11 August 2004. I had a fair amount of mail awaiting me yesterday when I got home from my trip. One was a nice note from Ellie Nichol, thanking me for the copy of Geof Huth's Ampersand Squared that I'd sent her--because of the two pwoermds by her late husband, bp, that were in it. Ellie was kind enough to include two poems with her thank-you-note (plus an order for a second copy of the anthology!). One blew me away. It's from bp's martyrology:

This is what I consider the best kind of visual poem, not just because it looks nice (as it very much does)--but because it takes its experiencer (provided he's capable of journeying) into so rich a manywhere-at-once. With such unsimple simplicity! Such as the spelling, which begins with two letters squeezed together, then a pair of letters freed from the first pair but still joined as they float toward the suddenly huge final letter of the single word that comprises the entire poem, and opens/ darkens beyond letterness/ into everyone's second world. And open book, a bed, night, a suggestion--for me--of clouds. And all the repeating curves . . . the m so close and unexpected a variation on the "dr" to repeat it in fairy-language . . . the druh eeeeeeeee mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, with the latter conquering the page, then expanding beyond it. . . .