18 March 2004. Today, a set-to with my sometime ally, Gregory Vincent St. Thmoasino. In a response to my po-X-cetera entry for 26 February 2004, in which I hoped someone would come up with "a better word for visual artworks whose primary subject matter is averbal textual matter" than my own "textual illumagery," Gregory said, "Bob, that better word is 'eidetics.'' He went on to say, "The problem (I have) with 'textual illumage' and 'illumagery' is that it is vague, and what's more when one reads it one might instantly, and correctly, presume that there is a misspelling involved. And it is difficult to pronounce!"

Aoh? How is "textual" vague? It means anything having to do with language. "Illumage" and "illumagery," being neologies, are understandably obscure but not vague, to get fussy about it. To the contrary, since the general population has not used, and probably will not ever use, the term, it is as unvague as language ever gets, with no meaning attached to it but mine, namely: "visual artwork" and "visual art." Ergo, "textual illumagery" has to unvaguely mean, "visual art that makes use of textual elements sufficiently for that fact to be part of its name."

Admittedly, some vagueness must come in since I use the term, "textual" in "textual illumagery" to refer only to averbal or asemantic textuality, so "textual illumagery" is in my taxonomy, "visual art that makes use of averbal textual elements sufficiently for that fact to be part of its name." Its name should suggest this, I feel since a kind of visual art, or illumagery, which "textual" is used as an adjective to modify, must be primarily a graphic work. I don't see how this could be if words related to the work's central meaning were part of it. So, from this point of view, a "textual illumage" could not be verbal. That I define it officially this way ought to help, too. Naturally, if there were a word in English, or any language, meaning "textual but not verbal," I would use it. There not being such a word, so far as I know, I'm stuck with "textual."

Gregory's other criticisms are the absolute pits. Just WHAT would "illumagery" be taken as a misspelling for, I wonder. Nor can I see why a person reading the word would not pronounce "illum" as it is in "ILLUMination" and "magery" the way it is in "iMAGERY," although Geof Huth can't pronounce it readily, either, and he's the only one to my knowledge who has tried to besides Gregory. It should be pronounced, "ih LOO muhdj ree." It sounds real pretty to my ear.

Gregory goes on to say, "But beyond that, you seem to intend that with 'textual' is suggested 'reading,' as by way of 'text' (which is to say, words and their structure), and with 'illumage' is suggested 'seeing,' as by way of 'illustration' and 'image' or 'imagery,' which all goes to privilege both 'seeing' and 'reading,' something the term 'visual poetry' already does exceedingly well, unless, UNLESS, one should misconstrue 'visual' not so much as distinguishing it ('visual poetry') from 'poetry' (poetry as such) as qualifying (and thus limiting) 'the' poetry (i.e., the semantic, 'verbal,' component)."

Response: I see the "visual" in "visual poetry" as an adjective modifying the noun, "poetry." Hence, it has to be qualifying "poetry" as that kind of poetry which is visual. Hence, according to the term, and--I feel confident--according to most people familiar with visual poetry, visual poetry is first of all, poetry, but also very importantly, visual. Adjective noun. One disputing this should compare the words alone of a visual poem with its visual effects alone (assuming that by "poem" we mean something containing words). Gomringer's famous "Silencio" as verbal only becomes, "silencio, silencio, silencio, silencio, silencio, silencio, silencio, silencio." Not much of a poem but more meaningful than it would be as visual only, or a rectangular doughnut.

Gregory finishes his paragraph with, "As for 'distinguishing,' this is what terminology does (for better or worse). As for 'qualifying' (and thus, perhaps, limiting), what was Eliot's word, a 'trifle?'" Well, I think one qualifies "visual poetry" with the adjective that is part of the term in order to distinguish it from other kinds of poetries. To qualify here is, for me, to distinguish, to single out "visual poetry" as a special kind of poetry. How special it will come to be perceived will depend not on what it is called but how people come to take it. Or, have come to take it, since it seems to be accepted that "visual poetry," however defined, is significantly different, or distinguished, from other kinds of poetry.

