Page 37 - Studio International - September 1972

Helio Oiticica; Mallarmé, Pound, Joyce, surface, colour and divesting their compositions
Cummings, Mondrian (in Broadway of narrative or psychological overtones. But the
Boogie-Woogie) Calder, and Webern for his intimists such as the Swiss, Eugen Gomringer,
Klangfarbenmelodie. saw the mode in terms of 'the challenge of
Among these the name that such artists as individual existence.' Here the line passes
Richard Long (on walls) and Jonathan through the axis of expressionist painting.
Williams (between covers) most bring to mind Robert Rauschenberg is closer to Gomringer
is Pound. It was Pound who hammered away at than Gomringer is to his countryman Max Bill.
the idea of objects, from which he derived But then Rauschenberg is an American hailing
objectivity without losing poetry. When he first from the same tradition as Jonathan Williams,
talked about Imagism he stressed 'objectivity both of them nurtured in the rich regional
and again objectivity, and expression.' In his bohemianism of Black Mountain College. He is
earliest letters on the subject he insisted that not quite one of what Williams calls USA
`language is made out of concrete things,' and isolatos (those hard driving muleros of the
said, 'I think there must be more, predominantly literary frontier who couldn't get their
more objects than statements.' As late as 1914 continent out of their heads long enough to
when he began to separate himself carefully develop polish, those fast-draw wordsmen
from his acolytes, he wrote to Harriet Monroe : William Carlos Williams, Edward Dahlberg
`I should like the name "Imagism" to retain some and Charles Olson, always spurning Culture
sort of meaning. It stands, or I should like it to because it came from Europe). But
stand for hard light, clear edges.' Hard light Rauschenberg has the same all-or-nothing
and clear edges figuratively speaking stand for nostalgia and can offer information and
the impulse away from expressionism and documentation and still hold on to a twangy
subjectivism; for the merciless reduction; for a Texan inflection. He can, like Jonathan
stripping of all the expendable integuments Williams, preserve a morsel of that old
holding together established genres. Pound American innocence. Williams can say without
argued for what he called 'freedom of subject' blushing that 'If you despise a place long
and became thereby a congenial progenitor. enough—this unruly continent for instance—
His own furious ramble through all the world's your own nature becomes despicable.'
literature and his discoveries that he loved to Even Bern Porter, atomic physicist,
explicate and make concrete for others via pronounced eccentric and 'conceptualist' by
language, endear him to the internationalist his own admission, is saturated with his own
contemporaries impatient with the classical Maine saltair pride, obvious in some of his
limitations of genres. Pound's hard light parodic found poems. The isolatos of the
reductionism speaks the right language. USA, conceptualist and wry, like Porter, or
Jonathan Williams said it: 'And then there is evangelist and lyrical like Williams, or even
always Pound's realization that it is the sign that willfully dumb visual like Rosenquist, just
constantly renews its vitality, as against them watching to see what comes up next on the
there dim symbols.' As sign language is screen: they ride the crest of those erratic
widespread in all the arts at the moment, it is cross-currents, those conflicted and even
not difficult to understand Pound's impress. sometimes harmonious confluences that occur
(Williams is an expert at extracting the essence toward the middle of anywhere but not at its
of other's signs. In the 'In lieu of a preface' in extremities.
his most recent book he quotes Einstein: It may be that the shift to language in the art
`Everything should be as simple as it is, but not galleries helped to bring these veteran
simpler.') concretists who are also earth artists and pop
The poem as a material object. The work of artists and tech artists of the Book, into focus.
art as dematerialized : at the extremes they In any case, during the past year, two books by
touch, but they are both more interesting Williams and one by Porter have appeared.'
toward the wavering middle. If both Richard I like very much what Williams says in his notes
Long and Jonathan Williams beckon to the to 'Blues & Roots Rue & Bluets, A Garland for
Lake country, they meet in that resonant middle the Appalachians', an account of his extended
ground which admits not 'them there dim hikes over the great mountain trial :
symbols' perhaps, but at least the possibility of Peregrinating taught me the kind of localism I
moving signs. In general, the concrete poetry like best—the kind that's been everywhere else
movement beginning with Pound's objects in first. Williams's often obstreperous books are
their reduced condition, has vacillated between endearing because their maker has been
the extremes. There are the final reductions, everywhere else first. This kind of Erlebnis
one sign to the page, and there are the very poetry seems to stick to the ribs despite its
complicated reductive works, collages of ephemera because it has earned its
thoughts, images and objects that seem to reductions. Having hobnobbed for years with
yearn for the nineteenth-century ideal of the the loft rats of New York, painters who
Gesamtkunstwerk. Many of the good disclaimed formalities, Williams quite naturally
concrete poets tend to be inveterate diarists or writes to the eye as well as to the ear. 'Blues &
spiritual journalists. The formalists among Roots' is a collaboration with a wonderful The above illustrations come from 'Blues and Roots,
them saw themselves obeying more the strict photographer, Nicholas Dean who hiked along Rue and Bluets, A Garland for the Appalachians', by
logic of the concrete painters recording line, in the wilderness with Williams. Browsing in Jonathan Williams/Grossman New York 1971

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