WEBVTT

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Dylan Thomas.

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Again, it's a piece
that I think--

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without the shape, it isn't.

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Kaz Maslanka, again,
which you may remember

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is another mathematical
poem of his.

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And when you get into
this notion of math,

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not just talking
about math, but when

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you're actually incorporating
the symbology of mathematics--

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I don't know what
that is anymore.

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I don't know if that's
textual or visual.

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Or maybe it's neither.

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Maybe that's OK, too.

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I mean, maybe this isn't a
continuum between the visual

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and the textual.

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Maybe it's something really a
lot more elaborate and complex,

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and I oversimplify
it by saying it's

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between the visual
and the textual.

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Because we can clearly
incorporate symbology

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into poetry without
it being [INAUDIBLE]..

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Here's another one of Kaz's.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is an example of--

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a lot of people have made
poems with an echo at the end,

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you know?

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And instead of
being an acrostic,

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where it's the letter working,
it's the word at the end.

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"My eye snaps all like a camera.

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The images, ghostlike,
float into fire."

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Do we need to see that together?

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I think this is a piece that's
a different poem if it's

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read aloud than if
it's seen on the page.

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And maybe it's still OK.

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It works.

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It doens't-- it isn't destroyed
by not being on the page

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the way some of the other
ones, I think, would be.

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But I think it's
completely different poem

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if it's not on the page.

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And that's OK, too.

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Douglas Hofstadter wrote a very
famous book, Gödel, Escher,

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Bach, among others

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[LAUGHS]

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And this is a hobby of
his, is write-- creating

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fonts that do exactly this.

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"Light is--" light is a what?

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What is light?

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It's either a particle
or a wave, or it's both.

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Again, is that-- I don't know.

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Is that visual or text?

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This is a long piece.

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I'm actually going to--
since I have internet,

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I'll just go to the
whole thing here.

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I put it on a few slides,
because it couldn't all fit.

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I'll just scroll through this.

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It's a poem about George
Lewis, that great jazz man.

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So it starts out--

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here we are, just only
poem, text, text, text.

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OK.

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Still text, but we know that
we're talking about a jazz man.

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And maybe we've got--
oh, that's ice cream.

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But this is not.

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Now we've got [INAUDIBLE].

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And we're back to text,
but it goes on further.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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So now we're embedding within
something that's clearly

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textual something that's--

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this one's-- I would call a
concrete piece, but not this.

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This is now music.

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I mean, they've
included the dashes

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in the same way, gives it
almost musical stanza structure.

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And you've got "Swan"
by John Hollander.

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This is, again, an
example of shape poem,

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but a poem that you
couldn't read it.

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And almost the only way
to experience this poem

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is like, this
visual, [INAUDIBLE]..

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Kenneth Patchen-- who
if, for some reason,

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you don't know who Kenneth
Patchen is, you should.

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Kenneth Patchen that everything
that everybody else got credit

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for 20 or 30 years before
anybody else started doing it.

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Astonishing.

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I don't know.

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I don't know why there
are so many cannons that

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do not include him.

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I mean, some do.

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It's not, like, a
universal shunning.

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But he was doing all the
stuff that concrete poetry

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movement of the '40s did,
he was doing in the '20s.

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Hey, Dan?

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Yeah.

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We have a really beautiful
book of his in the library.

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Awesome.

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So if you guys want to check
it out, ask the library.

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I totally encourage that.

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And Kenneth Patchen
was a painter

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and did a lot of paintings
that incorporated text

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in ways that were really
beautiful and challenging.

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This particular text
is all typographical.

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This is just this
extended section from it.

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Like I said, he was
a painter, also.

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Jenny Holzer, who we saw before.

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You know, when you do this
to the text, when you put it

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in bronze like this, when
you cast it in metal,

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how can it be more
integral to the text?

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How can it-- that, to
me, is a sculptural

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object that needs to be
experienced in its place.

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And this is the last one.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Just cracks me up
every time I see it,

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because it takes me some
time every time I see it,

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because the lips are just so
preposterous, but perfect.

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Gary Barwin is a Canadian
poet of much known.

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So when I started,
I said, tell them

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what you're going to tell
them, tell them, and tell them

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what you told them.

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So at this point, I would like
to tell you what I told you.

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What I hope I told you is
that poetry off the page

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is not a fringe activity.

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It is not something
rare and out there.

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It is something that is perhaps
hidden by its diversity,

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that the forms that it takes
are so myriad that it takes

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the smarts to put it under
the umbrella of off the page

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to be able to see how much
of it there really is.

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I think often as poets,
we find ourselves standing

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in a circle looking
in, and we need

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to be standing in a
circle looking out.

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Because when we do, we see this
range of surfaces and materials

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and techniques and opportunities
to put poetry where it belongs,

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which is everywhere,
everywhere, everywhere we can.

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And I hope by this
second section,

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that I have been able to
show that what I always--

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so often to come back to Nichol.

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Nichol said that
concrete poetry--

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and much of this, I think,
could fit, at least connected

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to the rubric of
concrete poetry.

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"Concrete poetry, at
its best, reminds us

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of the importance of
the small gesture."

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And I think as humans,
not even as a poets,

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but as people, we all need to
be reminded of the importance

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of the small gesture.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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