Hello all

I'm not sure that the chronology is very helpful though. To say, for 
example, that Bob Cobbing's work from the 1960s is 'concrete' and mIEKAL 
aND's contemporary work is 'visual' doesn't make much sense to me anyway. 
And the chronlogy leaves out Mallarme's Un Coup de Des altogether, and 
Apollinaire.

MacCaffery talked about clean and dirty visual poetry, another couple of 
terms (and not suggested as a replacement for anything)  but which make 
sense to me:

"… the presence of two fundamental tendencies. One towards the clean and the 
other towards the dirty. Dirty concrete characterises much of the British 
scene (for instance the work of Bob Cobbing, Paula Claire, Bill Griffiths, 
Clive Fencott, cris cheek, and Lawrence Upton). Which can be described as a 
preference for textual obliteration rather than manifestation, and the use 
of found objects as notation for sound performance … In contrast “clean” 
concrete is epitomised in the spatialist texts of Pierre and Ilse Garnier, 
Gomringer’s konstellationen, the semiotic texts of Décio Pignatari, and in 
much of the earlier work of the Campos brothers. "

He suggests that “dirty” concrete poetry engaged with and interrogated the 
tendency of “clean” concrete poetry towards closure. There are other 
connected differences. The first is the further development of ideas of the 
architectural and a subsequent interest in “three dimensional” or layered 
work, as against work which representes two-dimensions. 'Dirty' work takes 
on the attrributes of a lived space, like a building which is produced by 
moving through it (see MacCaffery's Carnival  - it's on-line somewhere). 
There is no single perspective, but the poem is capable of being constructed 
in a variety of ways, just as it is possible to move through a building in 
different ways and examine it from different perspectives. The second is the 
relationship between dirty concrete and ideas of the “baroque”.

"Baroque buildings have has never ceased to annoy the purists because they 
strive after the impossible, aiming to suggest to viewers that they are 
watching an unfolding process rather than a fixed and finished composition." 
(Harbison)

The Baroque is characterised as being without perspective or with multiple 
perspectives. It is an experience that draws “reader” and “read” into the 
same frame and which breaks down borders between viewer and viewed. In her 
work on the baroque, neo-baroque and modern entertainment media, Angel 
Ndalianis refers to the “seventeenth and late twentieth centuries’ shared 
fascination with spectacle, illusionism, and the baroque formal principle of 
the collapse of the frame”

There is also, of course, the idea of the 'postlinear' (see the Out of 
Everywhere anthology), another chronological term I know, as if after the 
liberation of 'free verse' at the start of the 20th century the line itself 
had become a restriction or a boundary and poets no longer wanted to 'stay 
in line'.

There are also those poets who use the space of the page, see Ed Dorn's 
Languedoc Variorum as an example, as a place of composition. In LV Dorn 
divides the pages into three to influence processes of composition and 
reading.

As I said before, I see the visual in poetry as connected to and being part 
of a variety of practices, although of course more emphasised in some, 
ranging from pattern, to concrete, to the sonnet (most of us can recognise 
the shape of a sonnet without reading it) to free verse, to the ballad, to 
compostition by the page, to the postlinear, to digital poetry, to poetry 
which draws on the concept of the text or language as material.

