A Tip o' th' Knife t' You

John M Bennett, "Cardboard 6 10" (2010)
Back in one of the golden ages of visual poetry (of which this is another), back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bill DiMichele (pronounced dee-mih-shell) was one third of the editorial board of Score, one of the very few magazines ever that devoted itself entirely to visual poetry. The other two thirds consisted of the husband and wife team, Crag Hill and Laurie Schneider. The magazine they put out stands as one of the hallmarks of visual poetry publishing. But that was a long time ago, and Bill disappeared from my sight for a while.

But he has returned with a new blogzine entitled Tip of the Knife, and its second issue is a simple but lovely affair. Printing a handful of visual poems by a handful of visual poets, he provides us with a good overview of the work of these poets and an issue of a magazine that it easy to ingest and digest.

With seven contributors in this issue (all male, by the way), the expanse of this is not complete, but the view of visual poetry's breadth is still quite well represented. Inside the issue are beautiful color visual poems by Guy R. Beining (who I'm used to seeing only in black and white), some comics-based poems by the indefatigable Andrew Topel, a wonderful set of iTouch-created (I'm assuming) visual poems created by Nico Vassilakis in reaction to the Avant Writing Symposium, a few visual poems by me, some wonderful cardboard-based visual poems by John M Bennett (which demonstrate, once again, how he's always working to extend beyond his past and current practice), a few slightly visual pieces by Richard Kostelanetz (which might lead me to question whether they're visual or poetry), and a few beautiful examples of textually-minimalist dirty visual poetry by Leon 5 (a name that is new to me).

Plenty though to tease the eye and the mind.

ecr. l'inf.