Later, Gregory says, "I think everybody already knows what 'visual poetry' means and what it is. It is only when we start to refer to specific works of 'visual poetry' (to specific endeavors in the field of 'visual poetry') and to what significance these works, these endeavors, have and how they depart from what is generally considered 'visual poetry,' it is only then that we realize that a terminology does not yet exist for these specific endeavors. Quite simply, I maintain that for the work Bob is referring to, the most germane and efficacious term is 'eidetics.'

"A 'visual poem' can have words and yet those 'words' may not function as words. Such 'words' may be pre-verbal ('averbal,' if one takes the 'a' for 'not,' seems to annul the verbal, in which case why 'verbal' at all?), or, more precisely, 'preconscious,' or, indeed, it may be a matter of letters that only seem to be forming words (the 'reader' recognizes what 'reads as a word' but what may not be intended to be a word, or what is 'interpretation'). Then again, that the letters are so aligned (or close) that they seem to form or to be forming words may be accidental or happening by chance or fortuitous. It's a matter of appearance, of how what appears appears, and how it is perceived. To use Bob's language, I still consider those works 'whose primary subject matter is averbal textual matter' and where 'textual and visual elements are more or less equally important' to be works of language. But I qualify the word 'language.' For me this 'language' is none other than 'langue.' It is the sea of language. The sea of relationality. The great postulated transcendent totality of system. It is Logos."

Here, I can only note that I disagree with Gregory. I cannot take averbal artworks as "poetry." Nor can I understand why a taxonomist should not take their being textual but not verbal as a nice, objective characteristic by which to define them. As for Gregory's "Logos," I hope I'm in it, but as a taxonomist, my only concern is "language" at the mundane, objective level. Oh, and I don't think "everyone knows what 'visual poetry' is, and what it does." Otherwise, why a debate like this one? And why do I so often get asked what visual poetry is when I tell people of my involvement in it?

Still later, Gregory finds fault with my (perhaps too contemptuous) belittlement of the term "language art." He finds it a useful introductory term, "for use by non- specialists, perhaps." "But," he continues, "I would not stop there--I think it is of great value (as of great a value as 'visual poetry'). And I wish it were used more often. When I think of 'language art' and of the 'language artist' I instantly (naturally) think of Richard Kostelanetz, for whom, it seems to me, language (and all aspects of it) is his material (at once his subject and his subject-matter). I would say to someone interested in language art, first learn Kostelanetz! (Because so much of what else you will see is but a footnote to Kostelanetz!)"

I agree with Gregory in considering Richard Kostelanetz one of our masters, but I think he is missing why I oppose the term, "language art." I oppose it as a term for "visual art that makes significant expressive use of textual elements but not words" because it is a standard term in American education for "reading and writing." Among those more sophisticated than (most) primary school educators, it can only mean, "the art of literature." Gregory seems to take it as such a very general term. I have little against that, although I don't see much point in it.

Finally, back to Gregory's term,"eidetics." I actually find it an admirable term. Nonetheless, I prefer "textual illumagery" to it. For one thing, it only suggests "imagery," so would seem to apply to any kind of visual artwork, and even to literary works that use literary images. Nor could it logically not refer to visual poetry. Actually, it almost works as a synonym for "visual art." In fact, earlier today, I seriously considered asking Gregory for permission to use it in place of "illumagery." One problem scuttled that idea: the difficulty that using such a term to base adjectives and related nouns on. That is, "illumage" and "illumagistic" can be readily derived from "illumagery," but what term could be derived from "eidetics" to mean "work of eidetics," or "having to do with eidetics?"

With that, I end yet another skirmish in my sad attempt to persuade people to be reasonable about the taxonomy and terminology of visio-textual art and use my terms and taxonomic system. Seriously, I welcome "peer reviews," as Gregory described his critique of my blog entry, and feel he did an excellent job, consider how unassailably correct everything I write on these topics I am. He had other interesting things to say at his blog, too. I strongly recommend that anyone who managed to read this entry of mine all the way to here should go to it.