Ian

>From: mairead byrne <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: mairead byrne <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: skald 22 - the visual issue (now you see it ...)
>Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:39:51 -0500
>
>Well you can see the difficulty of conducting a discussion without agreed
>terms, a difficulty scholars of VP+ freely acknowledge.  I tend to
>understand the terms as chronologically-specific, i.e., pattern poetry, as 
>a
>tradition in English poetry, tails off in the 19th century.  Visual Poetry
>is a late 20th/early 21st century term.  Concrete poetry relates to
>Brazilian, European, and American work 1940s-1970s (although I have 
>admitted
>to using this term myself to encompass Sound Poetry, Visual Poetry, Kinetic
>Poetry, and Cybernetic Poetry -- all terms which someone else might balk
>at).
>
>I don't know why constructing or identifying a tradition for visual poetry
>is somehow suspect, as you and Peter have suggested.  Practitioners, like
>Dan Waber for example, tend to be very well-versed in the traditions, as 
>his
>logolalia site evidences.  Are you really suggesting that vizpo is some
>contemporary or modern free-floating phenomenon with no antecedents
>poetically?  I can't believe you're saying that -- as you know (witness out
>age-old discussions on Sylvia Plath) I have an acutely historical sense of
>cultural production.  Even metaphor, just like the forms of pattern poetry,
>is conventional and convention-bound, as are the subject-matter and forms 
>of
>poetry.
>
>I offered examples of animosity directed against pattern poetry, which
>emphasises shape and pattern.  I could have offered examples relating to
>color.  What would it mean if you submitted your excellent verses in a nice
>passionate red font??? Eh?  How about yellow paper?  Would not use of color
>be interpreted as amateurism of an undesirable sort?  And how did this get
>to be?  (this is the sort of question that interests me, I don't 
>necessarily
>have the answer: I just speculate: oh, the connection between liturgy and
>literature, puritanism, even down with rubrics eventually).  What makes
>black and white so respectable?  Such a rigorous and clerical instrument 
>for
>the expression of our waywardness?  Thank God for the Web!  Thank God for
>color!  Viva colored words, colored paper, etc!
>
>Sure modern opinion cares what people thought in the 18th century.  Lots of
>people still think like that!  Lots of people still think like the Greeks.
>There a bit of Greek in all of us.  I myself have only partially made the
>adjustment from fundamentalism to relativity.  And Galileo has not 
>convinced
>everyone, effectively.
>
>But I will speak no more forever.  I am beginning to be repetitive.
>
>Mairead
>
>
>On 1/10/06, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > I think we've been misunderstanding each other for the last few
> > interchanges. I was responding to "My own theory is
> > that a certain snobbery attached to the written work and the ability to
> > read without pictures.  Also, maybe, a puritanical rejection of color, 
>and
> > the economics and logistics of printing" and not to anything about 
>pattern
> > poetry specifically. The confusion, on my part at least, I think comes 
>from
> > the indeterminacy of the terms, or else from my own dunderheadedness. I
> > thought we were talking about vizpo, of which, as I understand it, 
>pattern
> > poems are a very small subset. And I thought that the appeal to a 
>tradition
> > was for vizpo in general, which made no sense to me other than as an 
>attempt
> > to create a history for the sake of prestige. Which by the way, 
>considering
> > the regard for Herbert since at least the new critics, would be attached 
>to
> > his practice despite the opinions in the intervening centuries, as it 
>does
> > for other once discredited poets, like Donne, Smart and Herbert. I was
> > aware, by the way, of the past dismissal of Herbert et al. But modern
> > opinion really doesn't care what anyone thought in the 18th Century.
> >
> > Let me try to clarify: I didn't think you were saying that vizpo was the
> > same as modern pattern poetry, and that modern pattern poetry derived 
>from
> > someone looking at Herbert and friends and saying, "Gee, I should try 
>that."
> > But it sure got confusing.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> > At 09:25 PM 1/9/2006 -0500, mairead byrne wrote:
> >
> >  Well, since I obviously have no credibility with you, Mark, I can only
> > refer you to the many attacks on pattern poetry by William Webbe, Thomas
> > Nashe, and Gabriel Harvey in the late 16 th century; Ben Jonson, Thomas
> > Hobbes, Samuel Butler and John Dryden in the 17th century; Alexander 
>Pope
> > and Joseph Addison in the 18th century – here's a flavor of Joseph
> > Addison, writing for The Spectator:
> >
> >
> >       I observed there were attempts on foot last winter to revive some 
>of
> > those antiquated modes
> >       of wit that have long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters.
> > There were several satires
> >       and paneygyrics handed about in acrostic, by which means some of 
>the
> > most arrant
> >       undisputed blockheads about the town began to entertain ambitious
> > thoughts, and to set up for
> >       polite authors." (The Spectator, no. 58, 1, 246)
> >
> >
> >
> > Interestingly, many of the 18th century critics object to pattern poetry
> > for the same reasons they object to metaphor: all a reflection of 
>Hobbesian
> > philosophy, marked to an equal extent by its contumely against metaphor 
>and
> > its utter dependence on it.
> >
> >
> >
> > From the 16th century on, there is endless snobbery directed at pattern
> > poetry, whether fuelled by animosity against the bourgeoisie, women, or 
>folk
> > art.   Its practitioners tended to be isolated, and its scholars few and 
>far
> > between.  An infamous contemporary example of official blindness to the
> > visual aspects of a poem is Helen Vendler's critique of Herbert ("Easter
> > Wings," I think),  which actually did not refer at any point to the 
>shape of
> > the poem.
> >
> >
> > As Dick Higgins says in his book on pattern poetry, "the works on 
>poetics
> > which describe or advocate pattern poetry …   do not match the passion 
>and
> > intensity of the attacks on it" (15).
> > Even the few scholars of pattern poetry can be disparaging (but not the
> > great Dick Higgins).
> > Here's Kenneth Newell, author of one of the very few books on the 
>subject:
> >
> >
> >       A pattern poem (also called a poem of shaped verse) consists of 
>one
> > or more stanzas, each
> >       of which is printed upon the page so that its type will outline a
> > recognizable picture to the
> >       reader's eye.  The picture may be a geometric design, a silhouette
> > of some concrete object,
> >       or even an abstract representation of some mood or idea similar to
> > that found in the words of
> >       the stanza.  It is not likely that a student of English literature
> > will go through undergraduate and
> >       graduate schools without having seen what is described above.  
>Yet,
> > it is likely that, having
> >       seen it, he will not recognize it as a member of a specific genre.
> > He will read it once and
> >       discount it as affected, freakish, and not worthy of prolonged
> > attention.  This example does not
> >       show his narrow-mindedness but rather the narrowness of appeal in
> > the subject itself.
> >       (Pattern Poetry: A Historical Critique from the Alexandrian Greeks
> > to Dylan Thomas,   Boston,
> >       Marlborough House, 1976, ix).
> >
> >
> > If you would like to reflect on the consequences of the use of image in
> > poetry, apart from pattern poetry,   you might like to ponder the career 
>of
> > William Blake, poet, as poetry is our subject.
> >
> > Mairead
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/9/06, *Mark Weiss* <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >It's 
>interesting
> > that you mention respectability -- a  feature which >poetry using overt
> > visual elements has rarely enjoyed.  My own theory is >that a certain
> > snobbery attached to the written work and the ability to >read without
> > pictures.  Also, maybe, a puritanical rejection of color, and >the
> > economics and logistics of printing. > >Mairead >
> >
> > I rather doubt that, given the tradition of the finely-made book in 
>deluxe
> > binding, usually lavishly illustrated, sometimes hand-colored and, 
>during its
> > fad, with paintings on the edges. Often published "by subscription," 
>with
> > the list of subscribing lords and right-honorables included. I have a 
>lovely
> > copy of Stedman's The Revolt in Surinam, for instance, 2 vols folio in
> > tooled leather, with must be over a hundred engravings, many full-page, 
>many
> > by Blake in his guise as commercial illustrator. Not unusual.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >