RECEIVED: David Stafford's "Language is a Virus" Mail-Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art by IUOMA member David Stafford (Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA)

 

March 15, 2011 - David Stafford is far more than the original ATC Rebel Without A Cause (watch those sticky labels, they're hard to wash away). He has a tremendous sense of humor. He has real skill with satire and parody, and the New Wave in asemic writing is providing ample subject matter as this mail-art proves.

 

David pulls us out of the ether long enough to see a bit of absurdity in this mania. After all, we are dealing with a kind of writing that aims, more or less, to be meaningless and which seeks to communicate nothing. WTF? It is good to step back and question what one is doing sometimes. The reverse side of the piece illustrates the point perfectly. Asemic writing would not do well in a real life emergency, nor would your pharmacist make much sense of it either (or is it ether?):

 

Great work, David, IMHO. Getting mail-art from you is always a refreshing break from the trend further east these days - everyone is just mailing their trash to everyone else. But maybe it's just who you associate with. I always did fall in with the wrong crowd. David Stafford does excellent envelopes too:

Tanks again.

 

 

MAIL-ART PSYCHIC

If you're going to be in the bad girl club, you're going to need tiny flowers. The only thing missing would swell to grotesque proportions among other changes. A mouth full of friends. The former not the ladder. Chances are you will bounce back. Lucky numbers: 2, 14, 32, 33, 39, 43

 

 

MAIL-ART COLOR OF THE DAY: Blue

 

 

MAIL-ART QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

Some one-line poems by Ted Berrigan:

 

 

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

 

There were seven to choose from, all putty.

 

 

I found these Berrigan poems re-reading sections of David Lehman's "The Last Avant Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets." Lehman writes about the so-called second generation to which Berrigan belongs and their interest in the work of Frank O'Hara:

 

"For a band of younger poets that led bohemian lives in the East Village and made St. Mark's Church in the Bowery their poetry headquarters - poets such as Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Bernadette Meyer, John Godfrey, Maureen Owen, Jim Brodey, Tom Clark, Michael Brownstein, Lewis MacAdams, Tony Towle, John Giorno, Lewis Warsh, Alice Notley, and Andre Codrescu - O'Hara was, to use a phrase from one of his poems, 'the wings of  an extraordinary liberty.' Inspired by Lunch Poems, the younger poets turned out diurnal chronicles in the O'Hara manner."

 

I AM A MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW

 

'I know from my own experience that telepathy is a fact."

 

 

[De Villo Sloan]

The very same.

[De Villo Sloan]

Howard?

[De Villo Sloan]

Close but no ceegar. It was another inscrutable Texan named Hughes.

[De Villo Sloan]

You were reading Basil Bunting. It must have been... Lyndon Johnson was president. OMG, you took a leak alongside President Lyndon Johnson on 14th St. near your half step's sister's software store after you "dropped out" of Towson State?

[De Villo Sloan]

& in that same public lavatory on 14th street just spitting distance

 

from the White House & near my half step sister's software store. well

 

i might have had to pee 4 times a day. i dont know. it was

 

a summer day & as I was standing at the urinal i looked

 

to my side & there was a tall man relieving himself. he wore a suit coat & a cowboy

 

hat. now who was the president of the President of the United States when I began

 

reading Basil Bunting?

[De Villo Sloan]

I'm thrilled everyone agrees with me.

[De Villo Sloan]

you have to remember this was before i "dropped out" in 1917; and

 

it WAS THE Buffalo of legend - in flesh, blood & a raincoat

 

standing beside ME at the urinal; i kid

 

you not - not to be confused with Billy the Kid ether

[De Villo Sloan]

OMG Dark wall! Do you mean THE Buffalo Bill? The William Tell of the mainline? The Annie Oakley dare devil?

[De Villo Sloan]

now ya see it's the damned vortcists with their dogs; what

 

we need is some return to the archaic - like Basil Bunting. now when I used to go

 

to my half-step sister's place on 14th St. - and this was before I "dropped out" -

 

I would have to pee. Now this was right near the White House in DC.

 

I would say in those days I would pee about three times a say - when I was

 

at my sister's place on 14th st. Now I would always have to use the public

 

lavatory. And that's where I first met Buffalo Bill.

[De Villo Sloan]

now while I was growing up butt before I

 

"dropped out" which was either before or after vorticism I

 

was in the desert in Utah with the navy reading Basil Bunting. now

 

these "vorticists" could sure stand to read Basil Bunting, i mean ALL of Basil Bunting:

 

because in my half-sister's software store on 14th st. which is right across from

 

the White House well not across from butt slightly adjacent to the White House 

 

which is really where I grew up when I was not in Riverdale & before I dropped out

 

of Townson State in 1917 & then joined the Coast Guard; now I would frequently

 

spit on the sidewalk outside the White House. Butt say Basil Bunting went there

 

& he stood there. I would not spit where he stood. I'd probably shine his shoe.