (25% of the poems) to create
concrete (Beaulieu 12) or visual poems (Weiss 264).
Fragmented texts occur on 14% of the poems. Here, words are only partially
printed (Macleod 200, Ernst 73) or are separated by large spaces (aND 3).
Letter pictures are poems in which letters alone (concrete poems) or combined with
images (visual poems) are present in 16% of the poems. Letter pictures are
rubber-stamped (Helmes 126), printed (Altemus 2, Morin 203), or hand
drawn (Quarles 220, Luis 191). Text over text poems constitute 9% of the 309
poems in the original selection for this book (Cobbing 44).
Made-up words appear in 6% of the poems (Basinski 10). Conventional (Cobbing
46, Nichol 214) or computer typings (Daniels 60) is one of the oldest forms of
contemporary concrete poetry (since the 1950s). Such typewriter poems amount
to 6% of the poems. There are 15 shaped poems in which words or letters outline
recognizable images (Daniels 59). They are the oldest form of “concrete poems”
in the literature and examples have been recovered from ancient Chinese,
Japanese, Persian, Malayan, Burmese, Tibetian, Indian, Urdu, Ethiopian,
Moroccan, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Hebrew, Greek, German, and Roman
sources. Poems in which the letters or words are smudged or distorted with
rubber-stamping (Helmes 115) or photocopying (Topel 258, Figueiredo 95)
processes constitute 4% of the poems.Cancelled texts are present in five poems
(Huth 139). Mathematical poems that employ mathematical equations are used
in six poems (Grumman 110). Finally, Ficus strangulensis contributes the only
example of a transmorfation (Ficus 88) in this book, a term he coined (and
also a form used by other poets) of one word calligraphic poems that degenerate
to calligraphic markings and subsequently emerge as another word.
John M. Bennett’s compilation of so many outstanding concrete and visual poems
attest to his curatorial skills, honed to perfection in a world he knows full well. visual poetry
6 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 7

Introduction
by Bob Grumman

Who knows how he did it, but my pal, the multivariously- Probably everyone writing about this collection’s kind of
visio-textual art, or art that combines text and graphics, has a
nutto super-poet John M. Bennett, somehow wound his way
different way of sorting the various forms it can take. I use what
even unto the very bowels of the American cultural I think is a simple continuum to do this. It starts an infinitesimal
establishment and there builded he a collection of distance from pure poetry, or the wholly verbal, and ends an
infinitesimal distance from the wholly graphic, or pure visual art.
contemporary artworks amazingly counter to all that Halfway in between are works that are more or less half textual
the American literary establishment stands for. and half visual—collages and the like, for the most part.

Indeed, there’s hardly a poem in it by anybody you’d so much hear mentioned let alone seriously
First on my long list of works to treat is the comic, deadpanned
discussed in any but a handful of American university English departments or whose work has ever gotten pin in High Art’s sometimes pretentiousness provided by John
Furnival and Emmett Williams, “Wallpaper for a Classical Passion-
onto the pages of such “sophisticated” venues as the New Yorker. To begin with, the works here do
Pit Atop Mount Parnassus” (96), whose endlessly repeated text,
not trade entirely on literary techniques in wide use 50 or more years ago, nor (usually) force some “Basho bonks Sappho bonks Basho bonks Sappho” needs no
elucidation. Few works in the collection are funnier (although
socio-political agenda on us. Worse, for the word-centered professors of most English departments and many are quite funny), and it is clearly about as close to the mainly
their counterparts in the publishing industry, they are pluraesthetic, which is to say each of them makes verbal end of the visio-textual continuum as visual poetry can be.
significant aesthetic use of more than one expressive modality—generally, the visual and verbal. Perhaps even closer to it is Miekal And’s “Automatic” (3). In one
portion of it, a “Knowing Wages Ways” to “Collage Light”—or so
it plays out for me. It avoids being a conventional, wholly textual
My hopes of providing a definitive overview of what’s in the collection for this catalogue were killed when I poem due only to its (linear) spacing, and a few made-up words
like “Mostra” and “Agrom.” But the spacing of its words makes it
got copies of the pieces curator Bennett selected to reproduce in this catalogue. If only he’d sent
seem some sort of verbal abacus. This, for me, makes the poem
them to me three centuries earlier! Even then, I’m not sure I could have done a proper ever-so-slightly more than purely verbal.
overview of them. So many they are, and so various!
A third poem that belongs close to the same end of my continuum
is K.S. Ernst’s “ROSE POEM” (84), a variation on Stein’s “rose
is a rose is a rose.” Just three words in length, it’s about as
What follows will thus be a hodgepodge of my (very subjective) reactions to more or less randomly chosen
compact as a poem can be, but says three things (at least) in the
specimens—more accurately (in most cases), reproductions of specimens as they appear in this catalogue, read-slowing game it plays through the use of unconventional
placement of letters: “a rose arose,” “a rose, a rose” and—
for I’m writing this many states away from Ohio. I hope, however, that they are enough to give those who
because of the visual treatment of the vertical rose, “a rose
come to this publication a reasonably thorough and interesting idea of what’s here, and why it is of value. sprung out into full being.” There’s a simple rose on a stem in
the poem, too.
“The” by K.S. Ernst
Another poem of Ernst’s that consists of words only (if you
discount the fact that its page is a small wooden stage),
is the carpentered sculpture, “The” (66). Like the previous
poem, it goes back to a classical American modernist, this
one Wallace Stevens, grabbing his “the the” from “The
Man on the Dump.” Ernst makes the usually hardly noticed
definite article gloriously Important­­—and accommodating,
sheltering (note its enclosures). A featureless bit of text is
given concreteness, identity, its place at the very hinge of
existence. . . .Words as the vital furniture of our minds, with
”the” a primary supporter of verbal expression, is a central
part of the poem‘s metaphorical richness, as well. And note
how compressed the piece is, in spite of its being so many
repetitions of one word.
In “Nude Stare” (88), a specimen of what Crag Hill calls
“transforms” and its author Ficus strangulensis calls
“transmorfations,” a cursive “nude” descends through
quivers metaphorically suggestive of ekg readings to the
“stare” she is certain to cause—while we are reminded of
the famous Armory show’s “Nude Descending a Staircase”
by Marcel Duchamp. Or, we can read the work as a stare
that enters into and becomes its object. This is a classical
visual poem, all words going through visual changes to
enact an image.
8 T H E
One of American visual poetry’s leading exponents, Richard
Kostelanetz, is represented in the collection with such
similarly only slightly visual works as “no R CAVE” (150),
which performs infraverbal tricks such as the division of
“caveat” into “cave” and “at,” and “notables” into “no”
and “tables.” The disregard for linear placement of the
text’s words allows more than one message to form. The
message I like best here is, “Notables: cave, at rest, rain.”
This has a haiku simplicity and depth. Along with it, we
have: “Warning: no tables.”
Another leader in the field as poet and publisher (of
Kaldron, which for many years was the only periodical
exclusively devoted to visio-textual art), Karl Kempton is
represented here by probably the
best collection of his work, Rune:
A Survey, among other things.
“Charm” (149), which is from the
aforementioned volume, is typical
of one of the many lines he’s
taken as a poet: 3-D, vibratory,
employing just a single word,
symmetrical—and happy.
A page from David Daniels’s
Years 1974 (61) is one more
completely verbal work whose
typography is altered to transform
it into something visual that can
stand by itself (but agrees with
its text too much not to be much “Charm” by Karl Kempton
more than just visual). Its text reminds me for some reason
of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—because, perhaps, of
its seriousness, and concern with the flowering of the soul,
as shown with such grace by the piece’s design, which is
(metaphorically) a sort of leaf (note the little stem at the
bottom) and much else, that expands globally but gently
outward at its center, with butterflights in all directions in
the plane the rest of it inhabits. There is more than a hint of
flames, happy flames, in the piece, as well.
Annalisa Alloatti has a pair of visual poems (1) out of the
concrete poetry tradition here that depict a monument with
letters naming and describing it. “ME” and “TU” make up
its sides in the rigidly imposing first version of the monu-
ment—with “NON” between them. A sterile monument in
which you and me are kept separate? I’m not sure. In any
O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
case, the monument in the companion version is coming
apart, whether shattering with joy or despair, I’m not
sure, but equally exciting either way. And with
connotative small words or near-words infraverbally
anagramming out of “monument” such as “muto.”
“Self-Portrait/Profile/Poem” (224) by Marilyn R. Rosenberg
is a charmingly complete fusion of text and graphic whose
subject is self-reflection. One wanders over it, its strands
of text pulling us into a much fuller physical examination of
the self that is drawn than a pure painting of it likely would,
while simultaneously carrying us along inside that self (as
it looks down and sees her feet in her shoes).
It is instructive to compare this to
Lanny Quarles’s “Portrait” (220),
which goes a good deal away
from just words to attain its
effect. About all one can say of
this piece is that it is clearly
a portrait, but a portrait that
portrays beyond the human
shape outlined in a wild
complexity of everywhere-going
connotativeness.
Ilse Garnier’s “et 1” and “et
2” (104), to get back to entirely
textual visual poetry, is about
rhythms (as I take “rhythms”
to mean) and silence. The
combination at once suggests being and nothingness,
difference and sameness (a rhythm having to have at least
two elements changing back and forth), motion and
motionlessness (because of the back-and-forth
movement a rhythm must have). Order and the void
(because the essence of order is predictable repetition).
At the same time, the two frames of the work express
union and separation—also the centrality of “et,” or
“and” as that from which all rhythm and silence issues.
And/or, “et” as ultimate unmoving fulcrum and unifier of
Everything. In short, all kinds of metaphoricality are here.
Outside all this, we have two quite appealing pictures.
As the reader will have noticed, nearly all these poems
I’ve been discussing are minimalist poems. Bob Cobbing’s
“Off” (45) certainly is. It consists of just three and
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 9
“Self-Portrait/Profile/
Poem” by Marilyn R. Rosenberg
thirds letters, but it is xeroxially enlarged, with one letter tilted, and one larger
than the others and cut off, as well as over- or under-lapping the other letters. That’s enough to “Portrait”
by Lanny Quarles
make an engagent perceive the work as what I call “illumagery,” or visual art. The letters help us feel
at home, with something familiar, to ease us into an enjoyable, quite forceful non-representational
illumage—a kind of variation on Franz Kline, the attachment of which to the verbal multiplies a freshness
into it. At the same time, it is (amusingly, among other things) a story about something that was on but
is now off. Something that is off that a huge n, you better believe, is going to knock aside, to produce a
powerful on. Or the reverse, a sinking on that offness is rising out of.
Then there’s Julian Blaine’s “point de poesie” (35), which I find somewhat taxonomically problematical.
It graphically defines poetry as a loop in boring straightness, with a literal point making it exclamatorily
valuable (and fun) with minimalistic deftness. No words, but enough of a word-fragment (when we have
the title) to make it impeccably a visual poem.
One final piece within inches of the all-verbal end of my continuum that I want to bring up is Geof Huth’s
characteristically simple-seeming “space” (139). But what an eternity is back-and-forthed in this (implied)
excerpt from a description of the universe! But, wait: I want to mention Huth’s highly textual book, Dreams
of the Fishwife, as well, because of its demonstration of how much can be done to visually multiply a
text through simple small movements of letters. In his “dis trusst of” (140), one of his book’s pages, for
instance, he puts three “e’s” in an overlapping stack between a dr and an m to make “drem” not just
phonetically spell “dream” but become itself a dream under way—upward, out of the mundane, glaz-
ing the rest of its page’s text dream-hued. The extra “e’s” also allow “drem” to make a visual rhyme with
“dseeem” due to the latter’s overlapping “e’s,” although they are horizontally, not vertically, overlapping
(and rhymes, not overdone, are always magical). The font employed and medieval-seeming spellings add
a faerie long-ago quality to the dream the page holds, as do—needless to say—the Joyceanly-warped
spellings of its words.
Huth’s polylinguality, a forte of several visual poets such as Bennett and Luis, is evident in another
of his subtle concrete poems, “AGA NEVER” (also 139). This poem brings us into a new part of the
continuum, the one where we find poetry with averbal graphic elements added to it. It nicely exemplifies
the canceled poems Marvin Sackner mentions in his introductory essay. The cancellations are the (very
minor) graphic extras of the piece. But they are essential to making it a visual poem, for they disturb its
text into saying things it would not have said if left alone, as pure text.
10
“The Farm” (120), by Scott Helmes, has only one graphic
element, a rubber-stamped picture of a generic cow. Under it
are rubber-stamped captions for it, each absurd; it seems to
be an attempt to list the kinds of cows there are. I found it a
funny but silly dada exercise when I first saw it, and several
times afterwards. The idea of a street cow versus a house cow
struck me as quite droll, though. The work succeeded as a
sort of satire on Sternly Serious Illustrated Instruction, but not
very much more. Until I attended rather than just allowed the
entrance of its title. The Farm. As happens to me boringly often,
I suddenly belatedly understood something obvious: we didn’t
have a list of five kinds of cows—or, better, we did have a list
of kinds of cows but it was an undermeaning; the foreburden
of the piece was a farm scene containing 10 nouns. A square
with a cow on it, a house with a cow next to it, the sky with a
cow in front of it. A swing with a cow behind it. A street with
a cow near it. (Or—also, I would put it—a square house, blue
swing, and street plus cow, cow, cow, cow, cow.) A full scene
but with cows dominant: everything says “cow.” The technique
is close to that of Stein in “rose is a rose is a rose,” to return to
that: repetition where not expected, to almost drill an image of
cow to life. With this understanding, I saw how visual the piece
is. It presents a stack of cows, to begin with—a manyness, that
is. It visually shows us the house in the square with the swing
and the street in front of it as numerically equal, and implicitly
equal in other ways, to the five cows. The cows, too, are
rubber-stampedly prolific. Then there’s the graphic image of
the cow, not just an illustration but an icon, high above a chant
in homage to it. Avenued up to it.
“Orchids” by Sheila E. Murphy
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
“Portrait” (204A), by Sheila E. Murphy, seems a simple design
in a box, a design whose elements resemble hieroglyphics,
with a label, “portrait,” announcing what the design is three
times—above it, it would seem, and off to the right. With per-
sistence, one can find English letters in the stack of hieroglyph-
ics—in fact, “SELF” is spelled three times downward rather
than left to right. Ergo, the phrase, “self portrait,” occurs three
times. Simple seeming, with its background its only slightly
non-textual element once one deciphers the instances of
“self,” but so much is going on in it. The letters of “self” wave
like 12 flags on a pole, somewhat exhibitionistically. At the
same time, the word they spell withdraws into the difficulty of
its decoding, and the modestly hand-drawn undressiness of its
letters. It also seems neurotically stretched. On the other
hand, it is paradingly repeating itself up the picture frame.
Contradictions. Each “self” is subtly different from the other
two; the person depicted is not consistent. Each, too, is
rectilinear, crudely logical, or trying for a kind of conformity.
In short, here is no mere word for “self,” but a patient for a
psychologist, while announcement of the record of it slips
sideways out of existence as the selves continue indefinitely
alteringly ascending up and eventually out of the psychologist’s
viewing frame, which is capable of revealing only the minutest
portions of the full self on view.
Murphy’s “Orchids” (206) seems similarly simple: boxes with
words in some of them. Nice choice of colors. Beyond that,
though, note the greys framing “my orchids” (and consider the
choice of orchids as the flowers in this poem) followed by the
downward plunge of nested boxes to a yellow one—a plunge
that, for me, represents “suffering.” Inwardness is strongly
suggested. The orchids just about have to be code for “me.”
The rest of the text seems to me the outside world—it’s outside
the nested boxes, and in somewhat more cheerful colors,
and the attitude is fully outside the rest of the picture. Indeed,
it may be the cause of the rectangular prison the rest of the
poem is in.
What really grabbed me, however, was the way the plaintive,
yellow hopefulness of “won’t you touch me?” drops from the
narrative (into a rectangle below the other rectangles holding
texts). The result is a wonderful psychological study, a genuine
poem and an appealing graphic design, all interacting. That is,
the text is not labeling but fulfilling the design, the design not
decorating the text but fulfilling the text.
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
When I saw “E” (40), by Calleja, I immediately thought of our
planet—“e” for “earth” plus the drawing inside the “e” suggests
a continent. Ergo, the earth around a mind, the latter completely
imprisoning the former—but only slightly larger than it. That is
just one possible interpretation. Another might make use of the
hook of the “e,” and consider the brain predatory. A simple work,
but a full visual poem, if one considers the “e” a near-word, with
the capability of traveling manywhere.
While many visual poets eschew the classic poems, Irving Weiss
has honored a bookload of them with visual manipulations on,
into, against, through, over, under, or beside them in his book,
Visual Voices, which is included in the collection. For instance,
in his “Horror Poem” (265), he reverses the message of Robert
Browning’s dazzlingly positive poem, “Pippa’s Song,” with a
dynamically cruel X (to add a very small but consequential
graphic extra to the text of his work). How more devastatingly
(and hilariously) could one depict genuine horror?
A relatively large number of collaborations are in the collection—
which is to be expected, considering what a prolific collaborator
curator Bennett is. One that’s at this end of my continuum is
“Thinking Zen” (70) by Ernst and the late David Cole. Central to
it is a wondrous square aperture from which floats an “o”—and
all an “o” can represent, as well as—in my reading—making
possible the 3-D (zen) thought it pivots, and the rains from which
issues . . . it. Probably more validly, its full text makes a haiku of
a person deepening through thought into something that is to
thought as thought is to reality (yes, I’m peeling rather far beyond
what’s there, but causing that is one of the principal values of this
kind of minimalism), while outside it is raining. Ordinary existence
persists. Even reduced to its most direct but least meaning, it
paints a Scrabble-ludic day extremely inside rain. And I keep
reading “against” in the set-up of “rains” and “it” because of the
“ainst” normal reading produces. A raining against zen thought,
or zen thought raining against . . . it. Murk of a grey day yet also
potential of rebirth. To sum up: a thought-centered thought-
producing serenely playful gadget—and something close to
conceptual art, as much visual poetry is.
Speaking of Bennett, I’d like to turn to him now—because most
of his works in the collection are at this spot on my continuum.
But I want to treat a number of his works at once, somewhat
ignoring the continuum while I do so. It makes good sense to stick
with Bennett for a while for several reasons, aside from the fact
that his work is as certain to one day be considered major by the
estabniks (i.e., the professors and the like I mentioned before
11
“Found My Sock” by John M. Bennett
who completely ignore visio-textual art) as any other poet
of his generation. One is that what he is as a curator has
a lot to do with what he is as a poet, so investigation of his
poetry should help illuminate the nature of all the pieces he’s
gathered here. That would include a lot of his own poetry
here, too, since his oeuvre is one of some half dozen such
contemporary oeuvres held by the library, which makes it a
significantly identifying element of said collection. A second
is that his work is interestingly multifarious. It may be that
it more that any other artist’s work exemplifies the range of
visio-textual art.
“Found My Sock” (24) is fairly typical of one cartoony
strand of Bennett’s work. He may be the inventor-for-
contemporary-poetry of the (expressively partnering)
framing found in this and many of his pieces. Within the
frame is the simple declaration, “I found my sock.” Due to its
Bennettian sub-demotic scrawl, this text by itself is a visual
poem, for that scrawl tells us loudly how much its speaker
struggled to find his sock—in the process (underconsciously)
finding his cock (repeated by the upward-pointing screws
above the text). And what a struggle it was—inside, it would
appear, a furnace. Surrounded by teeth, no, by fangs. A joke,
of course: some lout with a third of a brain, if that, has gotten
his quotidian day right (and exultantly regained his manhood).
Or, one of us, reduced by the agony of a missing sock to
such a lout (and I say that seriously remembering how trivial
things can genuinely upset one, make one think God or the
equivalent is not in his heaven), has become, through his
own efforts, whole again. Yow!
12 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 13

