In our climb up the Mount Parnassus of Southern Experimental Writing, we stop off at a plantation house balanced over the abyss, where we’re served mint juleps by Sothern Belles and are invited into the main gallery to contemplate some of the South’s best minimal, concrete and visual poetry.

Bob Grumman is given the west wall for his “ku” series of in-between texts. Grumman is notorious for his attempts to stretch the word “haiku” into anything he darned well means it to be. Having the good fortune to live in Japan, and to count among my close personal friends Rokuya Akashi, winner of the Santoka award, and widely-respected haijin, I find this a bit off-putting, and smacking more than a little of the cultural imperialism that Westerners are blamed for. If Mr. Grumman had any idea of the real nature of the work of writing genuine haiku, or of what the real thing is like in the original language, he would search for another, more accurate definition for what he does. (May I suggest the neologism “Usoku” from Uso–meaning false, and ku, as in line or inscription. There’s also a tiny joke in this coinage for those of you who know a little Japanese.)

Be that as it may, here are two examples of Bob’s “Cryptographiku”

Cryptographiku for Wallace Stevens

spsjpi

vxqqhu

cwuvmn

winter

and yet another for our friend of a previous posting, Jim Leftwich:

Cryptographiku for Jim L5ftwich

full wish of a moon

lingering without effect

in the w i n 20 5 18 14 9 6 4 0

A longer mathemateku series dedicated to Beethoven which divides a large-font “sky” by a block of “blue” repeated in lines of nine is of much more interest, visually and conceptually, and this effort, along with another visual poem titled “Summer Rain” leaves us wishing that the work had been printed in color. No doubt they are striking in the originals.

On the east wall, positioned right next to “Racing Steamboats” by Currier and Ives are “Steelville, Missouri Rodeo” and the triangular “Zinc-Jangled Pencil of Groves” by David Thomas Roberts–both composed of interesting visual elements ranging from sheet-music to sketches of log cabins. Not bad at all.

Having taken a bit of a rest, we hit the uncertain path again. Is it our imaginations, or is the ground starting to level out?

To be continued.