IS KNOT by John M. Bennett

IS KNOT is: Poems, many incorporating visual elements, in English or Spanish or both, interspersed with visual poems, Fluxus-like texts, hacks, and collaborations. Written in 2016, it is a tour de force of Bennett's unique poetics. "Your visuals are priceless, John ... I prefer them to so much experimental work, either in the realm of the so-called visual arts or "concrete poetry" (which they really ain't) … your so-called poetry which calls itself verse, but is the cryptically deranged response to "official literature", stands head and shoulders above … Superimpositions of the subconscious stripped of Freudian valor (values?) … And knockout minimalism!" - Iván Argüelles

On Bennett's OJIJETE:

OJIJETE can be “read” in a conventional sense and also experienced strictly on the visual level. Bennett uses fonts, typography, tropes from concrete poetry and a minimal use of visual images to create one of the more effective image-texts that I have ever seen. I see in OJIJETE Ezra Pound's Cantos using ideograms, the fluidity of Paterson by William Carlos Williams and, of course, Charles Olson's Maximus. John M. Bennett is one of the few visual poets today who has the knowledge and skills to use the lessons of literary Modernism (and errors) to create a 21^st century vispo. OJIJETE is a shining example of his abilities.

- De Villo Sloan in Asemic Front 2.

$17.00

184 pp.

English & Spanish

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TAMAZUNCHALE By Iván Argüelles

TAMAZUNCHALE: Poetic and phonetic irregularities

Iván Argüelles

“One of the most visionary poets of our time. Ivan Argüelles is that rarest of poets: one who practices at the very precipice of being.” Andrew Joron also wrote this 2021 note to author: "The amount of supernaturally great work you've produced on a daily basis over the past few years has altered the path of this planet! Please keep me posted on anything forthcoming and I will order it. Shine on, you crazy diamond!" - Andrew Joron / "If there is anything great in contemporary poetry, and there is, Argüelles is an essential part of it. His work contains all that makes poetry great. That he does not have a massive audience means nothing. Should poetry matter to a culture that has almost entirely abandoned it?" - Jake Berry

Luna Bisonte Prods 2021

$20.00 US

193 pp.

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SIC: ARTE-CORREO Y POEINSTANTES por César Espinosa

SIC: ARTE-CORREO Y POEINSTANTES

César Espinosa

Con ensayos de Espinosa, Araceli  Zúñgiga, y John M. Bennett

 

César Espinosa, well known as a great promoter and scholar of visual and experimental poetry, is a first-rate visual poet himself. A compilation of some of his work in that field is long overdue. For this edition, Espinosa has also written an introductory essay on the long international and interethnic history of visual poetry, with special emphasis on México. Araceli Zúñiga adds some essential observations on Latin American experimental poetry, and on its Mexican context, with references to Ulises Carrión, and to the pre-colombian Tlacuilos (Náhua writers/painters), among others. She quotes Carrión, from his El nuevo arte de hacer libros: “Un libro es una secuencia de espacios” : a pronouncement that gives much food for thought, not only for visual poetry, but for all books, including this one, exhorting the reader to see the negative spaces, or what is missing, or what contradicts the book. It's the idea that reality is a union of opposites, a very Mesoamerican and universal concept. This book is both a work of art and a book about that art.