In another crazy poem of Bennett’s, “Kok” (30), the text is minimal, the graphic component entirely
fused with it (except for one word)—and the penis back again, this time dominant. But it is far from
all that is in the poem. First of all—or maybe last of all, who knows—we have a definite “ok.” That’s
affirmation, folks. If you look carefully at the piece, you’ll find a scrawled “b.” That makes the letters
spell (and in infraverbal works like this, one is loosened into all sorts of extra spellings) “bokks,” for
there is also a scrawl that might well be an “s.” Or: “box.” Slang for “vagina.” The union of a kok cerned with a “decaying city.” Note how the start, “A caller,”
with a bokks is ok. And, behold, the thing says that that is just what’s there: kok and bokks, incorpo- is picked up late in the two pages by “killer”; “kicking the
rated. As a burning collision, I might add. dead/ teacher” is an image representative, in “Wasteland”-
jump-cut-style, of the decaying city.
Needless to say, the “INCORPORATED” adds a tone of absurdity to the piece—a fuck as a formal
commercial enterprise. I find a lyrical metaphoricality in this, however—of human joy and animality The comic, comically emphasized “YOU BET” makes
glorixplosively triumphing over (and out of) Money-Making Enterprise. consonances with “eat,” “elite,” “street,” and “meat.”
With Ilse Garnier’s “Bee” (102)
The last two rhyming words are part of another set-apart
we come back to the portion of
“Bugs and” (19) is a completely typical Bennett framed visual poem. His frame this time acts as a “b ee” poem, this one ending the piece.
by IIse Garnier my continuum for poems mainly
fence around a backyard with “bugs and stool snapping in the wind,” but the frame also speaks
verbal but with graphics added. It
of the wind—as a “gust” that “tugs.” Spelled in a rectangle with multiple repeated letters enfran- That these two pages are from a notebook suggests copious
consists of texts inside something
chises the engagent to spell out “August,” too, to make the odd-looking thing a full lyric of a serene notes on the phenomenon discussed. Notebookness is what
laid out like a hopscotch game. What those texts say are similarly
if breezy super-normal midsummer day, with bugs scrawled windily, lazily askew through it. makes the work a visual poem—because it is something
playful. A capital “B” ascendantly occupies the highest of the
visual that adds significant metaphorical imagery and feeling
squares in the game. Meanwhile, a lower case “b” has flown
An untitled collaboration (233) between Bennett and Rea Nikonova is another good example of his to it. The writing helps make the work a visual poem, too, but
from the alphabet in the lowest of the squares to the square
collaborative efforts. Its text is visually framed, in a highly unconventional way. “Lust” and “luster” being jotting, or spontaneous responses to an environment.
furthest to the right, fluttering punfully into fullest life as a bee.
become sets of musical notes due to the staff they are on—while infraverbally disconcealing the The notebook is highly personal, too—handled.
With, perhaps, a pause in the square to the left of that to create
light that cometh from lust—and the “fluster,” if we notice the “f” scrawled against the left side
a bloom (“blume” being German for “bloom”) having petals of
of the staff. An extra “R” providing the staff’s right side allows “err” to be disconcealed, which fits Chapbooks form an important portion of the collection. A
light (“lume”). Certainly the “b” as both upper and lower case
with “lust.” For moralists, but also for anyone holding that emotions usually work against reason. representative one is by Michael Basinski whose proper title
on the stem in the grey square support that reading. I’m unclear
“bake my” is close to “warm my,” and “gland” can loosely be, in this context, and in the drawing consists of three occurrences of the astrological sign for
about the meaning of the word or words in the square furthest
with its dangling thing between two sort of round things, a testicle. “sHip” as an anagram for “Hips” Aquarius with one instance of the astrological sign for Aries
to the left, but I know “aime” strongy suggests “friendship” and
would support this reading. So, come to think of it, does “bake,” a form of creation, as well as part under it. For reference books, it’s called “[un nome].” Its
“love.” Visually, of course, the “me” here rhymes with the three
of a slang term for getting a woman pregnant. “The Blaze” (168), a piece Bennett collaborated with poems consist of words mildly jostled by graphics, or so
instances of “me” in the square “blume” is in.
Jake Berry and Jim Leftwich on seemed at first asemic to me—but turned out to be straightforward. one might think on a first encounter with it. The top line of
The first line, for instance, spells, “language.” Lots of sophisticated chatter about poetry here, with the sample poem (10) reproduced in this catalogue seems
If one were to find F.A. Nettelbeck’s book The Killer Elite left
“The Blaze” coarsely and . . . blazingly summing it all up. an unconventional decoration, nothing more, though
behind in a library by someone, say, he would consider its
somewhat appealing as sideways “U’s” or backward “c’s”
contents an odd collection of jottings—possibly a nutcase’s.
“Cover of K” (227), to finish with Bennett, brilliantly represents collaboration at its best, and a possi- pointing, it would seem, to a rectangle, and further, to a circle
By simply presenting it as a work of art, though, Nettelbeck,
bly unique artform I would call “infraverbal illumagery.” The work, a collaboration between Bennett I take for the moon (because of its appearance, but also
completely alters it into . . . Something Important. Something to
and Serge Segay, has no semantic meaning that I can find, but works comically/lyrically/seriously because I am familiar with Basinski as a habitual poet of the
take seriously because it has been made public, not just as pages
with punctuation, which is where, besides the interior of words, that infraverbalism acts. The yow moon). The sideways “U’s” are half rectangles, half circles,
in a notebook but as something we should pay special, sensitive
here is produced by punctuation marks larger than the letters they’re among, the reverse of the so the line works as a tune of sorts, the half&halfs turning
attention to. There are many points of interest in the pages shown
expected. I.e., commas are kings here, lording it over the Russian and English textual matter. Except to a thin perimetered rectangle—that in turn becomes its
here (209). The spelling of “civilization,” for instance, makes the
for two large burning or otherwise disintegrating “K’s.” Perhaps, I’m wrong, now that I reflect on the arrestingly opposite, a circle. Meanwhile, abstractions—the
notebook a glimpse into an outsider. A primitive, to an extent—
presence of the “K’s.” This piece may be a poem saying, “OK.” It certainly feels to me okay and bet- half&halfs and the rectangle—gain a kind of life as a moon
as the writing is in a combination of upper- and lower-case print.
ter. From one point of view, it’s a pair of algebraic expressions, which always indicate, to me, some (high in the sky) above “for ER fest rue”—or what infraver-
The correction of “Denoted” to “denoting”—which means the
problematic portion of life rendered orderly, or negotiable—safe, in the better sense of that term. bally mainly says “forest”: to me. It also hints of “forever,”
noise first seeming to have denoted civilization is still denoting
An important value of the over-sized commas is that they almost demand that one take the heart “for-ness,” or state of being for someone, with “fest” explicit,
it. This is all in a set-apart poem: “ears soft tunnels/ (a noise
as a second punctuation mark. That draws one into fertile reflections on just what it would do as a but “rue,” as well, slivering the experience, perhaps, like the
denoting civilazation)/ we stayed in the car.” Safe from civilaza-
punctuation mark. The top comma seems part of an eyeball overseeing everything else that’s going slight moon overhead. But “rue” is also the completion of the
tion, I presume. Once we decide the texts are part of an artwork,
on. All is plussed, all is adding up (in exuberant color, I need to add)! word, “true.”
and attend sufficiently to it, it begins to cohere into a unity con-
14 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
Another book in the library is a copy of K.S. Ernst’s
Sequencing. “Time On My Hands” (74), one of its
characteristic pieces, consists of block letters precisely laid
out on graph paper, all of which emphasize the rectinlinear,
methodical, irreversible, tiny-square-by-tiny-square sadism of
Time distributing signs of ageing. Meanwhile, it makes a game
of deciphering its message, which makes it a fun poem as it
also slows down the read to allow the wry sadness the poem
expresses to seep more deeply into the engagent, and the fine
lines of the hands depicted to show themselves more vividly.
The game it plays also condenses its text down to its absolute
essentials, always a primary goal of the best poetry. In short,
“Time On My Hands” is a minimalistic gem, and entirely
characteristic of Ernst’s charming sequencings.
“[un nome]” by Michael Basinski
I want to mention my own chapbook, An April Poem (107),
which is at the library, more as an example of sequential poetry
than any other reason, such poetry being common among
The fourth line makes this poem, for me, a love poem—due to
visio-textual artists. Actually, An April Poem is an example of
the heart and the “E,” “O,” and “V” of “love” beginning it—
what I’d term hyper-sequential poetry because it advances in
nuttily, as love generally is; strangely/mysteriously, too, as
frames that vary only slightly from the ones just before them.
love can be. With “oooing” (which has to suggest “coooing,”
Hence, they very decidedly say, “this is a sequence.” Each
I should think), whose “o’s” unletter visually as a full moon.
of its 16 pages contains just the word “rain”—except for an
The little “er” in between lines two and four repeat the “er”
ephemeral text in a tiny font that escapes like a scent or smoke
in line two, emphasizing erring/errant, as forests and love are,
from the dot of the i in “rain” several frames into the sequence.
and this poem. But I now hear it, too, as “her,” the object of
The dot had begun black, the way all the other letters of “rain”
this poem.
are, but gradually lightened until it was entirely white—or
“open.” That is where the text, “our dry spot within forsythia,
The graphics gradually ambiance the situation as a tremble in
years ago,” then delicately curls out of it in a manner intended
and out of words, mere words not being able to hold it by them-
to suggest a memory, with something of the tone of a haiku. It
selves. But the final four lines are all words. Actually, they are
is present only for a page, whereupon the “o” gradually closes,
as much sounds as words now, the work becoming fully a trio
the rain continuing.
of the verbal, the visual, and the auditory. We have a shipwreck,
normally a disaster, but here something highly romantic. In fact,
That this poem is also a book whose story happens with
it’s not a shipwreck, but something a ship wreaks. Better, it’s
the turning of pages is worth mention, too. The engagent is
something a shipwreak wreaks, which I imagine to be treasure
more physically on a trip with it than he would be if it were on
spilling onto a shore, the wreack becoming a wreath reminding
one page, or in 16 frames all hung on a wall. I consider this
us that we are in a fest. Flowing free of any kind of strict sense,
consequential. Many other visual poetry sequences share this
we may remember the moon in the shape of the wreath—and
feature; conventional poetry does not, however many pages
the ringlets and mushroom that “moonroom” brings to mind—
one turns in reading them, for the engagent reads through
as it vibrates into its near-opposite, making me conclude that
the turn of pages, and is hardly aware of it. The engagent of
the love-object of the poem is the moon. And repeats the “rue”
a poem like mine, however, looks, then turns the page. Each
of the second line, as had “marooning.”
page releases a step of the work discretely.
The other poems in the book interact with this one the same
Marilyn R. Rosenberg, a master of sequencing, has three
lyrically wonderful way its lines interact with each other, and
pieces in the Ohio State collection that come close to summing
fuse the verbal, visual, and auditory. The book’s last words are
up the visio-textual art continuum. Two comprise a set called
“rking of mushrrruemoons.”
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
“Some Things Never Change” (225 and 226). The opener of
“Some Things Never Change” is a pure visual poem—words in
a trash heap/bonfire that shout, rattle, growl in synch with their
colors that the world is a mess and will stay that way. A fascinat-
ing mix of bluntness and aesthetic sophistication, annoyance,
and beauty. Part two of the set shows the scene subsiding in a
sharp reversal of the first, for this time the word “SURE” hugely
takes up the middle of the page to sarcastically sneer, “Sure,
things never change,” while at the bottom of the page, two
instances of “NEVER” from Part 1 sandwich the word “SAY” to
result in “NEVER SAY NEVER.” All seems much more stable, too.
The question is, what have things changed to?
“Space time fillers” seems a scrap heap of the wood used to
make the letters of the set I just commented on. There may be
no intended relation between it and the set, but it struck me as
an image of all the hectic changes that filled time and space
dismantled of meaning—with a few skeletons of clock faces
mixed in—and an embedded title at the top (about to break up,
too, I’m certain). Apart from whatever it may be saying verbally,
or semi-verbally, the work is a masterpiece of design—almost an
arch-lesson in how to deploy simple small and large rectangles
and circles to give the eye substantially more than a glance’s
worth of adventure.
I find my continuum to arrive in significantly new territory with
works such as Ficus strangulensis’s “In a very real sense,
Dickens” (87): collagic visio-textual art. Strangulensis weaves
fairly consecutive, carefully chosen short passages from a text
about Dickens through similarly close-to-consecutive, carefully
chosen passages from a text that seems about a hard-boiled
detective. The result is such drollery as “Dickens bullet drilled
a neat hole through his forehead while giving a fresh direction”
and “a rifle popularize many aspects of the vest, and lifted the
window drape to peer into seasonal drinks.” I consider this work,
despite its use of a landscape of some sort with an evergreen in
it as a background, to be decoratively visual only. The strips of
texts, and the two kinds of font, jiggle the engagent appropriately
awry, and enhance one’s sense of unreality, of being in two
books, and time periods, and styles, etc., but they second the text
rather than combine with it. (Which is what they are intended
to do, and in no way makes them inferior to cut-outs used more
graphically. Role players: necessary, effective role players.)
Another cut-out-text work by strangulensis is “one’ (‘truth’)
pretension” (92). It consists of four-inch lines from John M.
Bennett’s poetry, carefully pasted together to form a neat
15
rectangle. Here, the dark lines between the lines of text
remind us to expect abrupt, probably preposterous jump-
cuts—to set up the thrill of their making a poetic kind of
sense (when they do) as with “ockets bulge with summer/
inside my lunch with you/ dream jaguar.” It’s the thrill good
found poetry causes—a sudden sense that the universe is
orderly however we fuck it up. But funny, too—in both main
senses of the term.
With the work of poets such as the inimitable Joel Lipman,
we move along the continuum from purely textual collages to
collages of text and graphic—witness his “Chemistry” (186),
from a program for a poetry reading. Lipman is a master at the
splicing together of superficially incongruous visual images
and texts that drolly and provocatively, but also insightfully
investigate society. Here he whirls us into the forwards
