A Poster for Poetry Month 2

(Click on images for larger versions.)

A version of the poster I designed for National Poetry Month, used as an element of another design idea. Not the first image I've rolled through one of my vintage typewriters, but this one definitely fits into the poetry/words/type/art theme of the original poster.



This is an idea I've explored before, in which the image emerging from the typewriter is one impossible to have done so: an anachronism, a technological impossibility, yet evoking both the history and the development of printing technology. The contrast and overlap are poetically evocative, for me.



This close-up, tightly-cropped version is my favorite version here, I think. I like the image emerging from the machine, as though it had been typed up. The dominant element is the Poetry Month poster, though, not the typewriter. The balance and composition of elements is important in any poster design, and I think this has a better balance than the overall view.

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Questions were raised in comments on my original presentation of this poster design, from Eshuneutics (who is always worth reading), that are relevant to the poster design and concept on several levels:

. . . Would anyone notice it [the poster] is gay? Now, isn't that the eternal question again: What is gay art/poetry? This intrigues me more and more (because as you wrote in a post, the gay image [in] mid-America is not the same as on the coasts, in other words, we don't belong to the stereotype). If the wordle had SEX, QUEER and the image was a male couple, hey, it would be obvious. Yes, obvious to the gay stereotyping mass. To me, there is an ambience to the poster that says something. . . .

These are really interesting questions. They don't really have answers, at least not definitive answers. Some answers can be found, personally and locally, but these questions will remain open-ended for most writers and artists. I want to return to the question of ambience, or sensibility, later. But first, let's deal with the obvious.

Yes, I could have made the poster more obvious, more openly and overtly homoerotic (gay, LGBT, homosexual, etc.) by including more obvious elements such as gay-tagged words in the Wordle clouds, or a photo of two men embracing (which I do have, from past photo shoots), or two women, or other obvious signs and symbols. (Bang a cymbal to make the symbol more obvious.) It's not hard to make LGBT content explicit: all you have to do is depict same-sex couples together.

Although, let's be realistically honest about same-sex couples nowadays, and avoid one older set of stereotypes: in other words, let's use psychologically-positive and openly-loving images of gay couples. Depictions of gay lovers as innately self-hating and self-destructive, bitchy, unstable, and promiscuous are themselves stereotypes.

There can be purpose to using the stereotypes. With some people it is necessary to make it obvious. With some others, maybe less necessary, but perhaps polite. My intent was indeed to make a poster mining the oft-overlooked wing of poetry that is openly, even proudly, LGBT.

But what makes a poem gay? Subject matter? Sexual content? Explicit statements in the body of the poem, along the lines of those explicit signs already mentioned? The fact that a love poem written to a man by another man might logically be considered gay in intent and subject? (Not overlooking the truth that a poem written from a persona or character viewpoint isn't necessarily portraying the author's character or viewpoint, even in a so-called confessional lyric.)

While I have been explicitly homoerotic, even sexual, in some poems and art, I also find myself wanting to be subtle and indirect about as often: an oblique approach to the subject matter, that evokes rather than bludgeons the audience. Perhaps this is Midwestern reserve; at times it probably is. In other instances, it may be because I am less interested in reportage and more interested in metaphor and parataxis. No-one writes the same poem in the same way all the time, or ought to.

It can also be a desire, in my case as an artist and writer, to depict love and desire, rather than simple fucking. To present eros as itself, in its aspect as life-force, the power under all life, that moves us to unite as two solitudes meeting, on an energetic/psychological/spiritual as well as physical level. I am more interested in eros and Tantra, in my own art, than I am in producing work that others might view as purely pornographic. I am interested in transcendence—which does not exclude the physical, the raunchy, and the explicit, but rather embraces it—since the essential practice of Tantra is to take the power of the raw, base emotions and convert them into fuel for attaining enlightenment.

There are ways to subvert artistic stereotypes, just as there are ways to subvert clichés in poetry, by turning them on their edges. One tactic is to overdo the stereotype to the point of absurdity or irony. (An overused tactic of postmodernism, one I don't like very much.) Another is to make substitutions that are near to the stereotype, without exactly repeating it; the audience will perceive a conceptual echo of the stereotype, but be thrown off because it's not an exact replay.

I find myself, in a poster design such as this one, as well as in art and poems from time to time, preferring the oblique approach. I want to evoke, not bludgeon. I don't want to fall into stereotype, precisely because I want to give a fresh take on Poetry Month, from a different direction. There is also a connection between Wordle word clouds and both traditional concrete poetry and contemporary VisPo (visual poetry), although the latter has (like much post-avant-garde poetry of the present moment) more theory than practice supporting it.

