> > Hi,
> > What poets have come closest in practice to
> > parallelling the mid-century's abstract
> > expressionism movement?

> > Ric

To this, J. Michael Mollohan replied:

> John M. Bennett
> Ficus Strangulensis
> Bob Grumman
> . . .
> I could go on. . .

I then entered the thread:

Interesting question. Thanks for thinking of me, J. Michael. At first, upon reading your post, I thought, yes, I must surely be as ab-ex in my poetry as anyone since I compose ab-ex graphics for use as terms in my long-division poems, and have copied canonical specimens of 1950's ab-ex works into my poems. On reflection, though, I realized that I use ab-ex conceptually rather than do it--although I may be a lot like Gottlieb in that. A poet who uses words the way ab-ex painters used paint, though, is John M. Bennett, whom I've called the Jackson Pollock of contemporary poetry. I see ab-ex painting as non-representational painting at its most visceral, primitive level--a reveling in color as dance-steps, pre-conceptual expression of sub-cerebral inner (animal) states; Bennett, in much of his poetry does something similar with words, which he transforms into sub-verbal vocalizations of sub-cerebral inner states rendered in dance-steps as a literary equivalent of action painting.

I don't think too many poets are much like the abstract-expressionists--but Ficus strangulensis, yes--and you, J. Michael, too. Mike Basinski in some of his work. Jackson Mac Low, very possibly, although I'm not sufficiently conversant with his work to be sure. But certainly not post-Eliot/Pound jump-cut poets like Jorie Graham. Nor most language poets, I don't think, who seem to me to have different aims than the ab-ex painters.

There, sort of a beginning sketch for yet another essay I'd like to write one of these days.