Two CD’s that have appeared in my mail box in the last week and deserve a thumbs up: “Les Chants de Maldoror,” read by Redjep Mitrovisa (Editions Theleme, 10, rue de Pontoise 75005 Paris) and “Live Capture Remix–June 10, 2005″ by Skip Fox, with electronic audio features by D. Perry and A. Verret (write to Skip at 1161 Highway 754, Sunset, LA. 70584).

Redjep’s reading of Chants I and II, interspersed with brief musical interludes, is accurate and intense. Redjep’s voice is that of an articulate youth’s–the voice has an unlined forehead, as it were–which drives home the fact that Les Chants de Maldoror is a young man’s book, written by someone who barely saw life before his atoms fell back to dust and silence.

Skip Fox’s voice, on the other hand, has the bite of a an older man who has gargled with acid after brushing his teeth with poison. The electronic augmentation fits perfectly–a swampy pool of sonorities through which the words fight their way to the ear and the heart. Skip writes that the group plans to issue a CD commercially. We hope it happens. Meanwhile, for those who might be interested, we supply the above address.

What exactly is visual poetry? Geoff Huth, Bob Gru-ku-mann, David Baptist Chirot, and other members of the Spidertangle List seem to know it when they see it, but can’t arrive at exactly what it is they mean when they try to define it. Does visual poetry need to have some linguistic element to make it poetry, or can it be created without words, or symbols, or even the beginnings of what could possibly be seen as linguistic elements? And if so, what separates visual poetry from just plain graphic art?

Or is it a matter of intention? David Baptist Chirot sees petroglyphs as visual poetry and assures us that some “Outsider Arists” are visual poets and some are not. Does wishing make it so?

Poor Spidertanglers weaving and weaving away in an apparent attempt to contain the whole world in their nets!

A definition stretched too thin is no definition at all.

As My final word regarding the University of Alabama Press’ showcase of experimental writing from the American South–which, on closer inspection appears not quite as ground-breaking as we’d like–I offer this foot-note:

From the Story of Decatur [Georgia] by Caroline Mckinney Clarke (Higgins-McArthur/Lingo & Porter, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, 1973) page 43:

“Some years later when part of the Chivers property was sold, the purchaser requested that his grave be moved to the Decatur Cemetery, where it now rests under a bow tomb [?] over which is a great urn (in the southwest corner of the old Decatur Cemetery). The inscription reads:

HERE LIE THE REMAINS OF THOMAS H. CHIVERS, M.D.
OF HIS EXCELLENCE AS A LYRIC POET
HIS WORKS WILL REMAIN A MONUMENT FOR AGES
AFTER THIS TEMPORARY TRIBUTE OF LOVE
IS IN DUST FORGOTTEN.
THIS SOUL WINGED ITS FLIGHT HEAVENWARD
DECEMBER 19TH, 1858
AGED 52 YEARS.”

Thomas Holley Chivers, in terms of imagination, range of poetic techniques, and use of language is at least the equal of every one of the writers in Another South. They should all leave flowers–or at least a bottle of patent medicine–at his tomb.

My thanks to Susan Ralph, librarian of Decatur Public Library for this information, and to Skip Fox for sending a copy of Another South.