It is possible to evoke LGBT literary and artistic history, I also believe, by using the old, pre-Stonewall, pre-Gay Liberation tactic of the "coded text." It was common, in much LGBT art and literature prior to the modern LGBT rights movement(s), to hide or "code" the queer content by using tropes familiar to subcultural insiders that outsiders would not know about, and therefore completely miss. Signs and symbols, turns or phrase, images, coded words: these were all used to evoke "the love that dared not speak its name" to those already "in the know" while excluding those ignorant of the code.

For this poster, using coded texts seemed an appropriate way to give the poster a gay sensibility without being stereotypical or blatant. In this case that meant using some of my own poems that are homoerotic without being sexually explicit as source texts for Wordle. It also meant using a male nude from a previous photo shoot, although the nudity is mostly hidden by the text itself. For one version of the poster it also meant using pink as the dominant color, which is a color associated with gay rights via the historical pink triangle used by the Nazis in World War II concentration camps for homosexuals, and reclaimed since as a positive gay rights emblem. Although personally I prefer the blue version of the poster, on purely aesthetic grounds, an art director might use the pink version precisely because of what it evokes. Again, how direct do we want to be?

To return at last to the question of ambiance or sensibility, the question arises again and again regarding if one is able to locate or identify a "gay sensibility" in artwork and poetry. Is there indeed a gay sensibility produced in his art by an artist who happens to be gay, even if the content of the artwork is not overtly (blatantly, stereotypically) gay, sexual, or homoerotic?

Although I do have an opinion here, at the moment I want to point out that discovering a gay sensibility in an artist's work is often a sub rosa attempt to identify the artist's biography with their artwork (the authorial fallacy), under the assumption that any gay artist must produce gay art even if they don't overtly want to. This assumption is itself a sub rosa (perhaps unconscious) attempt to categorize an artist's work based on their "innate" character or sexuality—which is itself a subtle form of homophobia. (Even liberated gay artists sometimes find subtle forms of internalized homophobia in themselves and their work; it can be a major opus to root it out.)

Homophobia? Indeed. You almost never see straight (non-LGBT) artists' sensibilities discussed in this same way, as though their sexuality was the dominant and deterministic factor in their artistic sensibility. The fact that it matters at all if there is or is not a "gay sensibility" can be taken as covert homophobia, and in practice it often is just that. For many straight critics discussing LGBT art, discovering a gay sensibility can be a road towards critical dismissal, a way of saying that this art doesn't matter to normal people. Indeed, for many mainstream critics this is a common and typical road towards critical dismissal of any and all "genre" art, from LGBT content to science fiction—and thus are enforced the critical and psychological standards of normative social and sexual expression. Normative critiques against non-normative stereotypes can be a direct, if subtle, forum for reinforcing what is considered normative: dismissing the margins keeps the center in power.

Discovering a gay sensibility in art, however, can also be taken as an attempt by gay artists to reclaim a formerly negative label as a positive emblem, in exactly the same way that the pink triangle was reclaimed. But to be taken this way, it seems important to know that the reclaiming is being done by other gay artists, rather than non-LGBT critics. This brings us back, full circle, to the insider's coded text. The distinction between insider and outsider, regarding discovering a gay sensibility in art by a gay artist, therefore, may be as simple as knowing whether the motivation behind the discovery is homophobia or reclaiming.

My own opinion is that there is indeed some kind of gay sensibility in art—the word "ambiance" is apt—although pinning it down can be elusive. It must vary from artist to artist, so it may be more useful to discuss gay sensibilities (plural). Different aspects appear at different time, in different ways. The subtle line between overt and coded. Can I tell you exactly what gay sensibility is? No; and I doubt anyone else can, either. In my own art, I can say that I do think that because I am a gay man who makes art, some aspect of my own sensibility, which is that of a gay man, gets into all my art, whether or not that art is openly, blatantly gay in content or not. It can be very subtle.

I do believe that one fundamental aspect of my own sensibility, which is a gay sensibility, and which might be shared by other gay artists, is empathy: the ability to walk a mile in the Other's shoes. To use imagination to create unity between disparate people. The use empathy to feel the suffering and joy of others. To be very aware, having grown up as an often-attacked Other within my own culture, of how the Other thinks and feels. Sympathetic thinking is after all one road to genuine empathy. if you can understand how someone Other has felt like a victim or a victor, you can walk a mile in their shoes. And thus all of my poetry, all of my art, I believe, contains the certain use of imagination and empathy to make those connections. I build a lot of bridges. Parataxis and collage are useful artistic tools that I use all the time.

