Comments on: the vispo challenge

By: C Mehrl Bennett

C Mehrl Bennett — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:24:15 +0000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmehrlbennett
for my own visual poetry, visual poetry collaborations, and a set of kimonos (collaborations); many of which I made for/with visual poets I’m familiar with.
My recent book of visual poetry is available at
http://www.lulu.com/lunabisonteprods
Report this comment

By: karl kempton

karl kempton — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:54:24 +0000

the inernaitonal visual poetry KALDRON on-line site open snce 1996
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/kaldron.htm
Report this comment

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:56:24 +0000

Meant to comment before this to second what David Chirot said and note that I discuss visual poetry often at http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/Index.html. Also at my blog are two galleries devoted to specimens of my own mathematical poetry, a kind of poetry which is to visual poetry so far as recognition goes as visual poetry is to language poetry, and language poetry to mainstream poetry.
I’m not sure what to say about Silliman’s take on visual poetry. I don’t think he knows much about it. Blake is certainly not a visual poet, but an illustrator of conventional poems. Nice to have Silliman sort of on my side, though.
I would add that Stephen Burt is wrong to characterize Cummings’s visiopoetic work as limited to “unusual layout”. (And, yes, it is “Cummings,” not “cummings,” the Madison Avenue misspelling.)
As for what visual poetry is, that’s a contentious question. I say it’s poetry whose verbal and visual elements are approximately of equal aesthetic value. To make a sound bite of it. Who knows what visual poems work best on the web, or anywhere, But Writing To Be Seen, an anthology of visio-textual art I and Crag Hill edited, has many good specimens of them. Most visual poets would agree with me that visual poetry derives from Mallarme and Apollinaire through Cummings, but many do not, wanting to find a more ancient, non-Western lineage for it. Certainly, modern visual poetry derives from Mallarme and Apollinaire. I claim that haiku is also an important ancestor, via minimalist poetry, of contemporary visual poetry.
I tend to think the relation of most current visual poets to the practitioners of other sorts of poetry is small (with the exception of language poetry, which is also innovative and sometimes has visual elements), but some–I, for one–have deep roots in the Western poetry tradition. But most visual poets also compose conventional poems. “Does it make any more, or any less sense, to use the term “visual poetry” for something made as much of images as of words as to use the more familiar term ‘telenovela’?” Yikes, the term, “visual poetry” has been around for decades and is much more familiar to me than “telenovela,” which I never heard of before. Surely, it must have to do with prose fiction? It certainly doesn’t sound like it has any more to do with visual poetry than the term, “novel,” has to do with what I call “solitextual” (for solely textual) poetry.
–Bob Grumman
Report this comment

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:50:33 +0000

Oh, and of course: vispo.com.
Report this comment

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:58:05 +0000

Folks interested in vispo might also check out the Sackner Archives.
Report this comment

By: david baptiste chirot

david baptiste chirot — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:20:45 +0000

There are a great many visual poetry blogs in several languages and a great many web sites. I have a blog which presents a wide variety of works and also have a Mail Art/Visual Poetry exhibition running at it, and starting a new one this week–if you look at the links i have you’ll find lot of great blogs and web sites both–which in turn have further linkes from all over the world.
http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com
Report this comment

By: Tricia

Tricia — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:53:51 +0000

Thanks, Shanna! In the course of my searching I also found kickknees, which features a chubby vispo blogroll.
Report this comment

By: shanna

shanna — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:39:42 +0000

tricia, definitely check out geof huth’s blog here if you haven’t!
Report this comment

By: Tricia

Tricia — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:17:40 +0000

Relatedly, I’ve often wondered why there are so relatively few vispo blogs out there. Art blogs flourish, comics blogs flourish, and poetry blogs certainly flourish, so where is all the vispo? Then again, perhaps my yellow-belt google-fu is to blame–if there are tons of fantastic vispo blogs floating around that have escaped my attention, please post links!
Report this comment