the pwoermd

Geof Huth's ntst: analysis and appreciation

Again, a gift of poetry from American visual, textual, aural and digital poet Geof Huth. I've just received a review copy of ntst: in the words of the PRESS RELEASE (3/3/10) by publisher if p then q, a collection of " 750 of Geof Huth's pwoermds; one word poems, visual plays, portmanteaus, abbreviations and cuts of regular words." The poet is introduced as writing in a tradition dating from 60s minimalist style of Aram Saroyan; and, even more interestingly, the poetry described as showing " the great maximalism of minimalism", by which he means the pwoermd gives both an "inside and outside" configuration. The essential 'paradox' of poetry in the fewest possible words: indeed, in the stand-alone word itself (as in the case of Huth).

Editor James Davies even offers a sort of literary framework within which to analyze (& appreciate) the poetry publications of if p then q, offering the public work that's "cutting edge" and clearly faithful to a "three tier" vision of writing to which the reader will hopefully be drawn at some point in interpretation. I'd like to offer a reading and appreciation of the one-word pwoermd in terms of 'the most in the least' paradox. And since it offers an outline suitable to my own reading of Huth's work, I will cite the publisher's "three tier model" in full:

• The first level is that the reader simply likes the poem (this could be that it works on a relatively simplistic, accessible level in part or in the whole) or that the work is aesthetically interesting - a comparison here is the minimalists.
• The second level of the work is that a reader may want to (is encouraged to ) 'dig' deeper and see the ideas through, without any need of specialist background knowledge - poetry or otherwise.
• The third level is that of a reader, who does have some prior knowledge to something contextual, allowing them an understanding of content or form. The audience who has gone through level one and two is prepared to research (because it's gone through level one and two).

In an earlier work of Huth's entitled &² an/thology of pwoermds, Huth himself justifies the one-word poem, eager to dispel the myth that writing style can be judged by virtue of size alone ("Why One Word is Enough: A"). There are, in Huth's estimation, three ways a pwoermd (however exiguous it looks) can bristle with meaning: as (i) a "single unmodified traditional word" relying on visual impact (tundra by Cor van den Heuvel), (ii) variations on a "the DNA of an original source word" ( groww by bpNichol), and (iii) a combination "of two or more words" ( ouzelfinesse by Emily Romano). Presumably all three types appear in ntst (though I haven't looked closely enough to say with certainty). If there is a minimalist credo here it's that language has the wherewithal to communicate in "the smallest of orts" ( & ) even a single letter sufficing to bear significant meaning.

If the pwoermd displays both "inside and outside", offering variations on a primary one-word form, perhaps it might also be true to call its inside "the tensions [that] exist within each word", as Huth also says in the introduction ( A) and the outside, "the page" or "garden" (after Ian Hamilton Finlay). Keeping the minimalist format as consonant as possible with the traditional expectations of poetry. "We can believe," according to Huth, "pwoermds are clearly works of art when we see they function just as traditional poems do." (O) It looks as if the pwoermd, very much a traditional poem, must also promote clearly defined etymological, typographical and visual purposes. The "great maximalism of minimalism" principle at work here.

I will randomly select a single page from ntst, and provide for the first three pwoermds I see a sort of traditional poetic interpretation (& appreciation). For each an analysis in terms of the way both individual pwoermd and any specific level of reading (as per Davies's "three tier model") can parlay into significant literary content. Reading poetry is here, I believe, as much aesthetics as poetics, relying on good literary instincts and a willingness, at the same time, to let each offering work on the eye unmediated by theory, and in the end remain what it essentially is— a lovely little artifact of language and art alone in its own garden.

To begin with, Huth is a visual poet and yet the pwoermd also seems to be an element of a wider textual design: namely, the page on which it appears. I consider the pwoermds on page 65, for example, as a sort of "text art" in its own right (the recto of page image below), a vertical (vertebrae-like) column that both supports and rests on nothing, and yet the whole amplifying a sense of stodgy resiliency, a verbal monolith of sorts. The page is also a site of traditional poetic meanings where, despite the predominance of writing 'space', the eye cannot fall too freely down the page. A writing space adaptable to text design and visual art: for it is here, especially in the case of cutting-edge minimalist poetry, that literary theory and the material act of writing cross paths.

 Huth addresses the text art & visual poetry distinction in a January 09, 2010 "dbqp: visualizing poetics" blog article. A distinction in which the textual artist is seen as dealing just with shapes on a printed page, without the "lifeblood" of meaning, reserving for visual poetry the "mysterious and magical" elements of true artistic expression. As he says,"[t]he visual poet is focused on text as lifeblood. The text artist focuses on text as a medium." I suppose the pwoermd is a bit of both: product of poetic imagination as well as a way to put "consistent and cutting edge" theory to the test. And now to Huth's page.

