Comments on: Visual Poetics 03

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:25:55 +0000

Vivek, I think I can help you out. If you can’t see it on your computer, you can draw it yourself. Just draw a circle. Below that, an identical circle. Below that, a long vertical rectangle. In other words, the letter “i” with two dots. And there’s your novel.
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By: Vivek Narayanan

Vivek Narayanan — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:11:44 +0000

Image doesn’t show up on either Firefox or Explorer…
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By: Vivek Narayanan

Vivek Narayanan — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:09:48 +0000

Hi yes, it would be good– and important– to see the image, please. Perhaps convert to a smaller jpeg image and upload? It may be that the tif file is too large to display properly. Thanks.
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By: Christian Bök

Christian Bök — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:03:55 +0000

Hello, Joseph:
Please–no need to pity my students….
I know that you regard my interventions here as nothing more than “malarkey”–but generally, almost all of my students have evaluated me well above the departmental mean for the quality of my instruction, and I have been nominated by them on many occasions for teaching awards; moreover, they have often thrown parties on my behalf, and I have received lots of mail from past students telling me that I have had a profound, positive impact upon their education. I might also add that several of my graduates from my first, senior class in creative writing have already gone on to publish books of poetry which have received literary awards and critical acclaim.
You may dismiss my whimsical additions to this site (whatever…); nevertheless, I do not believe that my job, as an educator, means reinforcing what you already know–but rather, it means inciting you to suspend your disbelief long enough to contemplate something anomalous to your experience….
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By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:11:08 +0000

I continue to pity Mr. Bök’s students.
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By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:26:59 +0000

At first I didn’t see that it was an “i” with an extra dot. All I saw were a rectangle and two circles. Even when I became aware that it was an “i”, I still had no desire to remove the extra dot. Maybe it’s just due to my passive nature that I don’t want to “intervene”. Or maybe I have a thing for deformed characters.
Anyway, if this is a novel, then anything can be a novel. My elbow, for example.
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By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:49:46 +0000

Christian, I see a filename where you may have expected me to see a big lowercase letter. Maybe it’s a Firefox problem. I take it that if the tif loaded properly I would see a big “i” and that would be the whole “novel”?
I enjoyed your reading (once I figured out what I was supposed to see). The best case for compressed vispo of that kind is that it encourages ingenuity of the kind such readings display (ingenuity which then illuminates other kinds of experience). You’ve convinced me that McCaffery’s vispo work includes or at least makes possible a commentary on the experience of reading novels. But you haven’t convinced me that the term “novel,” in the way that most competent speakers of English use “novel,” ought to include McCaffery’s one-letter (right?) work.
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