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via dbqp: visualizing poetics by Geof Huth on 3/9/09
Every visual poem is about boundaries and the broaching of boundaries, so every magazine of visual poetry has to be the same, and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's new online zine, Medulla, whose first issue is a snazzy affair small enough to drink with a couple of quick gulps, does not disappoint
The magazine opens with a few bursts of color and sublimated text, each the handiwork of Daniel f. Bradley, who has moved deftly into the world of color. The works have an inner glow that coats the eyeballs in sherbety colors, something I wouldn't expect from Daniel. Yet the pieces, almost to a man, engender a bit of disquietude. The verbal elements of these pieces are so shrunken and disguised to afford almost no help in the interpretation of the pieces, though the last ends with an ironic/dismissive phrase across the face of it ("BRIGHT CITY LIGHTS'). This first piece definitely includes the letters "SC," which seems almost to spell out "scowl" or "scud" or "screw." We are left scratching out heads but sure the word is meant not as something naturally pretty but as something a little offputting.
Jim Leftwich is one of the machines of visual poetry production (along with Jukka-Pekka, the editor), but some machines have hearts and minds, and Jim's work, which uses collage most commonly, is never merely the accumulation of random bits. The pieces talk. They make points to us. We are meant to read them. In this little collage poem, Jim takes pieces of the consumerist world, but particularly dry and boring pieces, and he mixes with them scraps of newspaper clippings about the war, presumably the War in Iraq. This is a simple anti-war message, but also anti-consumerist, and anti-so-blind-from-mindless-consumption-that-you-don't-even-notice-the-carnage-carried-out-in-your-name. This piece seems unassuming, maybe meaningless, but it is passionate in a way that only its dispassionate presentation could demonstrate.
I have to admit that I am a sucker for any image that comes from the fingers of Musicmaster, so I'm happy to see that he is working so studiously with John M. Bennett on collaborations. This one is interesting for its unsubtlety: Upon the foundation of a poem of John's, one simply printed out onto a page of paper, Musicmaster has drawn one of his surrealist figures, which appears to illustrate everything in the poem (clog, pesto, hair, noose) without clearly integrating itself with the poem. It even obscures some of the poem, restricting our ability to read it. Yet I can read it, can hear John's voice declaiming it, can appreciate how this jumbly little collaboration, a weird drawing upon a tumbling post-surrealist poem, works just perfectly because working isn't its major goal.
Everyone except for Márton Koppány has multiple pieces in this book, but Márton works unlike his compatriots. He works slowly, producing only a few tight, verbally spare yet intellectually dense pieces of conceptual visual poetry every year. And the works are demanding. He demands more out of a reader of visual poetry than any other visual poet, and he stumps me far too often. This poem above is simply the letter A (or an upside-down V), with a few clouds thrown in to complete the letter. I see in the letter the vanishing point, the two far edges of the road coming together in the distance, straight rigid lines that merely move forward, but which are impeded by these three clouds, tinged with storminess, soft yet a little menacing, soft but soft in contradistinction to the hard surety of the roadway leading to disappearance. I see travel that is planned out, designed to move forward, but which is slowed by the unexpected.
There are pieces in this magazine that even I can't consider visual poetry myself. Among these are these beautiful abstract paintings by Peter Ganick. I love the colors of these and how they swirl together, but I can see no words, no letters in these swirls. I see nothing textual and thus nothing visual poetic, but I love them just the same. Similarly, Greg Evason's drawings earlier in the magazine are merely tied little doodles and scribbles. These do not intimate written language, so we cannot assume they are related to language. So this magazine stretches beyond visual poetry without admitting it does, but what do I care? Medulla is an interesting and engaging selection, and a good way to exercise your eyes and your mind.
ecr. l'inf.
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