There are other great examples of the infra-verbal here & later in Debrot's sequence like "legligible" and "cooefficient," not to mention "geyswerks," which is defined (or so I take it) as "dogmad greepsing greepsing dusk unto dusk." Debrot also contributes three pages of mind-whirlingly stimulating, scientifico-nutto grid-charts with drawings. One set of chart- entries has "rotat" in box 1, "screw that 'that' evacuates 'the' or 'I'" in box 2, "the equivalent of extremely high ceilinged" in box 3, and "9gg" in the last box. The chart as a whole is labeled, "stiff liver-colored."

Editor Christopher Meyers does a nice visio-poetic turn on Go/God/Good . . . (but, thankfully, not "dog") that he's snuck a zero artfully into, and an even nicer visio-poetic turn on night/light in which the top half of the word, "night," is shown with the top half of the word, "light," under it, backwards, like a reflection. Each of the partial letters of "night" are joined to one or more of the partial letters of "light" to suggest some sort of arabesque swirl toward the devotional.

There is other interesting material here including drawings and poetry by Joshua Kil and some poems by Edward Mycue, one or two of which are too overtly political for me, including one about Thatcher and the Falkland Islands--but another of them starts, "I am dreampt by trees."

Now to jump to the internet where all kinds of great things are continuing to be done for visual poetry at Karl Young's Light & Dust site. A veritable library of current visual poetry world-wide, often in full color, it includes works by Karl Kempton, Avelino de Araujo, Scott Helmes, Philadelpho Menezes, Kajino Kyuyo, Clemente Padin, Harry Polkinhorn, Christy Sheffield Sanford, Marilyn R. Rosenberg and Karl Young himself. Major under-appreciated figures from the past like Kenneth Patchen, bp Nichol, Doris Cross and d.a. levy are represented here, too. The site is not all visual poetry, either, but showcases such diverse poets as Charles Alexander, Larry Eigner, Paul Dutton, Wanda Coleman, Hugh Steinberg, Jackson Mac Low, Joe Napora, Carl Rakosi, Rochelle Ratner and Michael McClure. It includes criticism, often with reproductions of poems, as well--by such authors as Harry Polkinhorn, Gerald Janecek, Padin and Young. (My own contribution, on minimalist poetry, was even written up-- briefly--in the autumn 1997 issue of The Wilson Quarterly; whaddya think of that!?)

There's way too much going on at Light & Dust for me to more than touch on it here, but I do want particularly to call attention to one of the newer attractions, Klaus Peter Dencker's Worte Koepfe. Part of the Kaldron subdivision of Light & Dust overseen by Kempton, Polkinhorn and Young, Worte Koepfe comes with an introduction by Young that I'm going to quote liberally from because it says more than I'd be able to: ". . . (t)he graphic elements in his poems recapitulate the range of techniques used by artists and designers of all sorts. One of the great satisfactions for me in his work comes from the interplay of techniques collaged together. A simple aspect of this appears in different types of shading in the images, ranging from the cross-hatching, layering, and feathering of woodcuts and stone lithographs, to the gradations produced by photographic techniques for offset and rotogravure printing, to the gradations introduced by airbrushes and now by computer programs. This wonderful confluence of icons and graphic techniques finds a match in Dencker's approach to letters. A page of Dencker's poetry will probably include at least half a dozen type faces, and it seems an interesting bit of serendipity that living in Germany provides Dencker with Fractur type faces as well as Roman and sans serif faces. Just as important is Dencker's hand lettering, which adds a great deal to the interplay of letter forms in his poems." To this I might add that Dencker makes often ravishingly good use of color.

The Winter 1998 pages feature work by Russian Dmitry Bulatov, Australian Peter Sullivan, Italian Vittore Baroni and Russian Serge Segay working together, Americans Carol Stetser and Amy Franceschini, and Brazilian Claudio Daniel. My favorite piece from this section is one by Sullivan that looks like a granite slab into which the word, "HISTORY," was once chiseled in several spots, but which, due to the onslaught of time, has become a delirium of textuality that seems first to shout "STOP" but then, like an optical illusion, flips through various semi-words before hovering--almost--on something that looks like "HISTORY"--for a moment. But there are all kinds of other first-rate works here and elsewhere at Light & Dust. If you have access to the internet, you've got to visit it!