All this discussion from a simple throwaway poster design made on a whim, for an annual designated national month about poetry that no-one except poets really cares about or will pay attention to!

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 3: Gifts

Two papier-maché bowls made specifically as gifts for family and friends for Xmas. I've already given these two bowls away, although I forgot to sign them. They were made after some thought about what to give as gifts, after a year in which I had made a lot of art but hadn't made much money. I like giving hand-made gifts for the occasions in which one gives gifts: there is something personal about making one's gifts, something special especially when one can give of one's artistic self. A lot of family and friends appreciate this. I like receiving such hand-made gifts, too.


Bowl of Type II




A refinement of the first bowl made of images of typewriters and type. I made this as a gift for my sister, who is an artist and book-binder, and who this past autumn took a class in setting type by hand. This classical skill, which I value highly, spawned a couple of typography-related gifts for my sister, including this bowl. The outer skin of the bowl is made from my own laser-print photos of my collection of vintage typewriters. The inside of the bowl is paper strips with random typewriter impressions printed on paper.

I like the end result here. I think it's one of the better bowls I've made so far. I particularly like the shape of this bowl, it feels very classic.


Bowl of Music




A larger bowl, made of various kinds of paper, cut with scissors into both triangular shapes and long strips, all with musical notation printed on them. These papers have been collected by me over some time from various craft stores in their scrapbooking departments. One particularly interesting paper was translucent vellum printed with gold music notation. I made this bowl for my friends in Chicago who run a recording studio, where I sometimes work as well as record, and since it was gifted during the annual studio Xmas party, I filled the bowl with chocolates and Xmas ornaments, and a few other little goodies. The last photo here shows the bowl filled with gifts, to be given as a gift.

The construction of this bowl is looser, even a little random, and deliberately sloppy. The mold was a large square plastic salad bowl. When I removed the piece from the mold (it came out easily because I used plastic wrap to line the mold) it had not yet fully dried. So even though I kept the base flat while it finished drying, so that the piece would stand properly, I allowed the side walls to deform as they dried, and did not try to preserve the perfectly square form. As a result, the bowl is oddly-shaped, neither fully square nor fully rounded, with some paper fragments shooting up along the sides almost architecturally. One or two connecting structural pieces in the bowl's base had to be reglued after the bowl was completely dried, as they had pulled apart meantime.

I tried to use the scrapbook music papers in an interesting design pattern, both inside and out. I also used two small prints of Photoshop pieces I'd made earlier, on opposite sides of the bowl's exterior rim, each one symbolizing music in some way. One image contains my photos of New Mexico, with cave art, including Kokopelli the flute player, superimposed. The other image involved a piano, and other musical symbols. Perhaps the music bowl will end up in the studio, holding chocolates or other snacks for those late-night recording sessions; that would be fitting.

I am discovering that some concepts for art bowls work better if I cut the paper into strips with scissors. Torn paper has a different look. This is about finished appearance more than papier-maché technique. The paper is soaked and assembled using the same papier-maché mold techniques, so far, regardless of how the strips are prepared beforehand.

In the case of an illustrated bowl, with a specific theme and imagery, like these two bowls here, sometimes the torn paper look detracts from the images themselves, which look more like pure collage if cut with scissors. For bowls made purely out of paper that is itself of aesthetic interest, such as fine-textured watercolor paper, tearing the paper into strips, rather than cutting it, softens the look of the finished piece, makes it look even more hand-made, and provides interesting textures and patterns in its own right.

Royal Green

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I have a small collection, about a dozen, of vintage and antique typewriters. I find them to be aesthetically interesting, mechanically and typographically, and also purely visually, as much as for the history of writing they demonstrate. I've an ongoing series of photos and artworks based around these typewriters, and others I've photographed in thrift stores but not brought home.

I was playing with saturation and desaturation in these images: making everything into grayscale except the bright green typewriter keys. Then I just started to have fun. Good way to spend an evening, to make a little artwork.

Silent Typewriter

My First Typewriter

This is my first typewriter. My parents gave it to me when I was in my teens. It's a Smith-Corona portable. I have many memories of sitting crosslegged on my bed in my room, or at my desk, typing on this typewriter. It has a hardshell metal carrying case that it locks into. When I wrote on my bed, I set the typewriter on top of its case, which made it a comfortable height for typing. I wrote most of my school papers on this typewriter, from 8th grade through the end of college. I can see spots on the rollers and shell where I accidentally painted White-Out, that most essential liquid tool of revision and rewriting before the invention of digital cut-and-paste.

