Why or why not?
And here’s another: of the following women, do you consider any or all of them to be visual poets? Yoko Ono, Mina Loy, Hannah Hoech, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Cecilia Vicuña
There are at least two segments on each question: are you a poet and if so are you a visual poet?
Jessica Smith
I think I’d consider all of the women in that list to be visual poets–or at least I think it’s fair to say that all of them made visual poetry, often in addition to other things. Most of them (all?) have work that is very interdisciplinary.
That’s what I’d say about myself, that I’m an artist who makes visual poems, among quite a few other things.
I feel similarly… like… it’s increasingly difficult for me to separate poetry and life. As I was telling you before… I feel like living has become the poem. Or as Duchamp asks, “can one make a work that is not a work of art?” Well… no.
Your two questions beg two others: What is a poet, and, then, what is visual poetry.
If poetry is limited to the use of words or their constituent parts, then any words or parts thereof presented in a manner meant to be seen by the eyes would be visual poetry, and everyone who presented such stuff would be a poet and visual poet, if they so self-dientified and/or anyone else so identified them.
If poetry is not limited to words, then the same is true as above, except that it applies to anything.
So I guess I agree with Duchamp (and you and k. lorraine).
But . . . I think even Duchamp said that not everything he touches became art, and I’ve certainly heard other stellar artists say the same thing . . .
I LOVE vispo but I am not a visual poet. I think I am trapped in the (gasp choke cough cough) lyric. Just another victim of sound.
Maybe you’re a visual diarist. Don’t see why not, if you chose to be.