EXCERPTS FROM A LIFE:
CRAG HILL AND 'SCORE'
SCORE
1*3:Into the new series :
To read a visual
poem well you must look the whole page in while you seek meaning of its parts. You must hold the world of the page in your
mind's eye as you begin to map its mountain ranges, watersheds, continents,
islands, polar ice-caps, and oceans.
* * *
The visual poetry
in SCORE can help us gain the sight to reduce our narrow-mindedness, to focus
and enlarge our understanding of the world.
This series of
SCORE, appearing annually, will provide space for new and long-time visual
poets, and a place to learn to look to live for all of us.
* * *
'I've got my nose in the
water, and sometimes my head's submerged in the daily poopla, yet I can still
see the vigor of the "otherstream" as it has come to be called. There are many fine magazines publishing work
that challenges the accepted definitions (that work that can be defined, the
acceptable definable, that words and images can have an absolute, verifiable
meaning) of writing and art--Generator,
Texture, Central Park, Avec Mirage, lower limit speech, to name a few'.
* * *
Everyone knows of the great
international concrete movements of the 50s and 60s (their experiments are now
repeated in elementary-and secondary-school classrooms, and in advertising),
but little did we know how many others sustained the practice of working poetry
into pictorial forms. The practice has been with us for millennia and it will
never die.
But after twelve issues, Score (the
magazine) has to cease. It has to expire so that something else can occur. Continuity is satisfying; change is
inevitable. "We already know the damn score. Let's get on with the
game."
* * *
SCORE has decided
to return for two reasons.
One: there are a hell of a lot of poets producing new poems, a lot of new
faces. Many of the poets in this issue were not active when the first series of
SCORE was being published. Two: we still can't see.
* * *
The strength of
visual poetry, what it can teach the world, is holistic vision, the ability to
see the macrocosm simultaneously with the microcosm. It will be this vision that turns our
species away from its mass destruction of ecosystems before it is too late.
* * *
Crag Hill often says, like many
of his fellow artists, that he does not have enough time for artistic
interests. In a way, this has become a
virtue of his work, a characteristic quality that preserves the integrity of
his effort, keeping it from becoming routine and maintaining it as a sacred
task enthusiastically performed during special moments outside. It keeps Hill from becoming too heavy-handed
and theoretical. Hill's work, which to
me is familiar more as an editor than an artist or writer, retains the
tentative, open, innocent selectivity that it has had since the beginning
of SCORE. Hill uses the word 'eclectic' and variations
on the word 'undefined'. His preferences
remain impulsive, related to the qualities of the artwork itself rather than
preconceptions and bias. His preferences
are not defined but are based on the here and now. I have the impression that there is a lot of
cleanness and empty space in his publications.
* * *
(Some of the quotes here are from an unpublished interview I did
with Crag Hill through the mail in 1993-94-95.)
* * *
'Experimental poetry has been
one of the means to delineate our world, poets sticking their heads through
ozone to find language to show us something right before our eyes. Ron Silliman's concept of the "new
Sentence" is one such method; visual poetry has been another; chance
techniques as practiced by John Cage, Jackson Maclow, and others are another;
Bern Porter's eye-opening use of ready-made--everyday--materials has been yet
another. When we are engaged by these
poetries, emotionally and intellectually, we are closer to the center or
centers of the world as it is, as they are'.
* * *
We began Score, circa 1983. Actually,
we had no intention of starting anything nine odd years ago. We wanted to
produce a book of visual poems by Miekal And, Bill DiMichele, Laurie Schneider,
and Crag Hill. We didn't even know what we had.
We knew no one else would touch it. Not anyone we knew.
* * *
'I think my
reading--history, contemporary essay and fiction--is going to change the nature
of my work. Less enamored of new forms
for their own sake--oh how I love new forms!--new content should surface. And I intend to start up SCORE again in the
near future. Though it will include
visual poetry, I hope to make it more eclectic, perhaps even including the kind
of lyric poetry so often despised by the avant-garde--introspective, imagistic,
eager. I'd like to try to bring the two
camps a little closer'.
* * *
* * *
'...we stumble, sidestep, spin our wheels, backtrack, leap
without knowing where (science is especially fond of this kind of leap, e.g.
genetic engineering). So what? We move.
We are moved. Why be
passive? We have enough rigor mortis in
our deaths'.
* * *
'We know
that simultaneity of time even if we cannot describe or reproduce it. What appears as "new content"
pieces together the picture of the world that has already been there, though we
have few ways to share our perception of it....
'Yet we
cannot be satisfied simply with discovering new methods. We must make sure that these methods uncover
content valuable to as many people as possible--content cannot afford to be
elitist, must be communicated widely or it will have little beneficial
effect. What artists know everyone
should know'
* * *
As
Hill himself points out, visual writing has undergone many changes since the
first issue of 'SCORE'. At first, from
my point of view, the art was not too much more than collage. I think the work that appeared at that time
was much influenced and inspired by the appearance of Xerox copy machines. The term visual writing was one term among many
and not the most preferred. 'Mail Art'
seemed more prevalent. During its three
decades of existence, 'SCORE' itself has undergone changes: beginnings, ends, restarts, varied
formats. Visual art and artists seemed
to die out for a while. Perhaps some
graduated from copy machines to computers.
Then new artists and new work appeared.
In the early 1990s, after ceasing publishing with the carefully edited,
glossy minimalist covered issue 12, Hill began to publish 'SCORE' again from a
new address on Clifford Street in Pullman WA with scratchy copy machine issue
13 (co-edited with Spencer Selby).
Throughout
it all, the presentation of the artworks seems to have the same liveliness and
freshness that it had in the beginning.
Issue 19 is said to be again the final issue of SCORE, giving way to
upcoming SPORE. Crag Hill demonstrates a
lot of integrity in the way he follows his principles. For me, the best thing about the latest issue
of SCORE, though it contains a surprising amount of textual poetry, is that its
appearance is reminiscent of the unrestricted, active 'Xerolage', 'vispo' and
mail art scene at its bright inception.
* * *
* * *
'Yes, the visual art scene does fit into this picture. It parallels what is happening in the
literary world. There is an explosion of
visual art activity--painting, computer animation, video, collage,
performance--but not enough venues to give new work adequate exposure. It is not dying. The audience is larger, obviously, for the
visual art world; it's much easier to slip into the hottest gallery than to sit
down and read Charles Bernstein. Visual
art is often more immediately accessible, something our turn-of-the-century
consumers demand. Coffeehouses
throughout the west, at least, give space to visual artists'.
* * *
* * *
'...Bill
DiMichele...continues to create paintings that excite me sensually--what he can
do with color and texture. It's
maddening--and intellectually. That man
has to get his painting out of the studio--out of his damn garage. He's got to get his paintings out into the
world. He's got something to show'.
* * *
'Dick Higgins is a
committed artist, the only kind of artist worth acknowledging. He's been mixing it up--music, collage,
performance, words--with world for forty some years. Involved with Fluxus and the Happenings of
the 60s, publisher of Something Else Press, one of the most intrepid publishers
of the 60s and 70s, a rare scholar and practitioner of pattern poetry, an
avant-garde composer, he has given us many different tools to understand and
enjoy the world. Not driven by personal
gain, he works hard to make the world a more interesting place'.
* * *
'My involvement has been curtailed the last three years by a
commitment to teaching in the public school system. (I hope to bring more and more of the living
literary and art world into my classes than I have so far, but it's a slow
process.)'
* * *
--Review by Tom Hibbard (Jan 2005)
