Dear fellow workers:
Visual poetry I think actually begins with cave paintings--petroglyphs--
the relationships among presenting visually and sounding--
forms, colors, lines considered as both visual and sound--
and then used as scores as well for performance--
dance--
often it is considered that Mallarme created modern visual poetry
with his "Un Coup de des"--
the Russian and Italian Futurists--of very different political ideas--
and Cubists painters and poets, the Dadas--contributed much to modern
visual poetry-
the history of it has been very rich in the European and Latin American
countries--
in the USA we are very fortunate to live in a time with John M Bennett's
LOST AND FOUND TIMES--Harry Burrus' O!!Zone--Crag Hill's SCORE--
David Stone's BLACKBIRD--
journals that present the great variety of visual poetry being done--
all over the world--
also there are many presses in Canada that publish a lot of good work--
and Dimitry Bulatov in Russia--
also web sites such as one from here in Wisconsin--
Karl Young's Light and Dust--which has a lot of work by Patchen and also
the great bpNichol--
d.a.levy as well from the USA--
I have been published a lot as a visual poet--I don't have a definition
of it--
I always have the hope that, like mail art, it will remain a wide open
field--
in each person and place it becomes an event--
the page becomes a space of action--
it is true so called Concrete Poetry "solidified" many people's ideas of
visual poetry--
but it was before and has continued to be site/sight/cite of work
that has varied greatly--
with historical/political implications--
that is its power
actually--I support strongly Bennett's "poetic aggression"--
freedom of speech, writing--these are essential--
the history of visual poetry in itself--in all its presentations--has
been a struggle
with this --
and as well a great shout and song of freedom--
davidbc
