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5 February 2004. Three days ago, on my 63rd birthday, Geof Huth devoted a blog entry to Xerolage 30. Grumman, Bob. A Selection of Visual Poems by Bob Grumman. LaFarge WI: Xexoxial Editions, [2001]. $6 postpaid
Xexoxial Editions, 10375 County Highway A, LaFarge, WI 54639; www.xexoxial.org. He paid my poetry more than a few compliments, detailed compliments that indicated not just that he liked something I'd done but why he did--in other words, the best kind of compliments. Because I've trained him to always say bad things about my work, too, so no one will guess I'm paying him exorbitant sums to be nice to me, he didn't let me off without knocking some aspects of my work. For instance, here is what he said about one of my poems:
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Marred by the unnecessary title �Poem in Homage to E. E. Cummings,� this poem
consists of the single word �spring��but the central i is missing its leg, leaving the i�s
tittle floating in place above the phantom leg. To the hyperliterate�those who have a
deep connection to the written word�this missing leg powerfully transforms the word
and the i�s dot: spring is not just a word in this context; spring has come to life as a
mysterious recurrent transmogrification, as something we perceive but cannot quite
explain. And this huge event, this artistic legerdemain, occurs in a one-word poem about
spring, the subject of probably half the poems written by teenagers.
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Geof and I have gone round and round on titles more than once over the years. As a person probably more interested in discussing artworks than composing them, I believe all artworks should have titles simply because it makes then easier to find and talk about. Titles also allow an artist to expand his work--or, at least, keep it from vacuously meaning anything one wants to believe it does. A title provided by an artist to his own work serves, too, as a pre-emptive strike against those who might later misname and therebry misrepresent it--and rest assured that no lasting artwork will go titleless forever (albeit the title may only be, "that thing by Huth about the bird with the little superscripts").
Geof does have a small point--a title inflicted on a minimalist work will act against one of its biggest virtues, its condensedness. However, I claim that no experienced aesthcountrant (i.e., one encountering a work of art) will be aware of a work's title when involved with it. A title is not part of a work, unless made so by the work's creator. And it need not so much as share a page with the work it serves to name, so need be no more active an adjunct to the work than the page or canvas or book or stage or whatever the work is on or in.
Conclusion: titles are good.
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