and backwards “RATADATADATADATA (several of the D’s
getting sufficiently truncated to suggest R’s) of the conflict
confusion vigilance adventure sensuality . . . chemistry of the
poetry reading that is its subject.
Another important American visual poet represented in the
collection is the collagist, Guy R. Beining. His “Plumb” (13) is
characteristic of his most frequent forays into visual poetry,
the word-play of “plumb/ plume/ Plumm-/ et” leading (via “at”
as “and”) to “voice/noice,” all combining with cut-outs and
drawing dexterously, if more than semi-wackily, to form a
design that would work as a superior illumage even if it were
not also speech. (Is that a horn or mouth the noice is curving
out of?) Connotativeness at its most extreme.
Some visio-textual collages, such as Spencer Selby’s “If the
moon is not high in the sky” (236), I’d call resonatingly non-
sequitirical cartoons. In this one, a girl is depicted deeply
walled in—because, it is my guess, of the world’s insufficient
supply of poetry, as represented by a moon high in the sky.
But the cartoon participates, with its use of a generic ’50s
instruction-guide face for the girl, in the ambience of Serious
Manuals for schools or the patrons of government agencies,
so we have the drollery of such a manual being distributed
to help people like the girl depicted come to terms with exis-
tence’s sometimes lack of beauty. It may be a found poem—
that is, Selby may have found the drawing with the text
already with it, but I assume he added the text. I can’t see the
text as anything more than a (great) cartoon caption, so have
trouble taxonomizing it as a visual poetry. (As if that matters.)
16 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
”His Wife” (16), by Bennett’s wife, Cathy, has only two words—its title, in fact. Is it not
“just” a graphic, with an embedded title, as I believe the previous work I discussed is?
Not that what we categorize an artwork matters as much as point oh oh two percent
as much as how much we enjoy it, but my answer here, after quite a bit of thinking,
and blank-mindedly flowing with the piece, is, “no.” That the two words are clearly
concrete things floating above the rest of the work is verbally important—for giving
the work an extra layer, an extra layer that contrasts vividly with the layer under it
as symbolic/ethereal/explicit versus concrete/earth-bound/connotative. It is visually
highly effective, too, for aiming the engagent (or viewer) at the same center of focus
that visual elements of the picture do, and as crisp formality versus the uncivilized
nature of the averbal elements of the work, but also picking up the thick darkness of
the wiry things in the work.
“His Wife” by C. Mehrl Bennett Of much greater importance, I’ve come to believe, is the way the placement of the
two words disconnects them, makes them two words each to be considered by itself.
Ergo, taken in a context of the junkyard the graphic elements can connote, one can
interpret “his” as “that which is his” on a collision course with “wife.” I see a stick of
dynamite right where they’ll meet, too! Rubble. To the right, a scribble of barbed wire.
Some wife this is. But wait. I made the previous comments while viewing a black and
white reproduction of the picture. The delicate oranges, yellows, and greens looked
grimily, grimly unpleasant there. But after seeing the full-color version, with those
colors, the yellows hinting of roses, I’ve decided that the collision may be a happy
one. Certainly, I learned how much color can change the connotational quality of a
work. Whatever interpretation one leaves the piece with, one has to agree that it is
visually gorgeous. Art reminiscent of Rothko and Motherwell—with maybe a touch
of Renoir!
The text of Gyorgy Kostritskii’s (152) “is of/,” “is of/ Has a/ And goes,” is a conundrum.
Something that is of something, possesses something . . . and goes. Is of, or is part
of something else, makes up something larger than itself. Words shorn of connec-
tivity like this, and in a nothingness or confusedness, force an engagent to either
leave quickly or seep into thoughts like these. And perhaps the idea of “And” going,
or connections being made. The blots declare themselves an illustration of this text
but clearly at the same time connect in no way with it other than geographically (by
sharing a page with it). The scene is primordial: the most basic of words in black
and white. Geography? I keep wanting to take the scene as a beach. Whatever it is,
it seems to enclose the text—but has an entrance, or exit, for it or other texts, at its
top. The highmost blob is difficult not to take as the sun, which makes little sense, but
gives the work a feel of archetypality that I also get from similar works of Adolph
Gottlieb. Can the text be considered the color of this picture?
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
The work’s text seems part of one of the two trails the other
shapes in the picture make. It also hangs in about the same
direction of the rest of the picture mostly does. So: the black of
the graphic portion of the work achieving verbal expressiveness?
There’s something in it of text as quotidian—just something there
with a small world’s other sloppy arbitrary shapes. The thing
forces the engagent—me, at any rate—to read the text into the
graphics, and see the graphics into the text. A mystery that won’t
finally declare itself, but avoids irritating by being utterly, serenely
all curves except where the tiny letters make their sharp angles,
and by being pleasantly balanced (note, for instance, the rhyme
the bottom of the vertical shape at the far
left makes with its top). I’m not sure where
this piece should go on my continuum.
I find it an A-1 illumage with a text that
prevents it from staying for long in the
visual cells of one’s brain. Strictly
speaking, it’s not a collage, but close
enough to put among the other more
legitimate collages on the continuum.
Among the works from the master of
rubbings, David Baptiste Chirot, is a visio-
textual collage-like page from Xerolage 32
(42) that resonantly depicts a man, or an
identity. I think of the latter because the
head resembles a fingerprint, the standard
mark of identity. Hints of ID numbers form
part of the image and letters. The word From “Re” by David Baptiste Chirot
on the head, “Open”—one wonders if it
describes and commands. The head also can be thought of as
radiating “SOME EVIL,” those words, or something like them,
being spelled down it. Is the figure victim or victimizer? An entity
to reckon with, no matter which.
While in this part of my continuum murkily inhabited by collages
and strange mixes of text and text, or text and graphic, I’d like
to point out my own ”Frame 2” from Dividing Poetry (108). A
combination of text and graphic, it is unusual in being also
mathematical—not for containing numbers or mathematical
symbols or terms but in carrying out a mathematical operation:
long division. In it, a version of the word, “words,” which is
wearing away, is divided into “poetry.” A quotient that’s a
distorted upside-down version of “words,” with a remainder of
“(port)” is the result. Two of the terms are mildly manipulated
17
visually to by themselves make the poem as a whole mildly
a visual poem. But the product of those two terms is, here,
wholly visual. A squaring of words, to put it roughly, yields
something full of color and hints of words, but no words
(unless one views the piece in context, in which case
certain words like “rain” would become evident).
The remainder, by the way, is intended to suggest that the
scene under “poetry,” the subdivided product, needs a
port, or something for the engagent to harbor in, in order to
become poetry. But the port should be subtly, parenthetically,
in it. Moreover, the port ought to be
verbal—to increase the verbality of
the graphic.
More mixing (or “collaging”) of
expressive modalities including
the mathematical occurs with Alan
Sondheim’s equilibrium-upsetting
graph (239). In this, a text (and its
author) are mathematically located
on a sheet of standard graph paper.
A pluraesthetic, and pluraconcep-
tual, adventure, for sure!
Prominent theorist of avant garde
poetry, Steve McCaffery has a
quietly cerebral piece called
“Land” (204) in the collection that
also seems mathematical to me.
I take it to be a tribute to Gertrude Stein, for its message
can be interpreted as “land is land is land.” But it goes
further than Stein’s “rose is a rose is a rose” with its graphic
elements: layers of what seem to be blueprints of houses.
Or of lots, on top of the piece, in unfaded black ink, seems
what all the layers hope to attain—a plot of land manfully
bounded, set apart, owned. It is also an island for the implied
protagonist of the piece, the one saying, “I land.” I also see
the piece as a sort of flow chart starting in a long ago large-
ness of indistinct possible land, ending after many haltingly
remembered turns in the small plot of the topmost layer.
An intriguing piece. Explicit labels that form a narrative,
a text genuinely fused with the graphic accompanying it
on the page to form a visual poem. In short, many are the
expressive modalities these pieces employ to connote.
18
Thomas L. Taylor, one of several visual poets with work in this
collection who is a first-rate photographer, tends mostly to
do captioned illumages like Selby’s “If the moon.” Two fine
examples are “where’s foldate-tore” and “thus no outer
doubts” (251 and 254) from his Hermetic Series. But in the first
of these, the non-representationality of the “caption” is so
similar (for me) to the non-representationality of the graphic
it shares a page with, that I consider it, in effect, overlap-
ping it (or being overlapped by it). Two moods interfusing to
form a third mood. This sets up, or is set up by, “thus no outer
doubts,” which has a representational image of a very ordinary
backyard view of neighboring backyards. This image overlaps
the non-representational one of “where’s foldate-tore” that
the memory carries over, thus becoming much more vividly
representational. Or, if we view the two works in the opposite
order, it is the non-representational image that becomes more
chargedly what it is. In either case, the fact that each work is
part of a series is vitally important. The captions team up to
smash the realities out of the representational images in the
series. The aesthengagent is left “ooler in your mists or/ musk
(where) no outer is,” according to “where’s foldate-tore.” That
is, he is pleasurably (it would seem) deposited in a kind of pure
subjectivity, the kind the best non-representational texts and
illumages can deposit one in because they provide plenty of
clues to soothingly sufficient coherences. Note well the hand-
printed addition to the text just quoted of “and.” That there is
more than the musk and the absence of outer, and so forth,
should not be forgotten. Bottom line: another singular
example of connota-
tionality taken to the
limit from the collection.
But a connotationality
prevented from going
wholly bonkers by the
careful rectangles and
obviously “good” crafts-
manship of the printing,
photography, and design
of the series. That is,
the works connote like
crazy, but from an
orderly elegance.
“Hoof Product” by Derek White
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
Scott Macleod has a series of wryly illustrated coined words
such as “Lucifection” (196), which has to do, I’m sure, with
Lucifer’s fires coming up through some kind of grate. To infect?
I consider these dada captioned illustrations, so appropriate in
this region of my continuum although not collages . . . perhaps
under or over the continuum.
Selby’s “Now What” (237) breaks into a form of collagic visual
poetry I call overlappetry, which is one of most fertile types of
visio-textual poetry. Whereas conventional poets are sensitive
to the effects of one word’s two-dimensional propinquity to
another, overlappetrists can exploit a third layer, as well as
weld two or more words fully together. Selby, probably our
country’s leading exponent of the form, generally works, as
here, with two layers, one graphic, one verbal. The graphic
is usually something banal from some kind of how-to booklet,
as the one in “Now What” seems to be. The text is usually
from who-knows-where, and has no (conventional) connec-
tion to the graphic. In this one, some obviously ambitious but
ineffective man wanting “to be bright, more intelligent” has
succeeded in turning on the light bulb that his life is. What he
will go on to do with it as a result provides the punch line to
what is surely intended as a satire on earnest mediocrity. On
conformity, as well—on conscientiously doing what our society
deems the right thing, and achieving the good job, and the
other things our society reveres.
Derek White’s “Scales of Evolution” (266) is another
indefinitely connotational specimen of overlappetry.
A side caption says the work depicts the “Scales of
Evolution.” We see that it goes from “DEAD” to “E,” for
energy, I take it, the opposite of deadness. Archeologi-
cal layering, references to Ancient Egypt, most tellingly,
“sarcophagus.” Something of the periodic chart of
elements is in it, and a strong flavor of science, the
two, and other forms of reason, doing their best to
pattern history into coherence.
White’s “Hoof Product” (267) is somehow similar,
although the patterning attempting to bound it (or,
maybe, “peg” it) is a sloppy/silly word game, with
one non-word (or very unconventional word, if “lue”
is a word, at all). Intriguingly hued, with all kinds of
connotations drawing one to explore it.
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 19
While most of the pieces reproduced in this book are recent, it includes a “historic” piece of
visual poetry from the ’60s, by d.a.levy, “Notice” (183), which is likewise an example of what
I’ve been calling overlappetry, something levy pioneered in. It beautifully connotes the see-
through fragility of the text of his life, and its nervousness, and fragmentariness, as well as his
surrealistic, lyrical undauntedness on behalf of its best aspects.
Helmes’s “The Void Enters” (119) has recognizable words. It’s also highly, importantly, and
vibrantly visual—illumagistic, in fact. But . . . is the broken-off text, “the void enters without the
recognition or centering of,” a comment on the proceedings or part of the proceedings?
“Without the recognition or centering of” what? A rational mind’s planning? Reason? Art? Love?
Whatever, I accept the text as part of the proceedings. My take on the work is that the strips of
illumagery represent the chaos of the cosmos, the white space the cracks opening up between
strips reveals is the void—labeled. I have a problem here: this void is expressing itself, but a
void should be incapable of that. The illumagistic strips can’t be the void because they’re
obviously material, complex, dense, inhabited, rich, etc. (The work is monochromatic,
incidentally.) I have to confess that I can’t understand this piece. But something wonderfully
creative is occurring—deeply into the archementality which is the origin of art everywhere.
Seattle visual poet, Nico Vassilakis, is, among other things, a wizard who often works in the
region of my continuum we’re now in, the one moving consequentially out of verbality toward
pure graphics, commonly constructing sequences. An example is the latter in the group of
four pieces from his book The Remington Vispoems (261). Each consists of nothing but letters.
The smallest letters form intersecting roads or tracks or seams that meet at or near larger
letters that beg to be read—the W N T R, for instance, saying “written” to me (as well as
suggesting points of the compass. At another intersection is the more exact anagram of “POV,”
or point of view, with “YES.” “POEM AX” is almost at a third, with “CODE” slightly suggested at
the fourth. These interpretations may seem over-strained, but it’s hard not to find something at
such fizzily centering loci. Which connotativeness is the point of such works.
In an untitled piece (176) by Jim Leftwich, we have archetypality, in my view: the Styx, glaciers,
50 million something. The deepening of knowing. A background explosion—from whence the
mushroom seems to have shot up. A shape that looks to me like, among other probably equal
