Received: Bifidus Jones mail art from the vispo phase (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

September 14, 2010 - Bifidus Jones recently sent me a stunning piece that integrates many vispo elements that have been mentioned in IUOMA discussions, notably layering (or over-laying) and integration of image with text. I like the expansive juxtapositions suggesting history, prehistory, and varied textual material - including handwriting. The part of this piece that interests me most is what might be a fragment of text about copper mining. Could this be (Thierry just shot Temporary Amnesia with his airgun; I'll never get the thought back). Bifidus extended this piece from the address side:

"From clutch of clock and/ calendar now fled." I like that a lot.Original? Strangely coherent, though. Somehow familiar. Nice radical enjamb on the "and," whether intentional or not. All in all, this is a wonderful piece that I'm very pleased to add to the growing collection. It has a depth for me, and when I return to it I keep finding new things. As synchronicity would have it, I also had sitting alongside the mail art a poetry text used widely today in U.S. public schools:

I hope most would agree that concrete poetry is a phase that vispo evolved out of about two decades ago. I've sat out the last few years, and I'm absolutely astounded at the progress that has been made in a relatively short amount of time. Theoretical quagmires have been worked through; seeming artistic impasse has been met with breakthroughs. On another front, it's very positive indeed to see this "genre" has a foothold in the mainstream because there should be some interesting times ahead as recent developments find their way into the broader culture, or cultures. However, I heed David-Baptiste Chirot's warning to avoid anything that looks like simply a "formalist exercise." Burroughs seems to be proven perpetually accurate: "Language is a virus." Thank you for the mail art, Bifidus Jones of Minnesota.

IN HONOR OF BIFIDUS JONES - HERO OF THE MINNESOTA INSURRECTION

(Sponsored by Animals Against Antonism and the Relief Fund for Anti-Artists Assaulted by Airguns)

[De Villo Sloan]

Bifidus, this is just something else completely. Do you realize how much you managed to put on a single postcard? If Pound had been a mail artist, what would The Cantos be? Please keep me on your mailing list.

[Bifidus Jones]

The title for my mail art "clutch of clock and/calendar now fled" comes from an uneasy translation of the first line of a Michelangelo poem. The handwriting is in Gaelic and recounts Cuchulainn's battle scene from The Tain, the Irish epic I studied while a student at the University of Galway. When Cuchulainn died in battle his fellow soldiers, clever men and always thinking, propped his corpse and spear up against a large rock where he looked so downright scary the approaching enemy retreated (something for my fellow Minnesota uprisers to keep in mind should I fall on the field).
And thanks for the Planet of the Apes scene--a great movie. I esp. like the line, "take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape"--an applicable quote in so many circumstances.
MN's fight for independence continues. And here I am, a member of IUOMA's Mail Art for Peace and Love, Forever group. Glad to have a friend out there like you who I dare hope understands that the rebellion is, among other things, inspired by Ezra Pound and his accurate label for a botched civilization: "an old bitch gone in the teeth." At the risk of insulting you, Mr. Sloan and the vast and deep library I imagine you surround yourself with, I humbly make a suggestion to read, if you haven't already, Andrei Codrescu's, The Poetry Lesson. I stayed up until 3 this morning to finish it because the writing was that wonderful.
On a final note, I am not from St. Cloud, but hail from St. Paul (what a holy republic!) I could not possibly live in St. Cloud--they eat bison for breakfast up there...Vive la Minnesota, n'est-ce pas!