                                       thevolution

I'm tempted to read here at an advanced third-tier level, noting a fundamental "form and content" tension. On the outside, 'thevolution' is a fusion of two words with the 'e' serving to key possible meanings to pronunciation: a clear case of the union of thought and the materiality of the written (or rather spoken) word. But does meaning subserve speech (felt here as a distinctive 'vowel' sound-feature) or writing itself? The lack of textual spacing between 'the' and 'volution' doesn't frustrate linear reading too wildly. If 'e' is part of the article, & 'volution' is not too implausibly imagined as a concrete noun derived from the root word 'volute'[L voluta, fr. fem. of volutus, pp. of volvere to roll], the pwoermd reduces to the "spiral scroll-shaped form" (from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary) of both the classical Ionic column to which it's etymologically akin, and the page's own verticality.

A specific, easily verifiable property that can be identified as referent.The first pwoermd caps the page like an Ionic capital but really only resting on an abstract textual space: perhaps a purposely ambiguous symbol of any notion of poetic firstness. Of the primacy of  form over content. If the 'e' slides over to form 'evolution', however, both pronunciation and meaning change accordingly: the portmanteau word being strongly felt as a presence despite the missing vowel. As though pronunciation (the ease with which the combined elements roll off the tongue) signaled a 'missing link' whose absence is only minimally felt, and this because of some overriding sense of 'organic wholeness'. There isn't here the bending of the rules of word-derivation (as in the case of 'volution'): 'evolution' is allowed to evolve carrying with it a suppressed silent marker of linguistic harmony. Almost a case of elision. Perhaps the point being that what is natural to speech will survive even if partiallymuted.

                                       complext

Tampering with linguistic DNA can result in a semantical reprioritizing of the world (and of our relationships to it) the likes of which have never been seen til the advent of minimalist writing. A single 't' addition to the root 'complex'( adj[L complexus, pp. of complecti to embrace, comprise, (a multitude of objects), fr. com- + plectere to braid) does not just mark gratuitous alteration of an otherwise complete word, organically safe & sound, at best a case of successful, "aesthetically pleasing" linguistic experimentation. What's at stake here (for me) is the semantic power of language in general or, to put it more more speculatively, the degree to which words can naturally adopt the self-transformative properties of the world, becoming a 'complex text' with the potential for significant variations. What looks on the "outside" like wanton variation on a root word is rather a seismic shifting deep "inside" language itself. It's the job of 'complext' to register that shifting and provide direction for detecting similar processes at work in word formation.

Perhaps all the forces ( from the root 'plexus' or "interwoven combination of parts") have lain hidden under layers of an all too familiar language usage. Huth's pwoermd is really an active linguistic blood and guts network distinguishable from ordinary words by its telltale 't' addition: 't' is a genetic marker for a new hybrid one-word formation.Perhaps it's both formulaic and combinatory at the same time: a sign of visible alteration attributable to lexical upheavals that like to push their way through to the surface of language. It's very much in the spirit of (but not the same as) Bök's xenotext project by which the pwoermd is a code that if deciphered will disclose deep "two-way interactions between letters and their more general DNA properties. In Bök's case a letter-nucleotide interaction that hopefully results in a genetically self-perpetuating poem!
                                       eduction

If we have to look deep inside DNA for the causes of a pwoermd's hard 't' ending, it might be possible to make a similar claim for softer vowel-prefixes like the  'e' in 'eduction', but recognizing that 'eduction' is, unlike the first two pwoermds, a "single, unmodified traditional word". Here the powers of word-formation, stemming from its root 'educe' [L educere to draw out, from. e- + ducere to lead] don't seem quite as cataclysmic. If by that we mean taking notice of the transformative powers arising from deep inside language, such as marks the  investigative practices of minimalist (Huth, Saroyan)  and the most post-avant conceptualist ( Bök )poets who aren't afraid to cross disciplinary borders.

Perhaps 'eduction' is a pwoermd manifesto of sorts, leading the reader away from the traditional writing space of poetry as comprising words only. By definition a pwoermd can never be just a word. It's maybe the reason poet Geof Huth has recently christened April "International Pwoermd Writing Month", and offers a much more comprehensive 'typology' of pwoermd-formation than that outlined above (In fact, I could very well have used the terms 'apheresis' and 'syncope' in my discussion of ''thevolution, a refinement made necessary by the form's growing appeal'). The scope is international; its spirit is both wildly experimental but respectful also of cultural & literary tradition. As he says in  the InterNaPwoWriMo blog,

For the third year, I'll be encouraging folks to write a pwoermd a day for every day of the month of April, and once again I'm looking for many participants, across the globe, and working in many languages. If you can write one one-word poem a day thirty days in a row, drop me a note so that I can keep track of you. ("So Begins InterNaPwoWriMo 3, Thursday, April 1, 2010)