possibilities, half a mushroom. Also a maw upchucking or about to swallow. Something of a
whale is in it, too. In any case, there are hints in the piece of Carroll, LSD, Jonah, expeditions
to the South Pole.
I forgot to mention that this piece is a specimen of treated page. The identity of the book it’s
from would no doubt help us interpret it. Treatment of a page (or book, which one has to consider
most treatments of individual pages whether the artist has treated other pages of the book,
or all of them) adds something of importance. There’s something destructive involved, even
sacrilegious. But, when successful, like an archeological excavation. There’s also the interest
of combining the new with the known, the latter being the text on the page treated. Compare to
the blotted page previously discussed which looks roughly like this one, but has (apparently) a
newly composed text rather than a previously published text in it.
20
The “still water” in the piece’s text seems to me the text on the
page treated. There’s something here of a page as a seed that
has blossomed into the treated page.
The thrill of an effective found text is here, too. To repeat one
of my standard ideas yet again, there’s something reassuring
about finding some new orderliness in a text that has been in
an accident—intimations that the universe may make sense,
after all.
Needless to say, deletional disconcealments are frequent in
treated texts—i.e., procedures that hide or remove parts of
words to free words inside them—as a jut of black exposes the
“we read” in “we dread.” And the black graphic as a whole
isolates “still water” above it to allow, almost force, us to read,
“still water we read.” And narrows the text to rivers, glaciation,
water—and knowing. Ergo, I’m coming to find this (in good
part) a celebration of full-scale, generational (over centuries)
deepening, partially dream-propelled knowing flowing out of
Final Darkness (i.e., Stygian darkness) into some exalted
still center.
I think my final point about this work and other works like it is
that they lend themselves to such tripping as I’ve just indulged
in. Connotativeness in spades.
A piece by jwcurry, “fill in” (56), seems to depict failed
language. There’s pathos in it, but it’s also a joke. It makes no
easy sense. Frankly, I can’t make sense of it, at all. But note the
emphasis on “TAR,” which the writer (using a rubber stamp,
so wanting to communicate, because the rubber stamp makes
very legible, accessible letters, probably to many people,
because the rubber stamp can stamp out letters fast, and is as-
sociated with mass-production) deems important to get across.
Finally, the author circles his message—this is something you
must take heed of! So, it’s all text except the circling, which
is a kind of typography, but its visual elements, including the
charged change of color with the introduction of “TAR,” are
providing most of its emotional content, begging us to read,
and act upon what we’ve read.
Two untitled pieces (49 and 50) by John Crouse clearly go
together, one being the basis of the second. The first suggests
words, but not sufficiently for me to think of it as a poem. It is
three sets of letters emerging from who knows what smudge,
or torn therefrom, with the barest hint of a fourth piece of
something textual at its very bottom. What seems to me
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
cellophane strips covers much of the not-yet-words, so may-
be these letters have been captured from somewhere. Not a
finally satisfying piece, I don’t think, but provocative. As the
first layer of the other piece, it comes into its own, however.
As a visual poem, for it becomes words. “REE” becomes
“TREE” or “STREET” due to the context, which now includes
a full word, “AM,” to set the scene (now rightside up, by the
way). “Ones” and “tones” and “stones” can be reason-
ably straight-forwardly if xeno-directionally spelled out
near the bottom of the textual part of the work, and I found
“THOUGHT,” more arbitrarily using the “GHT” above the
others. The work lends itself to much such finding. And its
place as the second of a two-parter intimates that more will
grow out of it. For me, the “AM” unifies it as an appropriately
unclear clearing field of who-knows-exactly-what, some of
it more prominent than others, with enough visual interest as
an arrangement of letters to make it pleasurably more than
a mere list of words, however susceptible to image-building
they are.
Another piece (51) by Crouse is mostly an exercise in the
infraverbal placement of spaces in fused words like “pure”
and “erotic,” which are rendered (on a bumpy page-as-
field) as “pu r e rot i c” to highlight “rot,” and add “I see”
and “icy” to the line. The line itself ratatats from “erotic”
through “erratic” and “erosive” to “errata” to form a kind of
commentary of “erotic”—or any of the other three words.
Above the text some kind of square tilted at a 45-degree
angle points downward weirdly. To illustrate the caption?
I haven’t worked it out yet. The square does seem eroding
into the field it’s in.
Many works in the collection are illumages created out of
typography or other textual materials but are not verbal, or
significantly verbal. To call them “poetry” may seem strange,
but a good argument can be made that they deal with
language too deeply to be called anything else. I term them
“linguiconceptual visual poems” and place them toward
the visual end of my continuum. One such work here is by
bp Nichol, one of the four or five with work here who were
importantly visio-poetical in the sixties. His “aaBaaa” (214)
seems to me to depict a column in the early stages of its
construction—and in the early stages of the alphabet it will
eventually result in. It verbalizes nothing, but conceptually
(and metaphorically), it suggests things about the formation,
the building, of a language.
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N
“directions” by Crag Hill
One of Crag Hill’s most interesting recent mostly asemic works
is a sequence called, “directions,” two frames of which are
shown here (137). Each frame forms a square with four square
cut-outs from magazines and the like, with occasional addi-
tions such as the hand-printed fragment in the piece to the left
of this set. Readable text is present—but seems to represent
language rather than act as language. Hill’s squares work the
way all (good) collages do: they combine unconnected images
into visually potent designs that are also full of textual/textual
or textual/graphic accidents or seeming accidents that expose
unexpected meanings from matter incongruously adjoining.
The transformationally fresh touch here, though, is the
scientizing of the collages: Hill has made each a map, and a
four-quadrant analytical geometry graph. So, we have the
vitality of the tension between abstract order and sensual
verbal and visual imagery wildly decontextualized and
mismatched. Each frame of Hill’s sequence thus acts as a
metaphor for science: the imposition of an abstract, wonderfully
revelatory scheme on life and the near-life that even stones
can be said to represent (due to all the chemistry and physics
going on within them) . . . that nonetheless leaves their mystery
ultimately untouched. What actually happens is what happens
in Hill’s squares: the Mystery is enriched and domesticated
enough to prevent our being overwhelmed by it, but endures.
Peter Ganick’s “ds mu” (97) is a collage mainly of cut-up texts
and what appears to be black paper to form a fascinating
collection of partial understandings uniting in the shape of . . .
a tree? Cursive and print suggesting a variety of voices. Close
to asemic although much of it can be read.
21
”Sonata I,” (143) by the late Bill Keith is entirely averbal, which
is odd, for he made a point of being verbal in his visio-textual
art. I would call it a linguiconceptual-visiopoetic impression of
what visual poetry is: music, order (the score being ordered),
text, focus and magnification, visual drama. . . . On reflection,
I suddenly wonder if the work be considered semantic. How?
Well, its musical notation specifies objects in the world—
musical tones of a certain duration. The notation is thus in
effect verbal. I withdraw the idea, but don’t delete it, for it
suggests, I think, the subtleties and adventures of the many-
wheres visio-textual art can enter.
Equally averbal, but linguiconceptual is an untitled piece
of resonant primitivism from Hartmut Andryczuk (4). That
it is white on black makes it seem especially interestingly
backward, out of night—also blackboard writing out of child-
hood. For one not knowing the work’s language, it is entirely
averbal—with language making paths through some kind of
jungle swamp.
Similar to the Andryczuk work is an untitled piece (232) by Rea
Nikonova, an interesting design using the letter “P”—and “E,”
with the “P” also standing in for “b’s,” “d’s,” and “q’s.” Under
all this, with something resembling a thought balloon coming
out of it and enclosing “gland” is a box containing the word
“true”—plus a possible “r” to make “eeling” into “reeling.”
The “r” looks somewhat like an “f,” too, “feeling,” especially
right after “true,” is implied. “Heeling,” or obeying (one’s
lustful instincts) is there, too, of course, as is “healing.”
22
I find what is portrayed something in progress, too—
improvised. Hence the empty rectangle at the right. The thing
as a whole seems a prank—a playful flow-chart joke on
Poetry-As-High-Art. The joke it plays is also on love poetry,
reducing it to an awkwardly diagrammable mechanism, as
well as verbally suggesting its basis in a gland. At the same
time, it seems to me a lyric celebration of the coarseness,
wackiness—and luster—of love. In my subjective reading.
”Sound Impressions of
Transpirator” (229) by Serge
Segay, is another specimen of
linguiconceptual visual poetry,
an illumage whose subject is
textuality. It isn’t language but a
device to reveal or comment on
language. To show it as coding,
and geological layering, and
paths, and in transit, with liquid
incursions. A suggestion of
a filmstrip is there, as well.
Scott Helmes’s “ehk” (116) “ehk” by Scott Helmes
gives me a lot of trouble. As an
aesthgagent, I find it terrific; as an aesthcritic, I find it
godawfully annoying. It’s easy enough to pin down
taxonomically: it’s a linguiconceptual visual poem, or design
making conceptually important use of textual elements: by
treating letters in various ways in order to create (my best
guess is) some kind of primordial soup from whence meaningful
language, clarity, will emerge. The universe a few moments
after the big bang?
The piece is effectively centered at a square, and flows—no,
zips—masterfully through a wide range of shades and states
of completion. I find it three-dimensional, which I generally
count as a virtue (and do so here). That it is pretty close to
entirely horizontal so far as its main elements, its letters, are
concerned (with its “s’s” upside down at the bottom) seems
somewhat consequential. The letters’ attempt to be readily
readable? A hint of a constricting order in the universe
Helmes depicts?
T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S
A particularly arresting untitled linguiconceptual visual
poem (190) by Carlos M. Luis depicts symbols and fragments
of letters going down a shaft. Or falling between cliffs. Or
bourne down or up a river. So: the detritus of a society’s
consciousness flowing away? Or communication eking
through the darkness of existence? Language coming into
being, in the process forcing The Void to part? The possibility
of communication letting light in, or being brought in by light?
Bottom line: this is a another richly connotative picture of
language. What more can one
say about it?
We’re now fully into the
asemic (or averbal) end of my
continuum, by the way. In this
region are such works as David
Fujino’s “Heartfelt” (93), which
is a kind of non-representational
who-knows-what consisting
entirely of typography that
compels the aesthgagent
(i.e., person who engages an
artwork) to read it beyond what
it is as a graphic design, and
perhaps find here its “oh” and/or “Ooo,” floating free of the
intersections the “x’s” are, or/and the kisses they stand for
at the end of heartfelt letters. I find something of mathematics
in the piece, too, but can’t work out a reason for its being
there, unless to contrast with or balance the heartfeltness
of the piece. So, another simple but meaningful averbal
language composition.
Gustave Morin’s absorbingly stark “silhouette” (203)
dramatically illustrates how much symbolic power mere
letters in an illumage can generate, although not making
words. As does Reed Altemus’s untitled quiet representation
image (2).
Bill Keith’s “Visual Poetry” (144) is more explicitly an
illumagistic impression of what visual poetry is. A rigor
of typed letters married to crude improvisations using
white paint. But maybe the work is slightly a visual poem,
too—one whose subject is seeing from black to white,
and “seize.” In any case, letters are central to it. Ditto a
makeshift grid. Harmony.
A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 23
In another untitled piece by Jim Leftwich (166) I can, if I push myself, find two “e’s”
and an “n” and a “v” in it. “Even?” It’s more than suggestive enough of cursive writing,
though, to qualify as possibly linguiconceptual visual poetry. I find the way it curves
into a single plane as it narrows to form its beginning “e,” if that’s what it is, visually ap-
pealing. Wait. I more logically now see it as an “e” that thickens out of the plane it was
in as it ends. Out of what it thickens into a thin-lined upside-down “v” leaps toward us.
An “e” buds off it to the left while most of an upside-down “n” crosses it a little higher
up to finish itself. Letters at play. A pre-semic language garden with Eve in it? Arbitrary
lettering can certainly be twisted into messages, and that’s one of the significant virtues
of this kind of art.
Andrew Topel and John M. Bennett have a wonderful piece of abstract expressionism
(256) at this end of my continuum. It has a few letters in it, but the letters are all vowels,
which are the only pronounceable letters, so I, for one, can almost hear the piece trying
(and failing) to speak to us, out of an agony whelming outward.
An untitled piece (162) by Leftwich we leave linguiconceptual visual poetry for what I
call textually enhanced illumagery, for what textual matter it has is fragmental. There is
no apparent “reason” (that I can find) for the hints of lettering; they are decorative noise
giving what they’re in the wrongness that makes them aesthetically effective.
Carol Stetser’s sequence, “On the Road” (241), consists, altogether, of 18 cards in a
folding plastic holder with a ribbon attached you can use to hang the holder on the
wall, if you want to (and as I have). It made me realize how such cards could be used
to tell a story.
I find them visually appealing as a purely illumagistic sequence, but I take them
as hieroglyphically visio-textual. Why? I think only because I know of Carol as
primarily a visual poet. Hence, I recognize the pre-language they can be taken as.
Are they found illumages, illumages painted on asphalt or illumages of paintings or
oil slicks on asphalt? I don’t know, but their foundness is part of what makes them
effective, I’m sure. In any case, they seem about as far to the averbal end of my
continuum as any visio-textual pieces can be.
”And Live Happily” (194), by Carlos M. Luis, makes a fitting piece with which to end this
survey, although I’d place it smack in the center of my continuum. It sardonically de-
picts (for me) the last page of childhood as a splatteringly smashed-against-a-wall fairy
tale. The verbal part of the work identifies what is being smashed, but also preambles
the textual mess, the incoherent insanity that follows “EVER AFTER.” That is, we have
a near-perfect fusion of destroyed book, destroyed text, destroyed life. “AND LIVE
HAPPILY EVER AFTER” is only a label, but it leads to the richly pessimistic visual poem
the fractured, scattered, dimmed text is, even without the purely graphic elements
augmenting it. “And Live Happily”
by Carlos M. Luis
24 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 25