César Espinosa, bien conocido como gran fomentador e investigador de la poesía visual y experimental, es también un poeta visual de primera categoría. Ya está pasada la hora de hacer una compilación de su obra en ese campo, lo que él nos ha hecho con esta selección de la serie SIC, que ha creado durante muchos años. Espinosa ha hecho para esta edición un ensayo introductorio sobre la larga historia internacional e interétnica de la poesía visual, con énfasis especial en México, que incluye una presentación detallada de los Bienales Internacionales de la Poesía Visual y Experimental que empezaron en 1985 para terminar 30 años más tarde, dirigidas y organizadas por él y su compañera Araceli Zúñiga. Araceli Zúñiga añade unas observaciones esenciales sobre la poesía experimental latinoamericana, y sobre el contexto mexicano de la práctica, con referencias a Ulises Carrión, y a los Tlacuilos pre-colombinos (escritores/pintores Náhuas), entre otros. Cita a Carrión, de su El nuevo arte de hacer libros: “Un libro es una secuencia de espacios”: dictamen que da mucho en qué pensar, no sólo para la poesía visual, sino para todos los libros, incluso éste, instando al lector a ver los espacios negativos, o lo que falta, o lo que contradice el libro. Es la idea de que la realidad es una unidad de opuestos, concepto muy mesoamericano, y universal. Este libro es a la vez una obra de arte y un libro sobre ese arte.

95 pages, color

In Spanish, with Bennett's Preface also in English

9781938521720

$27 US

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ARTHUR DIES: First Chronicle, Heirs of Constantine, Vol. IV, The pen-Dragons Return

OLCHAR E. LINDSANN

ARTHUR DIES: First Chronicle, Heirs of Constantine, Vol. IV, The pen-Dragons Return

In this 4th volume of Arthur Dies, the literary, experimental and multilingual excitement ramps up several notches, including several pages of visual guides and visual poetry. The great Merlin shows up, wearing a plague mask, and there are hints that Arthur himself may be on the verge of being born; is it true?! This is not just a re-telling of a famous legend/history, but a re-imagining and re-creating of a story/myth that encompasses all of history and all of human imagination. About an earlier volume of Lindsann's epic project, Iván Argüelles said: “This is in fact an epic both in the traditional sense of the word, and in the approach of an anti-poetics perspective of what can be undone in that tradition. In its sweeping texts and contexts it embodies not only the imagined or fictive culture of the twilight era alluded to, but those of our own post-modern and failed civilization with all its cultural and literary -isms that have arisen from an original 'avant-garde'. Lindsann combines the mythical Avalon with Blake's Albion, pursuing these emblematic nomenclatures to their illogical fusion in an always enigmatic concatenation of events and personages flung about in a supreme and deft literary whirl.” This new volume is enriched with four appendices, which provide a narrative synopsis of the previous volumes, a list of principal characters, a social glossary, and a list of sources. All of which are extremely useful for following the development of this incredible epic anti-poem, a work which redefines both poetry and epic. - John M. Bennett

263 pp.

ISBN 9781938521713

$25 US

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POETRY MAKES THINGS HAPPEN by Jim Leftwich

POETRY MAKES THINGS HAPPEN: Poems, Essays, Texts, Afterwords, Blurbs, Notes...

JIM LEFTWICH

For Jim Leftwich, the boundary between poetry and criticism, or more accurately, between poetry and writing about poetry, is extremely porous. This book should make that very clear; in fact, here it is sometimes hard to tell whether a text is “original poetry” or his writing “about poetry”. Which suggests that the distinction may not be all that important. (Another such book is one he wrote focused on my own work, or using my work as a springboard, Containers Projecting Multitudes: Expositions on the Poetry of John M. Bennett, 2019.) This is perhaps an outgrowth of his practice of making “hacks” of others' poetry and texts, which is in itself a means of entering into, and remaking aspects of, another's work, using a wide variety of processes ranging from the arbitrary and deliberate, to the improvisational and purely intuitive. What this does is to turn the process of writing about poetry on its head. Instead of applying a preordained critical method or theory to a text, Leftwich presents, as it were in “real time”, an account of what it was like, of what happened, when he read the text. We thus have a narration of a real experience of reading. For me, and for many of us in this new literary avant garde, this is vastly more interesting and useful than the use of a text to support or illustrate a particular literary (or other) ideology. Leftwich's work in this regard is unique, exciting, and represents real progress in the “problem” of “how to read poetry”, and of how to write it as well. -¬ John M. Bennett

245 pp.

ISBN7981938521690

$22.00 US

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