RECEIVED: Visual Poetry Book by Matthew Stolte & Published by Reed Altemus (Vis-consin & Maine, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Cover of Cr ch by IUOMA member Matthew Stolte (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) and published by IUOMA member Reed Altemus (Portland, Maine, USA)

January 6, 2012 - Visual poet Matt Stolte mailed me a copy of Cr ch, his new book. I am absolutely thrilled to have this beautifully produced edition that is a longer sequence, much more comprehensive than smaller mail-art pieces I have received from him.

In the area of vispo, the network has long provided a way to share work and ideas on an international level. Cheryl Penn (South Africa) and I are currently coordinating a visual poetry collaborative book project through the IUOMA. We're very lucky Matt has agreed to contribute a chapter. Some excerpts from Cr ch will contribute to ongoing discussions about approaches to composing vispo. Here is a two-page spread from Cr ch:

Excerpt from Cr ch by Matthew Stolte.

In this book, I believe Matt's work shows visual poetry's roots in concrete poetry. The foundation of the poems is the alphabet, words, and typography. They are employed as an expressive material, divorced from conventional reading. The use of what appears to be physically made collage (a nod to action art) is not disguised, rather it is pronounced and gives the work a dynamic quality.

A high degree of distortion is used through typographical (technical) manipulation and collage. The result is the achievement of the real ground of visual poetry: a synthesis of text and image. Matt's poems are filled with numerous, subjective images that constantly shift and change with each encounter. Words and phrases appear, fade, and meld in and out of images. This dynamic quality does obscure the fact, somewhat, that the structure of Cr ch is built upon the linearity of written and printed text, often morphing into familiar grid structures. Yet the dynamism, the spontaneous action art mode, prevents Cr ch from falling into sterile formalism. Here is another excerpt:

 

The textuality of Cr ch is revealed on the left-hand page. The right-hand page provides an example, fairly rare in the edition, of a visual image (the bicycle) integrated with the work. From all I have seen so far, visual poets work with combinations of image and text in varying degrees. As stated in previous blogs, some vispo only uses visual images. Being primarily a writer, I tend to favor vispo that still uses text. That's one of the reasons why I am such a big fan of Matt's work.

Beyond formal and technical concerns, what might one say about what Matt is expressing as a poet? For me, his is ultimately a bleak vision. The title of the blog refers to Vis-consin. That is because the US State of Wisconsin is a huge center for visual poetry. Matt's work affirms the vision of another poet currently in Wisconsin: David Baptiste-Chirot. Chirot has extended the darker visions of Kafka, Poe and Melville into visual poetics.

Matthew Stolte is also, I believe, of that existential and ultimately brooding American sensibility. His work is far more abstract than Chirot's, however. The sudden, vivid, jarring nightmare images that coalesce in Chirot's work and make it so powerful are absent in Stolte's and are replaced by the strange, associative, half-conscious stream I mentioned previously. Both Stolte and Chirot work with the primal roots of language yet both are free of the postmodern obsession with language as an end in itself. 

Cr ch is mostly composed of black, blue, and white, which narrows the artistic expressiveness provided by vispo to a minimalist field in the work. Through repetition, arrangement, and color selection, Stolte seems always to return in his work to industrial production: mechanistic and inevitably sinking into decay - a reflection of the Rust Belt environment?

Many of the forms have the quality and hardness of metals that are, paradoxically, transmuting into frightening semi-organic shapes: Yet another nightmare vision of techno-capitalism and, perhaps if his work were explored even further, an exploration of the evolution of technology, language, and humanity as they intersect. Here is a final page spread with information about the book:

Reed Altemus is a Fluxus artist whose work, including performances of event scores, is known by many in the network. I discovered his asemic work when I was doing research for the Asemics 16 Project. He has been publishing and documenting vispo for many years and has fascinating material, especially from the Age of Xerography. A visit to the Tonerworks blog is definitely worthwhile:

http://tonerworks.blogspot.com/

Matthew Stolte's blog is a must-see for vispo, especially work from Vis-consin:

http://illegitimateprescriptions.blogspot.com/

Many, Many thanks Matt. The best I can do right now is to send an Elgin Shroud shred, but maybe you should consider the DKULT.

 

[DKeys]

Angie, you should make your vispo pages on sheets of cheese

[De Villo Sloan]

Cheese-po! Hook Snooker to the dog sled. Go to Millarky Visconsin!

[DKeys]

I should have known Snooky made Visual Pawetry. The only thing better than mail art, is books.

Seriously Angie, one of these days it will happen so be forewarned:)

Yes, I still have a copy of the spitpo. I won't go into details, but I have heard of worse things being done with a scanner.

I was going to scan a piece of Turkey to send as a greeting to everyone for Thanksgiving, but I was at my Moms house and I didnt think she'd appreciate it.  

Scanner and printer casualties are a mail art hazard

[De Villo Sloan]

Right PB&J. And remember "spitpo." I think there was an episode where Gatorade was actually spit on the scanner. The thing is trashed.

It's hard to talk about favorites. John Bennett, for me, is like the Ezra Pound of vispo. But David has done really important, breakthrough work. I think he's fantastic, and he deals a lot more with visual images. You should run up to Milwaukee. There was message on the Fluxus USA blog that said: "Where IS David Chirot?" He is MIA. He was going to contribute to Asemics 16 but wrote to Cheryl he was ill. He and I used to talk via email. He's a wonderful person. I need to track him down because I think he's a national treasure.

[DKeys]

So peanut butter drove your scanner nuts?

It does look digitally manipulated, but raw and hand done-like rubbings or lithographs. As you know David Baptiste Chirot is my inspiration for the Vispo project and seems very similar in that it seems  very much about the texture as well as the suggestion of words. That would make a great collaborative book project to have illustrated poems, maybe people illustrating other people's writing and not their own. 

I always thought it would be great to work in a copy/print shop so you could play with all the equipment. i used to love printing my mail art on manila envelopes. I went through lots of printers that way, but getting those layers by refeeding it like you're saying is too much fun. Thanks for sharing this it is inspiring me to make more vispo. 

[De Villo Sloan]

Hi DK, yes, I think it's a great book and shows what you can do with the Cereal (Serial) Vispo concept. I know Matt is very tech-savvy, but it sure looks to me like the master pages are traditional collage. Regardless, it conveys very strongly the sense of the vispo dealing with language as raw material & building structures from it.

I don't know how Reed Altemus does his printing, but the images in the book are very sharp. As I explained before, ever since Dw mashed that peanut butter & jelly sandwich on the scanner bed and copied it, my scans haven't been as good. 

I remember when I did a lot Xerox stuff part of the process was to keep re-shooting copies, blowing them up & shrinking them, until you got typography that was totally distorted and unrecognizable. I think I see some of that in Matt's work.

Vis-consin. Yes, Wisconsin has been a hub of vispo for many years. Right now, for instance, you have David Chirot, Miekal And, and Matt there. There are many more. Look at Snooker; even dogs make vispo in Vis-consin. That's more heavy-hitters than some entire countries have.

I think part of the reason is Miekal And. The guy is just a powerhouse, although he seems a little more reclusive now. He is a member of Open Fluxus, and his "Fluxus Book of the Dead" is posted over there, which I think is a masterpiece. He is a pivotal character in the rise of the New Fluxus in the US. His Xeoxial Editions catalog is a museum of marginal masterpieces. 

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/and/

[DKeys]

Great blog! Lucky you to have this book-the art looks effortless and I never knew Wisconsin was a hotbed for Vispo