1 ) A n nalisa Alloatti &

M i r e l la Bentivoglio
Storia del Monumento, Roma: De Luca
Editore, 1968. Two leaves.

Storia del Monumento

Letters in Wind

2) Reed Altemus
[Visual Poem], 2003. From the Jim Leftwich Collection.
Photocopy.
26 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 27

4) Hartmut Andryczuk
System Fehler, Berlin:
Hybriden-Verlag, 2001.
Twelve prints in a portfolio.

3 ) m I E K A L aND
From his book, Automatic
Industrial Soothsaying:
A Languages [sic] [Sl:
sn, nd] First page.

System Fehler

5) Baron
“Antigen,” a 2005
collaboration with
Scott MacLeod and
John M. Bennett.
Digital print.

Eternal Rovish Agile

Antigen
28 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 29

6 ) B aron
“Leap Cut Bowl,” a
2003 collaboration
with John M. Bennett
and Scott Helmes.
Digital print.

Leap Cut Bowl

7) Baron
“Whoa!”—a 2006
collaboration with
John M. Bennett.
Digital print.
r p s s h

8) Gary Barwin
“r p s s h,” from Whitewall of Sound, 33, Winter 2003,
“Contemporary Canadian Concrete & Visual Poetry,” guest edited
by Derek Beaulieu, published by Jim Clinefelter, Portland, OR,
as a CD-ROM, 2005, and as a set of photographs, 2003.
Whoa!
30 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 31

10) Michael
Basinski
From his book,
[Un Nome], Port
Charlotte, FL:
Runaway Spoon Press,
1997.

For ER

Coda Bees
Anonka 1
9) Michael Basinski 11) Michael Basinski
From his book, Strange Things Begin to Happen When a Meteor “Anonka 1,” original word art, collage
Crashes in the Arizona Desert, Cleveland, OH: Burning Press, and mixed media, 34” X 18.”
2001. Illustrations by Wendy Collin Sorin.
32 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 33

12) Derek
B e a u l i eu
From his book, (PLOP),
A Manuscript, Calgary,
Alberta: House Press
[ca. 2000]. One of 16
copies printed.

Frog Plop

Air Fight
13) Guy R. Beining
From his book, Crossing the 14) C. Mehrl Bennett
Haiku Border, Fort Collins, CA: “Air Fight,” 2005. Drawing
Avantacular Press, 2005. and stamping; digital print.

15) C. Mehrl Bennett

“Sog,” 2005. Collaboration
with Melissa Gilbert and
John M. Bennett. Digital print.

Sog
Plumb
34 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 35

His Wife Mad

16) C. Mehrl Bennett 17) Jesse Freeman and John M. Benn e t t

“His Wife,” 2005. Manipulated digital photograph.
“Mad,” 2004. Mixed media.
36 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 37

boine bugs and

1 8 ) John M. Bennett 19) John M. Bennett

“boine,” 2005. Stamping and “bugs and,” 2003. Stamping and
calligraphy; digital print. calligraphy; digital print.

