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24 March 2005: Today, I'm going to be negative about the work of a fellow visio-textual artist. I feel guilty, nonetheless, particularly as I don't personally know Mark Scott, the artist involved, and suspect he may be young, and therefore should be encouraged. At least, he's not repeating the poetry of the fifties the way just about all the current names in poetry are. But I would also feel guilty if I suggested neutrality all the time toward works I really don't much like. And if I dishonestly gave the impression I approve, or don't disapprove of some visio-textual artworks. Which is also boring, and must tend to cost me any credibility as a judge I may have. Moreover, Scott's piece gives me a chance to pontificate against illumages that are represented as being visual poems, and I can't resist the temptation. It's another from the exhibit at the Segnini Gallery that I have stuff in. You can look at it
here.
My problem with this is that (1) it's just a labeled illumage, so shouldn't be in a show devoted to visual poetry (which needs all the space it can get) and is not technically interesting; (2) it's sort of amusing, all those arrows, but kind of vague, too, it seems to me; satire on wild west mythology, and/or some kind of smear of the White Man's Crimes; if the latter, I can't see it, and would be bored with it, if I did, being strongly biased against propaganda; (3) it doesn't do anything aesthetically, although it is pleasant enough as an image. There's one big "but" here, though: Scott's piece is from a book, so in context it may well work, even visio-textually. I'm treating it as a single image here, however. As such, it seems to me below the standard of the other works in the show. (And if the book is at all visio-poetic, a more genuinely visio-textual piece from it should have been available.) But as an editor having to make compromises to pull an anthology together, I certainly don't blame Curator Carlos Luis for this very minor flaw in the show, which continues to strike me as excellent plus.
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