Saturday 24 January 2009

Guriel has a question


Over at Harriet, Jason Guriel -- author of the upcoming Pure Product -- is looking for an answer:

"Is there a substantial study on visual poetry that is also a pleasure to read, in and of itself? A picture's worth a thousand words, but in the case of the 'pictures' made by visual poets, whose thousand words should I be reading? If contemporary visual poetry isn’t just an anachronistic curio, where is its great – and I can’t italicize this enough – jargon-free criticism?"

Read the rest here. (Visual poem above, called "Canada Council," is by Earle Birney)

1 comment:

Zachariah Wells said...

We discussed that Birney piece in an undergrad honours seminar. A classmate suggested that a paraphrase of it might be: "The Canada Council has its eye on you." I had no idea at the time just how hilarious that was.