20) John M. Bennett

“Cleen 3,” 2002. Stamping and
calligraphy; digital print;
part of a series.

An Imprecation

21) John M. Bennett

Cleen 3 “An Imprecation,” 1992. Calligraphic portrait; digital print.
38 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 39

22) John M. Bennett

“Sooner Spread Than,” 2004. 24) John M. Bennett
Calligraphy; digital print. “I Found My Sock,” 1987. Stamping
and calligraphy; digital print.

I Found My Sock

Sooner Spread Than

25) John M.
Bennett and
Jim Leftwich
From their book, Loud
Work, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 2003. Poem
by Bennett cut up and
reassembled by Leftwich
with additions. In 2008,
Scott MacLeod created a
new version by tearing
the book in half and
reassembling the pieces in
Delice the Acid a different configuration.
2 3 ) Suel, Lucien
“Delice the Acid,” from his book, Day-Sat, transducted from the French
by John M. Bennett, Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 1994. Calligraphic
transductions of stanzas from Suel’s Les Derivées (cf. item no. 242). Flag Rant Hose
40 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 41

Under the Bed a Moon

2 6 ) J ohn M. Bennett Devil Tongue Mask

“Under the Bed a Moon,” 1987. Mixed media;
digital print.
27) Peter Huttinger
and John M. Bennett
“Devil Tongue Mask” [ca. 1999].
Mixed media. From the Peter
Huttinger Collection.

28) John M.
Bennett
“Maya,” 1988. Mixed
media; digital print.

Scratching’s Head

29) John M. Bennett

“Scratching’s Head,” 1991. Stamping and calligraphy; digital print.
Maya
42 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 43

30) John M. Bennett

“Kok,” 2005. Stamping and
calligraphy; digital print.

Kok

From Brambu Drezi

Mud 32) Jake Berry

3 1 ) Solamito Luigino and John M. Bennett From his book, Brambu Drezi: Book Two, Berkeley, CA: Pantograph Press, 1998.
“Mud,” 2005. Digital print with stamping and calligraphy.
44 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 45

33) Bill Bissett

“Feel the Flesh,” from his book,
(Th) Gossamer Bed Pan, Vanvouver,
BC: Blewointment Press, 1974.

Erivte
36) Jean-François Bory
Feel the Flesh “Erivté,” from his book, Made in
Machine, Milano: Edizioni Amodulo,
1972.

Once Again Drilled

37) Jean-François Bory

Once Again, New York: New Directions Books,
1968. Altered with drilling by Paul Lambert,
Portland, OR, 2004.

34) Bill Bissett

“the future uv salmon,”
from his book, Scars on
35) Julian Blaine
the seehors, Burnaby, BC:
“Point de poésie,” from his
Talonbooks, 1999.
book, Reprenons la punctuation
a zero (o), Paris: Editions
the future uv salmon Nepe [ca. 1980].
Point de poésie
46 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 47

38 ) J o h n B y r u m
“h ea,” from his book,
Black Fire, Lakewood, OH:
Burning Press, 1995.

h ea

Ray

41) David Baptiste Chirot

From his book, rubBEings: Visual Poetry,
Copy Art, Collage, LaFarge, WI: Xexoxial
Editions [nd].

4 0 ) J . M . Calleja
“e,” from his book, Poemas
visuals, Barakaldo [Spain]:
La Caraba, Taller de Intentos
Culturales, 2001.

Re
39) John Byrum Pots herd
“Pots herd,” from his book, rIMAGE,
42) David Baptiste Chirot
From his book, rubBEings, op cit.
Vancouver, BC: Tsunami Editions, 1990.
48 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 49

4 3 ) B ob Cobbing
From the book, Bob Cobbing,
Maurice Scully, Carlyle
45) Bob Cobbing
From his book, Kob Bok:
Reedy, Buckfastleigh:
Selected Texts of Bob Cobbing,
Etruscan Books, 1999.
1948-1999, Buckfastleigh, South
Devonshire: Etruscan Books,
1999. Originally published in
Realistic Private Parts [with
Lawrence Upton], [London]:
Writers Forum, 1996.

Off

Cobbing

CrustEructs

44) Bob Cobbing

Pontaneous [England?: Bob 46) Bob Cobbing
Cobbing, 1968]. A broadside, From his book, Whisper Piece
signed on verso by author. [London: Writers Forum, 1969].

Marvomvi
Pontaneous
50 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 51

Ree
Comb and Tape
50) John Crouse
4 7 ) J o hn Crouse “Ree,” original found text
[found object], ca. 2003. Ree with dirt and tape, ca. 2003
Broken comb and tape with 49) John Crouse [cf. item 49].
a lettristic form. “Ree,” digital version with additions by
Jim Leftwich, ca. 2003 [cf. item 50].

Are You a Forest

48) Ira Cohen 51) John Crouse

“Are You a Forest,” from his Celestial Graffiti, New York “pu r e rot,” ca. 2003.

City: The Ira Cohen Akashic Project, 2003 [CD-ROM].

pu r e rot
52 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 53

53) Robin Crozier and

John M. Bennett
Front cover from their TLP, Screw Show,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 1996.
A “TLP” is a “Tacky Little Pamphlet,”
a technical term for a small booklet
cheaply produced.

Cover of Screw Show

Chapter 23

55) Robin Crozier and

John M. Bennett
“Chapter 23,” from their book, The
Chapters: 1980-2001, Columbus, OH:
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2002.
Pins in Sleep ION
52) Robin Crozier and Serge Segay 54) Robin Crozier
Page from their book, Zaum, Orillia, Ontario: ASFi Editions [nd].
“ION,” from his book, Some Art
Objects: for Ulises Carrión,
Amsterdam: Robin Crozier, 1981.
54 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 55

56) j w curry
fill in [Sl]: Spider Plots in
58) David Daniels
“Earlybogey,” from his book,
Rat-Holes, 1985. Hand-stamped
Years, Berkeley, CA: David
postcard; edition of 60.
Daniels, 2002.

fill in

57 ) S t e v e
D a l a c hinsky
“Confirmation,” from Visual
Poetry, [introduction by]
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL: Earlybogey
Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.

59) David Daniels

“Sin Fan Says,” from his
book, Years, op cit.

Sin Fan Says

Confirmation
56 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 57

6 0 ) D a v i d Daniels
“Sun with Marrow,” a first
version (1974) of the poem
from his Years, op cit.

Sun with Marrow

61) David
Daniels
“In View,” a last
version (no. 353) of the
poem in item 60 above,
from his Years, op cit.

Dea END

62) Klaus Peter Dencker

From Renshi 2000-02, Berlin: Hybriden-Verlag, 2002.

In View
58 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 59

63) Mirta
Dermisache
From her book, Libro
No. 1: 2003, Buenos
Aires/Marseille/
Montpellier: Xul/Mobil-
Home/Manglar, 2003.

(untitled)

64) Johanna
Drucker
“Genetically
Distinct,” from her
book, Through Light
and the Alphabet,
Berkeley, CA: [sn],
1986.

Slack and Tumble

65) K. S. Ernst and John M. Bennett

“Slack and Tumble,” 2001. Collage and calligraphy.

66) K. S. Ernst
“The” [ca. 1986].
Mixed media.
Genetically Distinct The
60 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 61

71 ) K . S .
Ernst
“Visual Poets’
Picnic,” 2001.
Large digital
print on canvas.

Bruce Looms Frog 9

6 7 ) K. S. Ernst 68) K. S. Ernst
“Bruce Looms,” 2003. Crumpled and “Frog 9,” 2003. Crumpled and
stained paper; text is a collaborative stained paper.
poem by John M. Bennett and Ernst.

Visual Poets’ Picnic

Thinking Zen
Synesthesia: the Letter Me Virtue in Dreaming
Feeling Boxed In
70) K. S. Ernst and 72) K. S. Ernst 73) K. S. Ernst
6 9 ) K. S. Ernst David Cole “Synesthesia: the Letter Me,” 2000. “Virtue in Dreaming,” 2005. Digital print.
“Feeling Boxed In,” 1999. Mixed media. “Thinking Zen,” 2000. Mixed media. Digital print.
62 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 63

74) K. S. Ernst
“Sequencing: Time on My
Hands,” 1980. Original
manuscript; published in 77) K. S. Ernst
Ernst’s Sequencing, Madison, “Inspiration 4,” 1999.
WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1984. Digital print.

Sequencing:
Time on My Hands Inspiration 4

78) K. S. Ernst
“Just Go,” 2001.
Digital print.

Isotrocal Ancient Pages

7 5 ) K . S. Ernst and 76) K. S. Ernst

J o h n M . Bennett “Ancient Pages,” 2000.
“Isotrocal,” 2001. Mixed media. Watercolor.
Just Go
64 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 65

Two Red Fish

82) K. S. Ernst
“Two Red Fish,” 2000. Digital print.

79) K. S. Ernst M Spot 81) K. S. Ernst

Abracadabra,” 2004.
“M Spot,” 1984. Mixed media.
Digital print.
Abracadabra

80) K. S. Ernst
“(Let’s Get) Lost,” 2000. Charm all
Watercolor on four sheets of gauze, 83) K. S. Ernst
each letter on a separate sheet.
(Let’s Get) Lost “Charm All,” 2005. Digital print.
66 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 67

87) Ficus strangulensis

“In a Very Real Sense” [ca. 2001].
Cut up collage text.

Rose Poem Sequencing: Snakes

84) K. S. Ernst 85) K. S. Ernst
“Rose Poem,” 1969. “Sequencing: Snakes,” 1980. Original
Original typescript. manuscript; published in Ernst’s Sequencing, In a Very Real Sense
Madison, WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1984.

Nude stare

88) Ficus
strangulensis
“Nude stare” [ca. 2000].
Digital transmogrification.

89) Ficus
strangulensis
“JMB Lips the Risk,” 2001.
Photocopy of cut up and
collage of a poem by John
sil ver cat M. Bennett.
8 6 ) K . S. Ernst
“sil ver cat,” 1980. Original typescript. JMB Lips the Risk
68 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 69

93) David Fujino

“Heartfelt,” from Whitewall of Sound, 33,
Winter 2003, “Contemporary Canadian Concrete &
Visual Poetry,” guest edited by Derek Beaulieu,
published by Jim Clinefelter, Portland, OR: as a
CD-ROM, 2005, and as a set of photographs, 2003.

Heartfelt

90) Ficus strangulensis Speedy Tough Girl

“Speedy Tough Girl,” 2001. Collage.

Nothing Matters Cover of Fraude

Behind Your Moony
91) Ficus strangulensis with
Baron and John M. Bennett
“Behind Your Moony,” 2001. Digital print;
words by John M. Bennett.
One” (“truth”
94) Charles Henri Ford, Reepak 95) César Figueiredo
92) Ficus strangulensis Shakya, and Indra Tamang and John M. Bennett
with John M. Bennett Handshakes from Heaven II, Paris: Fraude, Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte
“One’ (‘truth,’” 2000. Cut up collage Handshake Press, 1986. Prods, 1997. Front cover of small
text; words from John M. Bennett poems. booklet of collaborative word art.
70 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 71

Wallpaper for a Classical

Passion-Pit Atop Mount Parnassus
ds mu
96) John Furnival and 97) Peter Ganick
Jonathan Williams “ds mu,” photocopied cut up text [ca. 2001].
“Wallpaper for a Classical Passion-Pit Atop Mount
Parnassus,” 1988, in their Letters to the Great Dead: A
Collaborative Work [Sl: sn, ca. 1989]. Portfolio of 11
large (16” X 24”) broadsides of visual/concrete poems.
72 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 73

98) Peter 103) Ilse and

Ganick Pierre Garnier
page spread from Atriox “Le Blason de la Peste,” from
manuscript notebook, their book, Le Spatialisme en
1999. It was published Chemins, op cit.
in 1999 as Atriox. Book
One [cf. item 99].

Atriox MS
A Wave

101) Pierre Garnier

“A Wave,” from his book, The
Words Are the World, Port
Charlotte, FL: The Runaway
Spoon Press, 1996.

Le Blason de la Peste

Page from Atriox

b ee

For Foreign Why 99) Peter Ganick

1 0 0 ) P e t er Ganick
From his book, Atriox. Book One, 1 0 2 ) I l s e G a r n i er
1999. This is the published version “b ee,” from Ilse et Pierre Garnier,
“For Foreign Why,” from his book, Poem-Book
of the left side of the manuscript Le Spatialisme en Chemins, Amiens:
One: Poems and Illustrations, Elwood, CT: Front
page spread above [item 98]. Editions Corps Puce, 1990.
Pictures Artist Books, 2000. Copy 3 of 6 printed.
74 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 75

et 1

All Reflective Surfaces Acá Dentro

105) Jesse Glass, Jr. 106) Martín Gubbins

“All Reflective Surfaces,” digital From his book, Album 01.02>04 .05,
print, ca. 2001. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Tácitas, 2005.

et 2

1 0 4) Ilse Garnier
2 poems from her book, Rythmes et Silence: Poèmes
Spatiaux, Paris: Editions André Silvaire [ca. 1980]. Rain
107) Bob Grumman
Page spread from his book, An April Poem, Port Charlotte, FL:
Runaway Spoon Press, 1989. Each page is identical, except for
the dot above the “i,” which has different content on each page.
76 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 77

1 0 8 ) B o b Grumman
“Dividing Poetry,” digital
print, ca. 2004.

