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Daily Notes on Poetry

9 May 2004. Just a day less than three weeks ago, I said, "I doubt that my mania will last anywhere near as long as it did the last time. Indeed, I hope it's almost over." I was referring to my now-thirty-year quest to make or find proper names for the many kinds of visio-textual art there are. And here I go again. To begin with, I have yet another new name for "recipient of an artwork": "aesthoyager." The awkwardness of "Aesthinatient," my previous one (which I may not be spelling right) finally became too much even for me. No verb is readily derivable from it, either. Hence, my combination of "aesthetic" and "voyager." From this comes "aesthoyage" as both the verb for "to receive an artwork" and the noun for "the act of receiving an artwork." I suppose "aesthoyaging" would be the related adjective. I doubt there'd be much call for it.

Good grief: already I've changed my mind. I have a better term for recipient of an artwork!" It is, aestheuceiver. ES you SEE vur. Ridiculous. Yes, but the best possible! It's a combination of "AESTHetic," "eu," which is Greek for "good," and "reCEIVER." The "eu" is mostly for pronunciation but does distinguish someone who properly experiences an artwork from one who merely glances at it. Anyway, "aestheuceive" is readily derivable from "aestheuceiver"--or the reverse. From that, we have "aestheuceiving" as the related noun and adjective.

But, no. Too strained. So "aesthoyager" it is

Now back to my visio-textual terminology. I've decided against "textlumagery." "Litrography" is back, but now only for poetry containing both significant verbal and significant graphic matter. In other words, it means what I've always meant by the term, "visual poetry," which I can no longer use with a clear conscience because too many others use it to mean just about the whole spectrum of visual and verbal art. I've coined another new word for what I used to call "textual illumagery," or visio-textual artworks which contain significant textual elements but no words: "textagraphy," to go with "litragraphy." That's tecks TAH gruh fee and lih TRAH gruh fee.

A work of litragraphy is a litrograph, the way a work of photography is a photograph. A work of textagraphy is a textagraph. "Illumagery" is, and will remain my name for "visual art."

My table is now:

THE VISIO-TEXTUAL ART CONTINUUM

1 words whose semantic meaning is of crucial importance for the artworks they are in combined with visual effects of little aesthetic importance for the artworks they are in OR Visually-Enhanced Literature

(A) works as described above whose words have been infiltrated by graphic matter which is clearly decorative only, as when fancy initials are used to start chapters of novels, or a calligrapher renders a poem OR Illumagistically-Beautified Literature

(B) works as described above whose words share pages with graphic elements obviously intended to illustrate the words only OR Illustrated Literature

2 words whose semantic meaning is of crucial aesthetic importance for the artworks they are in combined with visual effects of near-equal aesthetic importance for the artworks they are in OR Litragraphy

(A) works as described above whose words are fused with graphic elements whose aesthetic importance is equal or nearly equal to the words' aesthetic importance, as in many examples of classical concrete poetry, OR Fusional Litragraphy

(B) works as described above whose words share pages with graphic elements but are separate from them which are as aesthetically important to the works they are in as the words, as in many specimens of sophisticated collage, OR Collagical Litragraphy

3 visual effects of crucial aesthetic importance for the artworks they are in combined with textual elements whose semantic meaning is of little or no aesthetic consequence for the artworks they are in but whose connotations or references to language are of an aesthetic importance nearly equal to that of its visual effects for the artworks they are in OR Textagraphy

(A) textual elements whose words are irrelevant or of little relevance which serve as the subject matter of illumagery OR Textagraphic Portraits of Language

(B) textual elements used as design elements in illumagery with no concern for their semantic significance, if any, OR Textagraphic Designage

4 visual effects of crucial aesthetic importance for the artworks they are in combined with textual elements used as labels of some parts or the whole of the artworks they are in but of little or no aesthetic consequence for those artworks OR Labeled Illumagery

5 visual effects of crucial aesthetic importance for the artwork they are in combined with words or other textual elements that are part of visual elements being depicted (such as a name on a sign in a streetscene) but are without aesthetic importance OR Texted Illumagery

Note: Even those who want the term, "visual poetry," to cover maximal territory should still be able to use the above. They need only consider the term, "visual poetry," as they understand it, to cover whichever varieties of visio-textual art in my table that they think it should. Thus, if they want both litragraphy and textagraphy to count as visual poetry, for example, they need only ordain that it be so--in their> taxonomy. However they classify these kinds of artworks, they will need--at some point--to distinguish those that are overtly very verbal from those which are not. Other distinctions will be required, too.

Ach, if I thought Apollo were still around, I'd pray to him that this be it for my scrumflusial through this precinct of poetics! If he was the one in charge of poetics, as opposed to poetry. . . .

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