before i get to the "what i found remarkable", i think, feel and see a need for context. context is a necessary addition within this discussion by visual poets on the spidertange list because there has been none. the november 2008 issue of poetry mag is not merely another mag with some visual poems as a feature. it is not just another emag issue among many with visual poetry. like it or not, it is the only poetry magazine found throughout our country's library systems and probably the most widely read poetry mag by poets and non poets in this country.

i had to be reminded of this and so i pass on the reminding. another context is that one of the main characters in the founding and early years in harriet monroe's poetry mag's rise to fame was ezra pound. for easy digestion, she tempered down his writings in the mag. it is their efforts upon which poetry mag remains a force to this day.

pound was a player in the early visual poetry and its rise in the last century; he had a hand on BLAST for one, encouraged and supported visual poets in the 20's and onward. his interest in ideograms also influenced visual poetry. he interacted with many japanese visual poets during this period. this included an extensive correspondence with kitasono, the founder of the japanese visual poetry group, VOU, and attempted in the 50's to bring him together with the concrete movement in brasil — the brasilian concrete movement named itself "noigandres" after a few lines in pound's canto XX. this was no casual triangulated correspondence and relationship. so, the mag poetry in its past had a strong link with visual poetry.

then, there is the fact that this issue of poetry graciously gave visual poetry its first large scale stage and exposure in over 40 years, the concrete anthologies being the last large public exposure. (it seems the mag lost contact with its past; this feature seems a bit over due.) one would hope, then, the selected visual poems for this issue would make an earthquake of epic proportions at least with the readers of poetry mag first and foremost and among the composers of visual poetry.

the last context is a question. if this presentation of visual poetry was your first introduction, would you be interested enough to pursue more?

with this and more in mind body and spirit, i suggest a look at this event within this frame. for me, this is not an unimportant and isolated moment in visual poetry.

alas, the issue caused much grumbling among visual poets. besides a few emails to the web at poetry foundation, a loud roar of silence followed its arrival. by few, i mean number of individuals. the grumbling among the visual poets has not been very public. many who submitted work and were rejected felt, and i guess still feel, they cannot come forward with their criticism without the ladle full of sour grapes poured over them. to be open here, i submitted work. huth passed one on and it was rejected. my head is tilted back waiting the sour grape call and pour.

this is not about sour grapes; matters not to me that i was rejected, but it matters to me that those i consider top notch visual poets were rejected. other high quality visual poets, because of the process and or editor, refused to participate. i was an optimist disregarding their pessimistic forecast of the end results.

upon reading the first sentence in the intro by huth ("The child of both poetry and the visual arts, visual poetry has a double set of interests and its forms are myriad."), i was deeply concerned. huth may be a child of art and lit, but visual poetry in its long global history with its many antecedent streams and rivers is a grand old ancient. soon thereafter he continues the misinformation and ideology that the sole ancestor of contemporary visual poetry is the pattern poem from greece onward. this was hoisted upon us by higgins and the concreters to frame their specific and narrow genre within the vaster and wider spectrum.

nor i am the only one noting this reductionism that disappears rock art symbology dependent upon narrative, ceramic symbology that continued from rock art eventually finding its way into writing systems or as accompanying illumination on small and large scale presentation, calligraphies, illuminated books and codices of all sorts from a variety of cultures, etc. he also jumps from mimeo to xexox limited editions to the web forgetting to mention the bursting forth from the mid 70's through the 90's of offset magazines and journals publishing a great blooming of american and international visual poetry. he also disappears the global mail art exhibition phenomena with its catalogs of the same period, a vast percentage of which were visual poems. lastly, he forgoes mentioning the great creative global urban movement of huge multi colored spray can painted panels and walls of language based graffiti equal to and often surpassing the majority of visual poetry and concrete works of the 80's and 90's. whether or not anyone agrees with me here about this and the entire shallow intro, huth had the opportunity at least to have provided a wealth of web links for folks to followup should they be curious enough to do so and to prop up global visual poetry.

if you take a moment either now or after completing my little piece, go to kaldron () and scroll down to the surveys. you will note ernst, helmes and lipman count among those surveyed. also, among individuals published, work by basinski can been seen; work by huth is found in "The Institute of Broken and Reduced Languages." so, five of the players' works i have had a hand in publishing directly or indirectly on-line. in the printed issues of my mag, helmes was featured a number of times. helmes, ernst, lipman, gallo and grumman (see below) i exhibited in one or more of the many international exhibitions i curated or published in issues of kaldron.

so, what i find remarkable in this goal to show case visual poems in a wide public arena is that there is nothing remarkable. these could have appeared in any emag and be among the counted but not necessarily the standing tall. i would not have selected any of them for a kaldron issue. i would have requested more to select from. there is no next step evolution of work by any of the selected, nor nothing made new. further, these works do not meet the level of previous works. again, look at the kaldron surveys for a compare and contrast. the poetry mag issue is, as huth implies in his intro, a glimpse, a peek-a-boo. it is not a knock you over announcement that THIS is visual poetry!

how many readers of poetry mag unfamiliar with visual poetry wrote in to express interest in it? hundreds? many tens? a handful? five?

huth has complained his palette was too small. i would have written back and requested more work if i did not have enough to select from. i would have demanded more quality. if the submission rate was telling in insufficient numbers, i would have constantly reminded the world wide community of visual poets to send, send, send. to me, that is one of the roles of an editor, work hard to get the best. this did not happen.

perhaps i think this issue is more important than it is. perhaps it is just another special feature and then the audience moves on and forgets.

the issue does what the concrete anthologies did, create a huge yawn among most lexical poets and a bit of snarking and sniping by others replied to by some visual poets. this issue maintains the status quo; visual poets remain delegated to the caboose of the poetry train.

as i understand the process, whether it is fair or unfair, huth signed up for it. he did so with full awareness that he did not have final say. thus, he handed over the first major public viewing of visual poems to individuals with no deep, wide or tall knowledge or participation in visual poetry. so, this is what we get, a small ripple, if that, in the huge lake of visual poetry. but we do get a large back wash the waves of which set visual poetry backwards — again — in the public eye.

now, as far as grumman's review of this poetry mag issue in the may/ june 2009 small press review issue, i point to his public email in spidertangle where he said he held back on his full truth. i know he did. we had many exchanges about this. he has yet to answer whether or not he held back 50 or 25 per cent.

this is further negative fallout from this issue. holding back actual response out of fear. fear of what? has american visual poetry reached the tipping point of fearing to state one's heartfelt truth or vision? this is even more remarkable.

karl kempton
summer solstice eve 2009
oceano ca