111) Da v i
Det Hompson
“ou hu,” from his
book, Flat Ground: A
Dividing Poetry
Film Script, Richmond,
VA: [Davi Det
Hompson], 1980.
ou hu

Drawing
Mathemaku for Robert Lax Seaside Mathemaku Bub
112) Scott Helmes
1 0 9 ) B o b Grumman 110) Bob Grumman
Original ink drawing, from 113) Scott Helmes and
“Mathemaku for Robert Lax,” “Seaside Mathemaku,” digital print,
a sketchbook ca. 1976. John M. Bennett
digital print, ca. 2004. “Bub,” from Clunk [Columbus, OH]:
ca. 2004.
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2001.
78 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 79

j Centering
help
1 1 4 ) S cott Helmes 115) Scott Helmes
118) Scott Helmes
“j,” from a sketchbook titled Ambiguous, “Centering,” from a sketchbook titled
“help,” ca. 1970. Original rubber
1976. Original stamping and drawing. Ambiguous, 1976. Original stamping.
stamp drawing.
eh
117) Scott Helmes
“eh,” ca. 1970. Oiginal rubber stamp drawing.

119) Scott
Helmes
“enters,” ca. 1977?
Original rubber stamp
drawing and cut up.

ehk
1 1 6) Scott Helmes
“ehk,” from a sketchbook titled Ambiguous, 1976.
Original stamping and drawing. enters
80 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 81

Zipper: Poem 1976

122) Scott Helmes
“Zipper: Poem 1976” [St. Paul, MN:
Scott Helmes], 2000. Edition of 100
printed on a computer mouse pad. Passing into Night
the Words Vanish

123) Scott Helmes

“Passing into Night the
Words Vanish,” 1978.
Original drawing.

The Farm

1 2 0 ) S c ott 124) Scott Helmes

Helmes “When You Read in Your
“The Farm,” 1997. Dreams,” from Poemes (Zehn)
Original rubber Visibles [St. Paul, MN]:
stamp drawing. Stamp Pad Press, 1998.

HN EF
121) Scott Helmes
“HN EF,” from VI Visual Poems, Minneapolis:
Stamp Pad Press/Hermetic Press, 2003. When You Read
in Your Dreams
82 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 83

Life Death Typtich

129) Scott Helmes
“Life Death Typtich,” ca. 1977. Original rubber stamp
drawings. Published in Helmes’ [untitled], Vandergrift,
PA: Zelot Press, 1986.

TS
theand
126) Scott Helmes
1 2 5 ) Scott Helmes “TS,” ca. 1975-1985. Original
“theand,” ca. 1975-1985. Original rubber stamp drawing.
rubber stamp text.

Light p from Ra aR
1 2 7 ) S c o tt Helmes 128) Scott Helmes
“Light,” ca. 1975-1985. Original “p,” ca. 1975-1985. Digital print.
130) Scott Helmes and John M. Benne t t
Page spread from their book, Ra aR [St. Paul, MN/Columbus, OH: Scott
mixed media drawing.
Helmes/John M. Bennett, 2003]. One-of-a-kind original artist’s book.
84 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 85

134) Dick Higgins

“Translation of a Poem by
Pedro Xisto,” from his book
FOEW&OMBWHNW, New York: Something
Else Press, 1969.

Information Translation of a Poem

1 3 1 ) S c o tt Helmes by Pedro Xisto
“Information,” ca. 1977. Original
typoglyph poem.

Zoom Poems

132) Scott Helmes

“Zoom Poems.” Original collage; used as cover
of Helmes’ book Zoom Poems: Adventures Among
the Hyperchips [St. Paul, MN?]: Scott Helmes,
1992. Edition of 20 copies.

Cover of Sonatas, Piano, No. 2 Cover of Sonatas, Piano, No. 2

Visual Poem
135 & 136) Dick Higgins
1 3 3 ) S c o tt Helmes Sonatas, Piano, No. 2, Barrytown, NY: Printed Editions, 1983. Two
Visual poem, ca. 1977. Original mixed media.
views of the cover with two of the included transparencies superimposed.
86 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 87

139) G. Huth
“Aga” and “Space,”
from his book, Dachau:
Afterwards, State
College, Pennsylvania:
IZEN, 1994.

from Directions to the Primary

1 37 ) C r a g H i l l
Centerfold from his book, Directions to the Primary: Maps
of Juxtaposition, Calgary, Alberta: Housepress [1999?]. Aga and Space

dis trust of

Clubloop #0001 140) G. Huth

“dis trust of,” typewriter
138) August Highland poem manipulated through
Clubloop #0001 [San Diego, CA: August photocopying. From his book
Highland, 2004]. Two views of a loose leaf Stampede The Dreams of the Fishwife,
book in a wooden box with a visual poem 141) jUStin katKO Madison, WI: Xexoxial Editions,
mounted in the lid. “Stampede,” from his book Scheme! 1989 [Xerolage #17].

[Oxford, OH: jUStin katKO, 2005].

88 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 89

143) Bill Keith

“Sonata I” [nd]. Mixed
media photocopy print.

Sonata I

Visual Poetry

144) Bill Keith

“Visual Poetry” [nd]. Mixed media
collage photocopy print.

Fuch me, pasifae

145) Bill Keith
142) Bill Keith and Arrigo Lora-Totino “Sale,” from his book, Stalking
“Fuch me, pasifae,” from their book, L’Affaire du Labyrinthe,
the Dinosaur: Selected Works,
New York-Torino: Edition des Auteurs, 2001.
New York: Koja Press, 2003.

Sale
90 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 91

1 4 6 ) Peter Huttinger
“for,” from his book, Little Ones
at Home [Cincinnati, Ohio]: Holmes
& Riordan, 2001. One-of-a-kind
original artist’s book.

for

Light Is the Man With No Words Charm

148) Anna Korintz 149) Karl Kempton
“Light Is the Man With No Words,” from her “Charm,” from his book, Rune: A Survey,
book, Axle [Fort Collins, CA]: Avantacular Kenosha, Wisconsin: Light and Dust Books,
Press, 2004. Atticus Books, 1992.

My Dog He Has Become Mutted No Cave Rest

147) Peter Huttinger 150) Richard Kostelanetz
“My Dog He Has Become Mutted,” from his artist’s “No Cave Rest,” from his book, Dis/Sections [Monroe, NY]:
book, A Dog Lost But Not Forgotten, 1975. Aseidad [ca. 2003]. Book was designed by Michael Peters.
92 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 93

1 5 1 ) Gyorgy 153) Gyorgy

K o s t ritskii Kostritskii
“Coulore,” original “echolalia,” original
calligraphic painting calligraphic painting
on a page from the on typescript, 2003.
Oxford English
Dictionary, 2003.

echolalia

Coulore

154) Gyorgy
Kostritskii
“TT,” original
calligraphic drawings
from a small sketchbook,
ca. 2003.

TT
is of
15 2 ) G y o r g y K o s t ritskii
“is of,” original calligraphic painting and typescript, 2003.
94 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 95

157) Jim Leftwich

From his artist’s book, Only Help,
2002. Original stamping and ink.

LI WR
DD OOO

154A) Jukka-Pekka Kervinen 154B) Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

and John M. Bennett and John M. Bennett
“DD,” 2007. D i g i t a l p r i n t “OOO,” 2006. Digital Print.

You’ll Never Know

159) Jim Leftwich

Mixed media work from a
notebook, 2003.
Do You Have

155) Cal Kowal

From his artist’s book, Cover of Death Text Book 3
Oxymoron: The Making of an The Babble 158) Jim Leftwich
Original Photograph, OSU Front cover of his book, Death Text Book 3
156) Paul Thaddeus Lambert
Portfolio [Columbus, OH: [Charlottesville, VA]: Xtantbooks, 2003.
From his book, Final Notice Before Service
Cal Kowal], 2004.
Ends [Portland, OR: Paul Lambert, 2001].
96 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 97

160) Jim Leftwich

From a series titled “Newspaper Collages September
11, 2001.” Original collage dated September 13, 2001.
Published on the cover of The June 30th Manifesto,
compiled by John M. Bennett and Scott Helmes,
Columbus, OH/St. Paul, MN: Luna Bisonte Prods/
StampPad Press, 2004.

Infamy

EM imi

163) John M. Bennett 164) Jim Leftwich and

and Jim Leftwich John M. Bennett
From their book, Loud Work, Columbus, OH: Luna “imi,” a collaborative visual
Mo Drawing
Bisonte Prods, 2003. Collaborative visual poem. poem, 1996.
1 6 1 ) J i m Leftwich 162) Jim Leftwich
Original visual poem, December 2001. Original charcoal drawing, February 2001.
Mixed media.
98 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 99

168) John M.
Bennett, Jim
Leftwich, and
Jake Berry
“The Blaze,” a
collaborative visual
poem, 1997.

The Blaze

ation
1 6 5 ) J i m Leftwich
“ation,” crumpled newspaper
from a series titled “Sept. 11,
2001,” made September 13, 2001.

Militant

170) Jim Leftwich

“Militant,” from his artist’s
book, It Turns Out That the
Sample, ca. 2003.

169) Jim Leftwich

From an original series
Drawing lhr
167) Jim Leftwich titled “Sublettered
1 6 6 ) J i m Leftwich Mixed media visual poem on a 3X5-inch card, ca. 2003. Stencils,” ca. 1998.
Charcoal asemic calligraphy,
ca. 1999. ob bod
100 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 101

174) Jim Leftwich

First page of William S.
Burroughs’ “A Thanksgiving
Prayer” [from Mondo 2000
magazine], modified with text
and paint by Leftwich, ca. 1999.

Let Fall

1 7 1 ) J im Leftwich
From an original series titled
“Magnetic Word Poems,” August 2001.
Cover of HW#14
172) Jim Leftwich
Front cover of his book, HW#14
[Charlottesviller, VA]: Xtantbooks, 2001.
One-of-a-kind artist’s book.
Burroughs Modified

173) Jim 175) Jim Leftwich

Leftwich Another page from item 174
A page spread from his referred to above.
one-of-a-kind artist’s
book, CDDDI, ca. 2003.

Burroughs Modified
Page Spread
102 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 103

177) Jim Leftwich

From a series titled “Newspaper
Collages September 11,2001.”
Original collage dated
September 13, 2001.

Mark

since the ice

1 7 6 ) J im Leftwich
“since the ice,” paint on text,
May 2001.

Among Knots

179) Ken Harris and Jim Leftwich

residential section
A collaborative poem, 2002.
178) Jim Leftwich
“residential section,” manipulated
photocopy text with paint, 2002.
104 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 105

181) Jim Leftwich 183) d. a. levy

Page from a construction- From his book, Scarab Poems,
paper pad, mixed media, 2001. [England]: Writers Forum, 1978.
The piece was made in 1967.

Asemic Word Art

Notice

Asemic Word Art

1 8 0 ) Jim Leftwich V I Demand

a n d Marilyn Dammann
From their one-of-a-kind 185) Ruhe Lücentezza 184) Olchar E. Linds a n n
artist’s book, Asemic Anti-War From his book Concrescent Poetry From his “The Bloodless Gut Anti-
Songs #5, 2002. [Charlottesville, VA]: Xtantbooks, Manifesto,” in The Appropriated Press,
Institute for Study & Perception, series 6, vol. 6, issue 5.5, 2003.
acts re 2003.
182) Jim Leftwich
“acts re,” folded text, 2002.
106 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 107

187) Carlos M. Luis

From the book, O, Vozque Pulp
[texts by Derek White; images by
Carlos M. Luis], New York, NY:
Calamari Press, 2004.

Ojo

188) Carlos M. Luis

“Affiche,” mixed media, ca. 2005.

Model

1 86) Joel Lipman

Art from the front cover of a program for a poetry reading,
Some Chemistry, Toledo, Ohio: Red Star Productions, Toledo Poets
Center Press, 1993.
Affiche
108 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 109

192) Carlos M. Luis

From his book, Disfunctional
Texts I-II: A Selection,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte
Prods, 2003.

E S.
┼ + ∩

1 8 9 ) C a r los M. Luis
190) Carlos M. Luis
“E S.,” from his book, Texticles & Other
“┼ + ∩,” from his book, Texticles
Texts [Miami, FL: Carlos M. Luis], 2004.
& Other Texts, op cit.

Las Osamentas

193) Carlos M. Luis

From his book, Contraloquios y
Peritextos [Miami, FL: Carlos M.
Luis], 2002. Edition limited to
50 copies.

