O, Vozoque Pulp is a collaborative venture from www.calamarispress.com (no price, saddle-bound, 40 pages) that features the visual poetry of Carlos M. Luis and the prose-poetry of Derek White. The art is a compelling scitter of pen and ink with washes of color. Some appear to be based on the old trick of creasing paper across an ink bead and working from the resulting pattern. Others appear to feature Mr. Luis on a straw puffing a bead of ink across a blank page. Don’t laugh! Justinus Kerner used the former technique to create his powerful portraits of the dead, which he published in 1857 under the title of Klecksographien. (To see an on-line version of this interesting combination of poetry and prose go to here) And Henri Michaux used the latter method to produce some of his most interesting graphics.

Derek White’s words enlarge the resonance of the visuals in an interesting manner. Here’s an example from page 29:

(h)ALT(O)HE(ME)

There’s a host in “ghost” but the “h” is silent. He lived in the same building with us, on the floor above. The (g)host occupied his time by occupying the building. His hemorrhaging was indicative of everything going on upstream. The hourglass sand dripped from his brain, diffusing and lining his esophagus.

When it finally happened, he was thinking of something else. He was considering the permeability of his own skin and how it was able to let certain molecules diffuse out and not let others in. He raised his hand to hail the taxi. He opened his mouth, but did not speak. It was too late. A man living inside him was jostled loose. It was nothing he was proud of–harboring this being inside him this whole time.