CALL ME PROJECT by Jon Foster

[Carmela Rizzuto]

CALL ME: Mail Art Call---

I read the poem below in response to Jon Foster’s Call for Entries: CALL ME.  Respondents were asked to call a  phone number and leave a message about mail art.  There were 38 responses. You can listen to them online as a digital recording (Discography) in the following link. 

https://callonme.bandcamp.com/album/call-on-me

My response is # 4--a reading of a Beat-era poem.

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Found in the poetry review titled, Invisible City, No. 23-25, March 1979, Red Hill Press, Fairfax, California.

EXHIBIT 6:

   I’d known Kitasono Katue since 1964 through the mail

   and I haven’t yet actually met him.

   I’d known Edgardo Antonio Vigo since 1965 through the mail

   and I met him in 1975.

   The encounter was almost fortuitous 

   like Malevitch’s white square on the white background,

   it added nothing to the knowledge I had of 

   Vigo.

  The proof of white on white suffices: the material

   proof is nothing.

  Postal route = postal voice

  Read! See!

  Postal route = postal voice

  Thanks to the courier

  The route is the voice

  It’s a unique case.

  This is what mail art is

  and not international competitions of

  stamp-collectors.

  PS:  I met Kitasono Katue in December 1976. 

       The text remains accurate.

                                   — J.B. in DOC(K)S

[jon foster]

Thanks so much for sharing.