My sister had an identical typewriter, and so did my mother. They were all purchased at the same time. I have two of the three typewriters in my collection.

I am fascinated by old technology. I enjoy reading about the history of technology, which is also the history of ideas and innovation. We are a technical culture, and much of our self-esteem as a culture is bound up with our developed instrumentalities; as is much of our hubris. So I have small collections. meaningful to me if no one else, of older tech. I have my father's old stethoscope. I have about a dozen antique typewriters, including iconic Royal and Underwood montrosities; but my collection is mostly focused on vintage portables. I have a small collection of navigation tools, working reproductions, commemorating my grandfather's leaving Norway at age 14 to sail in the merchant marine; I have a couple of telescopes, a sextant, several unusual compasses, etc. I have photographed many items in my collections on more than one occasion, and they appear as elements in both my visionary artwork and my commercial illustration work.



I typed up most of my first poems on this typewriter, when I started writing poems in my teens. Doesn't every writer write poems in their teens? Other than a school unit in second grade wherein we were taught haiku and cinquain as forms, I don't think I wrote poetry at all, until I entered puberty. Aren't these early poems usually forgettable? Recently, going through my old papers in storage in the basement, I found several old journals I'd forgotten about, and a sheaf of poems typed on this very typewriter. One or two poem sets are pasted into a journal volume. Others are loose, in a folder, paperclipped together. I plan to photograph these early poems, as I am doing with many of my old documents, to preserve all such papers as part of our family history, but also to explore my own personal history. I am still in that period of re-discovering and re-assessing my own life's story, in the wake of my parents' deaths.

A few days ago was the second anniversary of my father's death. At the same time, I was moved to purchase at a thrift store, for the first time in several years, another vintage typewriter, an old Underwood portable, to add to my small collection. I've also been thinking about the interconnections between my typewriter, my poetry, my calligraphy and handwriting, my design and typography work, including my original type designs, and my computers. To the mix I can now add photography, video, and multimedia aspects. I am working towards some combination of all these modes, or an exploration of what's possible when all these modes merge, overlap, or combine.

Nowadays I often type my poems directly to the screen, on my laptop, when they come forward, ready to be captured. I still handwrite poems in journals, too, but mostly when I'm away from the daily technology; for example, when I'm traveling or camping. But I remember typing to the page, composing directly on this typewriter, in my teens. That was the probable beginning of my fascination with type, and with writing directly at the typewriter, and later the laptop. I know several poets who state they can only write by hand, not to the keys; only later do they transcribe to the typewriter or computer. They say they can't write to the screen, they have to start with handwriting. Apparently I've always been able to do both. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I've never felt limited to one or the other mode of writing; the words come when they come, and the medium I write them down in is not as essential as getting them down. I still handwrite a journal, as I said, mostly when I'm traveling, when the laptop isn't handy or available. I write fast and I write legibly, another legacy of being a trained calligrapher. It all ends up in the computer now, eventually.

Among those rediscovered journal papers I also found a handwritten journal I had made on my first trip to Wyoming, as a geology student. It contains occasional entries—again, I was never a daily diarist; I can think of few things less interesting—but also many drawings and sketches. Mostly doodles, done idly during downtime, appearing as often as one is moved.

What I get from this rediscovery, now, is a renewed awareness that many of my adult artistic themes and concerns were already present in my writing and art even when I was very young. I abandoned drawing in my early twenties, thinking I was no good at it. (I was unable to cease comparing myself to more accomplished artists, and thus developed almost no self-confidence.) I look back at these old drawings and they're more interesting than I recall; but I am also remembering who I was when I did them, an explorer, an experimenter, as I am still. I gave up drawing because I thought I was no good at it, and gave all my attention to my music-making. Nonetheless, this rediscovered journals give me evidence that I was a confirmed writer and artist much earlier in life than I have recently believed. I recall starting in college the first volume of the journal that I have kept continuously ever since; but now I know I started earlier than that, I just let it drop before picking it up again more seriously later on.

I have many memories of sitting on my bed, typing on this typewriter. I wrote some of my first poetry on this typewriter. I wrote some of my first erotic poetry on it, as well. I kept a journal even in my teens, but it was a small, limited project. It was mostly for thoughts, sketches, and poem drafts. It was never a diary, a daily record of events. When I was 16, I began a long homoerotic poem that I wrote off and on for almost twenty years; I would set it aside for awhile, then come back to it; eventually it reached over 2000 words, and I transcribed it into the computer, revising it and adding to it once more. The three longest poems I have ever written have been erotic poems. I remember writing poems in a clean hand, too, when no typewriter was available. I wrote an entire chapbook of poems while on my Fulbright year in Indonesia. I copied them out in a clean hand which I mailed home to my mother periodically. I only gathered them together into a book later on.