OBPU Para Comenzar

191) Carlos M. Luis
“OBPU,” from his book, Collages
[Miami, FL: Carlos M. Luis], 2004.
110 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 111

195) Eric Lunde

From his book, Aphasic
Machine [Bloomington, MN]:
Kanshiketsu Editions, 2003.

It Is

Lucifection Imphulian
And Live Happily

1 9 4) Carlos M. Lui s 196) Scott MacLeod 197) Scott MacLeo d

From his book, Si No Si Da Rio [Miami, FL]: Carlos M. Luis, 2002. “Lucifection,” from his pad of original “Imphulian,” from his pad of original
drawings titled Amygdala 1998-99. drawings titled Amygdala 1998-99.
112 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 113

201) Malok
“Frozen Ass,” original
collage, ca. 1995.
1 9 8) S c o t t M a c L e o d
“Followed,” from his book, The
Trouble I Had, Charlottesville,
VA/Oysterville, WA: Anabasis/
Xtant, 2004.

Followed

Frozen Ass

202) Malok and Bern Porter

Balloonhead
1 9 9) S c o t t M a c L e o d
“Balloonhead,” manuscript, ca. 1990’s.
Also in his artist’s book, Metpo, ca.
1990’s.
Cover of Culture and Society ”Frozen Hypnosis,” original artist’s book,
200) Scott MacLeod ca. 2000. “#7” on cover.
Front cover of his Culture and Society
Have Departed from the Sight of Men [Sl]:
Scott MacLeod, 1999. One of MacLeod’s
one-of-a-kind gathered paper books,
consisting of texts, found printed
matter, notes, and other material. Frozen Hypnosis
114 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 115

Silhouette
203) Gustave Morin
“Silhouette,” from Whitewall Portrait Flash Fiction
of Sound, 33, Winter 2003.
204A) Sheila E. Murphy 205) Sheila E. Murphy
“Contemporary Candian Concrete &
“Portrait,” digital print, ca. 2003? “Flash Fiction,” digital print, 2004.
Visual Poetry,” guest edited by
Derek Beaulieu, published by
Jim Clinefelter, Portland,
Oregon, as a CD-ROM, 2005; and
as a series of photographs, 2003.

2 04) Steve McCaffery

“Land,” from his book, Melon
[Sl]: Gronk, [nd]. grOnk
Series 6, 4.

My Orchids
206) Sheila E. Murphy
Land “My Orchids,” digital print, 2005.
116 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 117

208) Keiichi Nakamura

and Rea Nikonova
“mmclkgrlijij,” from their book
of collaborations, The Tropic
of Cancer, Tokyo, Japan: Keiichi
Nakamura, 2001.

mmclkgrlijij

A Caller
Night Club
207) Musicmaster [AKA Thomas Cassidy]
209) F. A. Nettelbeck
“Night Club,” original mixed media, ca. 2004.
Page spread from a manuscript notebook titled “Summer, 1981 (notes).”
Contains notes made in California, Oregon, and possibly Texas.
118 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 119

2 1 0 ) F . A. Nettelbeck
“Artificial Testicles,” manuscript 212) F. A. Nettelbeck
page, ca. 1970’s. Shows fragmented “Bremer Allegedly Fired Five Shots,”
structure used in his Bug Death, manuscript page, 1972. Note at
cf. item 211 below. bottom: “1
st
attempted cut-up.”
This text was used in his Bug Death,
cf. item 211 on previous page.

Artificial Testicles
Bremer Allegedly Fired Five Shots

213) F. A. Nettelbeck
211) F. A. Nettelbeck “Your Bloody Organs,” manuscript page,
“Iris Wand came home,” sheet of ca. 1973. Nettelbeck’s note on this
newspaper clippings used in his book sheet reads, “Spontaneously typed
Bug Death, Santa Cruz, CA: Alcatraz page with sections that later became
Editions, 1979. part of Bug Death,” cf. item 211 on
previous page.

Iris Wand came home Your Bloody Organs

120 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 121

216) Stuart Pid

Sight, State College, PA: IZEN [nd]. This is
214) B. P. Nichol [bpNichol] a small book (50mm X 12mm) consisting of the
“BBBaaa,” from his book, KON 66 & 67: For word “sight” on the front cover, followed by
Jiri Valoch, Maxville, Ontario: Above/Ground several leaves of clear plastic that, when
Press, 2002. turned, gradually reveal the second word,
“insight,” on the inside back cover.

BBBaaa

Sight

Output AET
Braaaaakit
217) Bern Porter 218) Bern Porter
215) Michael Peters “Output,” from his book, Found Poems, “AET,” from his book, Gee-Whizzels,
“Braaaaakit,” from Visual Poetry, [introduction by]
Millertown, NY: Something Else Press, 1972. Rockland: Maine Coast Printers [1972?].
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL: Burban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
122 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 123

21 9 ) L a n n y Q u a r l es
“ZoEllum,” from his CD book,
Trashpo, Portland, OR: Lanny
Quarles, ca. 2004.

ZoEllum

220) Lanny Quarles

“Portrait,” from Visual Poetry,
[introduction by] Carlos M.
Luis, Miami, FL: Durban Segnini
Gallery, 2005.

An Egg Case Escape Mechanism

221) Marilyn R. Rosenberg

“An Egg Case Escape Mechanism,” broadside, 1994.
Portrait
124 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 125

2 2 2 ) M a r ilyn R. 224) Marilyn R.

R o se n b e r g Rosenberg
“No Parking,” broadside, 1994. “Self-Portrait/Profile/
Poem,” broadside on
transparent sheet, 1970.

Self-Portrait/Profile/Poem

No Parking

Some Things Never Change (left) Some Things Never Change (right)

Wheelwork 225) Marilyn R. Rosenberg 226) Marilyn R. Rosenberg

2 2 3 ) Marilyn R. Rosenberg “Left” side of “Some Things Never Change – “Right” side of “Some Things Never
A page spread from her artist’s book, Wheelwork, 1986.
Left, Right,” broadside, 1983. Change – Left, Right,” broadside, 1983.
126 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 127

2 2 7) Serge Segay 230) Rea Nikonova

a n d John M. Bennett “Letter to Robin Crozier [1995
Cover art from their book, K, version],” from an untitled
John M. Bennett, Rea Nikonova, manuscript, ca. 2001. In the
Serge Segay, Columbus, OH: Luna Jim Leftwich Collection.
Bisonte Prods, 2005.

Cover of K

Letter to Robin Crozier [1995 version]

dorm dorm

2 2 8 ) S e rge Segay and

J o h n M . Bennett
“dome dorm,” from their book, Baden
Where Foam, Columbus, OH: Luna
Bisonte Prods, 1997.
Sound Impressions of Transpirator
Visual Poem Visual Poem
229) Serge Segay
“Sound Impressions of Transpirator,” from
231) Rea Nikonova 232) Rea Nikonova
Visual poem from a book titled, Serge Segay, Visual poem from an untitled manuscript,
his manuscript, Picto and Other Poems, ca.
Rea Nikonova [Sl]: Anabasis/Xtant, 2003. ca. 2001. In the Jim Leftwich Collection.
2002. In the Jim Leftwich Collection.
128 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 129

236) Spencer Selby

“If the Moon Is Not High,” from
his book, Stigma, Oakland, CA:
Score [1994?].

Lust er

2 3 3 ) Rea Nikonova and

J o h n M. Bennett
“Lust er,” from their book, K, John M.
Bennett, Rea Nikonova, Serge Segay,
Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 2005.
Visual Poem
234) Serge Segay
If the Moon Is Not High
Visual poem from his manuscript,
Picto and Other Poems, ca. 2002.
In the Jim Leftwich Collection.

Now What Be Brighter in the

2 3 5 ) R ea Nikonova
“ttutt,” from an untitled
manuscript, ca. 2001. In the 237) Spencer Selby 238) Spencer S e l b y
Jim Leftwich Collection. “Now What Be Brighter,” from his book, Malleable “in the,” from his book, Problem
Cast, Mentor, OH: Generator Press, 1995. Pictures, Berkeley, CA: SINK
Press, 2003.

ttutt
130 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 131

Lightbulb

240) Carol Stetser

From her book, A Box of
Pandoras, [Sedona, AZ]: Carol
Stetser, 2002.

AAuthor’s LLocation 241) Carol Stetser

From her artist’s book, On the Road:
The Calligraphic Tracings of Tar
2 3 9 ) A l a n S o n d h eim
Filling the Cracks in the Asphalt
“AAuthor’s LLocation,” from his book, [an,ode,,
Road, Sedona, AZ: Carol Stetser, 2004.
[Sl]: Burning Deck Press, 1968.
On the Road
132 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 133

242) Lucien Suel

A page from his book, Les
Dérivées: Poème, Berquette,
France: Station Underground
d’Emerveillant Littéraire, 1995.
Cf. item 23 for a treatment of
other texts from this book.

Core
Le Squelette 245) Thomas L. Taylor
“Core,” original computer art printout, 1998.

2 43) Hiroshi Tanabu

“Sound,” from his book, Vivid
Sound of Light, London: Writers
Forum, 1995. Open This
What Comes Again
246) Thomas L. Taylor
244) Thomas L. Taylor “Open This” [nd]. One of a group
“What Comes Again,” no. 46 from a of approximately 63 original visual
Sound
series of text and image pieces, 2002. poems on cards.
134 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 135

247) Thomas L. Taylor

from a 1974 drawing pad titled, The
Mating:Merging:Mandalas of Eagle & Seed,
“Eagle” is a pseudonym Taylor used for much 250) Thomas L.
of his early work. Taylor
“Triumph to Song,” 1974.
From an original notebook
by “Eagle.”

Triumph to Song

Mandala

Seemed Sort

249) Thomas L. Taylor

“Seemed Sort,” 1997. Color photocopy with
original drawing and writing. Roman Hours
Where’s Foldate
Experienced As
2 4 8 ) T h o mas L. Taylor 251) Thomas L. Taylor 252) Thomas L. Taylor
“Experienced As,” ca. 1070’s. From a “Where’s Foldate,” from his manuscript, “Roman Hours,” from his manuscript,
group of exercise sheets Taylor gave to Hermetic Series, 1995. Original drawing Hermetic Series, 1995. Original
the classes he was teaching. and printout. calligraphy and paint on printout.
136 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 137

O
253) Thomas L. Taylor
“O,” from his manuscript, Intentional Series, 1995.

oye Round Space

256) Andrew Topel and 257) Andrew Topel

John M. Bennett “Round Space,” from his book, Spheres,
From their collaborative book, RO, Portland, ME: Tonerworks, ca. 2005.
Columbus, OH/Ft. Collins, CO: Luna
Bisonte Prods/Avantacular Press, 2006.

258) Andrew Topel

“Two Magnetic Minds,” from
his book, Mystification [Sl]:
Avantacular Press, 2003.

Thus No Outer Doubts Wherein Split

2 5 4 ) T h o mas L. Taylor 255) Thomas L. Taylor

“Thus No Outer Doubts,” from his manuscript, “Wherein Split,” from his manuscript,
Hermetic Series, 1995. Hermetic Series, 1995. Two Magnetic Minds
138 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 139

261) Nico Vassilakis

“TRNW,” from his book, The
Remington Vispoems, Seattle: Nico
Vassilakis, 2005.

262) Elizabeth Was

Front cover (with window) of her
book, Compulsively, Spilled, Madison,
WI: Xexoxial Editions, 1991.

TRNW

S Droplet Sign Language

2 5 9 ) A n d rew Topel and 260) Andrew Topel

J o h n M . Bennett A page from his book, Sign Language, Cover of Compulsively, Spilled
“S Droplet,” from their collaborative [Ft. Collins, CO]: Avantacular Press,
book, Manifesto, Fort Collins, CO: 2005.
Avantacular Press, 2005.

263) Elizabeth Was

“Blak,” from her book, Eye
Shadow, LaFarge, WI: Xexoxial
Editions, 1985
Blak
140 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S A V A N T G A R D E P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N 141

265) Irving Weiss 266) Derek White

“Horror Poem,” a two-page work from “Scales of Evolution,” from
his book, Visual Voices: The Poem his book, 23 Text Files,
as a Print Object, Port Charlotte, New York, NY: Calamari
FL: Runaway Spoon Press, 1994. Press, 2003.

Horror Poem

Scales of Evolution

Gloss Twombly

2 6 4 ) Irving Weiss
“Gloss Twombly,” from Visual Poetry,
267) Derek White
“Hoof Product,” from Visual
[introduction by] Carlos M. Luis, Miami,
Poetry, [introduction by]
FL: Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.
Carlos M. Luis, Miami, FL:
Durban Segnini Gallery, 2005.

Horror Poem

Hoof Product
142 T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y L I B R A R I E S

Second T

2 6 8 ) R e id Wood and Karl Young

“Second T,” from their collaborative CD, Collaborations,
[Oberlin, OH]: Reid Wood, 2004.
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AVA N T GARDE WRITING COLLECTION