Sent: Concrete poetry to Cheryl Penn (Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa)

[De Villo Sloan]

(from 'deep square wave structure" by Karl Kempton)

October 11, 2010 - So, okay, I'm not actually mailing this. I didn't want to change the blog format for a one-time thing. Cheryl, it's amazing how Mehrl Bennett could put things in perspective with a few comments. Here are examples of absolutely certified, unadulterated concrete poetry by Karl Kempton. Karl - I think he's still around and in California - was/is a central figure in U.S. concrete poetry of the minimalist variety Mehrl was talking about. Back when I was just starting, I co-edited a journal called Access (it survived for one issue). Things had already moved past the point where this kind of concrete poetry was viewed as any kind of cutting-edge (put this in the context of poetry not visual arts), but we wanted to start with someone who was considered an "Old Master," so we picked Karl on the West Coast. He kindly sent us "deep square wave structure," and I'm not sure if he ever re-published it again or not. But when referencing things that are more than just the shape of coke bottles in words, this is concrete poetry. I mean, the guy was doing this stuff on a typewriter. Can you imagine? This would be a distinctly American variety. There were things going on all over the world, of course, but I would say I was especially interested in Germany, and, uh, Belgium... Belgium is a really interesting. In fact, I used to trade mail-art with a guy from there years ago.

More of Karl Kempton's "deep square wave structure"

In comparison, this is what I was doing. For Access, Karl and I were trading things back and forth; and he kindly told me that what I was doing wasn't concrete poetry because of the "overstriking." I think with the passage of times things are leveled a bit - and then it seemed to me that visual poetry just exploded and made quibbling over things like over-striking irrelevant. So maybe now for future IUOMA disccusions we have a baseline for concrete and visual poetry - thanks to a few guiding words from Mehrl.

[cheryl penn]

I've come back here - 669 - that's something it is.

[cheryl penn]

Thank you De Villo - I am emailing you.