shades of the new concrete: derek beaulieu and Donato Mancini

The examples of concrete/visual poetry in Canada over the past few years, at least in trade form (as opposed to smaller publications such as chapbooks, broadsides and other ephemera) has been few and far between (see some of the previous examples and history of such as listed in my review of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry, eds. beaulieu, rawlings, Christie), but, as many have suggested, exist as a form throughout the entire history of literature, language and human culture. As Jars Balan wrote in his introduction to the Open Letter issue he edited, "Cantextualities: Contemporary Visual Poetry in Canada" (Tenth Series, Number 6, Summer 1999):

Visual poetry [viz-you-elle poh-eh-tree] embraces a wide variety of verse forms, styles and media, but always requires that a poem be seen for a total appreciation of its aesthetics or content. Visual poetry is a type of intermedia, straddling the grey area between traditional written literature and the graphic arts. Forms of visual poetry include: acrostics, labyrinths, palindromes, word squares, textual collages, rebus poems, serpentines, abecedarian verse, lipograms, proteus poems, constellations, leonine verse, mazes, and versus cancrini or crabs. To name but a few different configurations taken by visual poetry through the centuries. (p 7)

One of the most consistently active in the realm of both creating and publishing Canadian concrete/visual poetry is easily Calgary writer, editor and publisher derek beaulieu, with his work appearing in more places I've seen than just about anyone else (check out some of his visual pieces here at minimalist concrete poetry). After the visuals included in his previous trade collection, with wax (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2003), it's good to see something further along those lines in his collection Fractal Economies (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2006). Two of perhaps only a handful of presses in Canada that would even consider publishing such a thing (historically, blewointment, Coach House and Talon were almost the only games in town, with more recent publishers such as The Mercury Press, New Star and even Insomniac Press getting into the fray), despite Talonbooks ongoing history with publishing non-linear forms, the lack of any real communal push still gives concrete/visual in Canada far less support behind it than the more mainstream lyric. Is concrete/visual to poetry what poetry is to the rest of literature? As Shift & Switch showed, there are certainly enough younger people across the country working with, around and through the form (some of the more interesting examples including Windsor, Ontario writer Gustave Morin, Canadian ex-pat Jason Le Heup, Toronto writer Daniel f. Bradley, Brantford, Ontario lad kemeny babineau, Medicine Hat, Alberta poet/publisher ross priddle and Ottawa's own Max Middle), making me wonder if these continued practices of outside have been building enough over the past few years, with journals such as filling Station, dANDelion, Matrix, RAMPIKE and others actually giving space to publishing concrete/visual work; is this a return, finally, to a much-maligned and misunderstood form?

An interesting component to beaulieu's collection is the inclusion of his essay "an afterward after words: notes toward a concrete poetic," an essay that also appeared (slightly altered) on Brian Kim Stefans' ubuweb, allowing the casual or less informed reader a context to enter into the work. As he writes in the piece:

Concrete poetry has expanded beyond the tightly modernist "clean concrete" poems
of the 1950s—typified by Eugen Gomringer and Mary Ellen Solt. Gomringer and
Solt sought simplicity and clarity in their materialist use of semantic
particles (Gomringer's "Silencio" and Solt's "Flowers in Concrete" are
examples). Gomringer argues that concrete poetry is an essentially modernist
gesture that "realize[s] the idea of a universal poetry" and can "unite the view
of the world expressed in the mother tongue with physical reality" ("Concrete
Poetry" np). Created by a dictatorial author-function, the modernist concrete
poem limits and sanctions the role of the reader according to strict
formulations; the reading space is "ordered by the poet … [h]e determines the
play-area, the field or force and suggests its possibilities" (Gomringer, "From
Line to Constellation" np). (pp 80-1)

More focused on visuals than his previous collection, that included sequences of texts, Fractal Economies is probably one of the very few collections published in trade form in Canada focusing entirely on the visual/concrete, in a very short list that would include works by jwcurry, Darren Wershler-Henry and Gustave Morin. Throughout the collection, beaulieu works with manipulative devices such photocopy, digital, letraset as well as what appears to be charcoal/lead rubbings; the last section of the collection, what appear to be pencil rubbings over plastic letter refrigerator magnets (which anyone born over the past three or four decades should be aware of), is actually my least favourite of the whole, and I think, overall, the least effective. What is far more interesting are pieces like the found poem "new directions in canadian poetry" (p 51), which appears to simply be a series of lines and connecting dots from the directions that come with Ikea shelves (I remember helping him put that shelf together, actually). I like it for its referencing, and for its sheer simplicity. This is very much a more mature work than his previous, by an increasingly interesting artist.

I've been hearing complaints here and there (muttering, mostly) about Vancouver writer and KSW member Donato Mancini's Ligatures (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2005) since his own collection of visuals appeared, although it hasn’t yet been explained to me what exactly the problem with his work is. There are certainly parts of the collection I think are interesting, such as the altered "@phabet" (originally published as a chapbook with above/ground press) and various of the text pieces (keeping to the concrete of the argument presented by Balan), but others, such as the altered cartoon (with dialogue from his "@phabet," reminding me slightly of the altered comic book texts published as Patricia Seaman's New Motor Queen City that appeared a few years ago by Coach House Books) and the abecedarian "Writing For the First Time: 22 baby mesostics," are extremely interesting as ideas for pieces, but somehow don’t manage to follow all the way through to their respective and effective ends.

A B C A C

setting, tone, time, intimation
of the expected

'tuning up'

w/
what's done
he does
has done

interlude A
suggesting unspoken the

un-
spoken comes to
the
surface

say what's
needed
what's
lack

setting down again only
this setting
is understood as a particle
of a total
return
to the particular
now

here is the desire
is the wish

only the thing that matters (pp 78-9)

Another section, featuring white text on black paper, scatters individual letters into the deliberate shapes of water and flow beautifully into cloud-shapes, letting the eye wander up and down the boundaries of what the mind works fervently to shape and decipher. I don't think everything in Mancini's Ligatures completely works, but I very much appreciate the effort, and, still very much like the book; I look forward to seeing how and where he further develops.

One of the most important elements of both these collections is that sense of very serious play, something so very much in evidence in the work of bpNichol, the ghost that floats through both works as nearly the octopus that sits in the room. Play is extremely important, and sometimes those working in these forms can get lost in the play, they are so serious about it. Both books are worthy additions to that most ongoing of fields.