But my mother kept everything I had ever given her; every painting, every letter, every poem, every piece of music, every drawing. She collected all my young work, and saved it for me, to be rediscovered when we were clearing out the house after my parents had died. So I have this early record now. It's juvenilia, mostly. One or two themes I can see recurring and revisited more maturely in later years; but already present in that teenage work. I'm grateful to my mother, now, for saving all this stuff: not because it's any good, as art or writing, but because it tells me that she cared, she did understand and support my art-making, and she loved me. This has been good for me to learn, now, when I need such reminders that, maybe, after all, despite everything, it has been worthwhile.

for Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy

at the thrift store today
a new old typewriter
ancient Underwood portable
saw it a few days ago
still there still unsold
bought it brought it home
cleaned it up ribbon
still works some of the keys
stick the X key sticks
watched a documentary
about Christopher Isherwood
and Don Bachardy lovers
thirty years age difference
didn't matter didn't ever matter
why would it why should it
if it's love it doesn't matter
older younger mentor student
father son mistaken by some to be
what mattered was the words and images
the old writer and the young artist
the artist stopped drawing anyone else
for the last six months of the writer's dying
then spent all day drawing his corpse
the sunny day after he died
Christopher eyes closed jaw slack
skin folded in wasted away not much hair
everything gone pale and faded
pose in repose drawn again and again
while the artist kept looking
and seeing seeing clearly even if eyes clouded
the last look of the body of the writer
in pose and repose looking exactly

the same my father did in the hour after he too died
two years ago today

The Boy, the Flower, and the Typewriter

In my basement I have a small collection of vintage and antique typewriters. About half of them are portables, complete with travel cases; some of the cases are leather, others are wood boxes, still others with plastic travel cases. I have an old Underwood; a couple or Royals; portable Remingtons and Smith-Coronas.

I don't collect a lot of things—vintage typewriters, lapel pins from national and state parks I've visited, books—although I do admit some things mass more than others. I'm not a collector the way some collectors are; and I'm a recovering packrat, finally cured of that tendency by the many months it took to go through the crap in my parents' house after they passed on; so I don't really care to gather too many chattels into my possession. I'm also not a "serious collector" in that these old typewriters have often stumbled my way, without having to seek them out. I don't spend a lot of time or money on the things I do collect. My Underwood, which weighs a ton, was the only one I went out of my way to acquire; but I still paid less than twenty dollars for it.

My tastes are also rather monastic, when it comes to decorative objects. I like examples of functional, elegant design; an exquisite, simple Michael Graves teakettle is far more attractive to me than any Victorian silver tea service. I am drawn more towards simplicity and Minimalism, in architecture, than I am to the Baroque and over-decorated. Visual clutter leads to mental clutter, to being distracted and scattered. I keep my house clean, and put things away when I'm done with them, including dishes, because I'm more vulnerable than ever to being derailed from my purpose, thanks to the life-changing events of recent years, which I'm still recovering from. A clean house is one way of coping with a lack of focus elsewhere.

In going back over my design and illustration work, because I'm starting over, I have been digging through new and old artwork alike. I found this image, originally made in 2003, I think, and have pulled it out again to use in my self-marketing.

This image is iconic, for me, and speaks to lots of the reasons I get pleasure from art-making, graphic design, illustration, and photography.

I made a Photoshop collage of a male nude, photographed in the studio, and a flower, also shot in the studio, under careful lighting. I printed the finished Photoshop collage, then inserted it into one of my antique typewriters, rolling it like a page of typescript around the typewriter's platen, as though the typewriter were producing the art.

To me, this symbolizes a convergence of old and new; the old printing technology meeting the newest; the digital meeting the analog; the natural and organic meeting the mechanical; the chaotic (nude and flower) meeting the orderly (mechanical precision of engineering, in technology). The finished artwork, for me, symbolizes how the digital emerges from the old, too: the digital image scrolling up from the keyboard; I thought about this very often, in my earlier days of doing graphics and typesetting work on computers. The technologies are recursive, curving back around to support each other in new and surprising ways.

I enjoy the fact that all the different technologies, old and new together, go to produce a single finished artwork. Old and new tech are not in conflict; the one doesn't replace the other, rather it provides a new palette of artistic choices. I often go back and use older tech in my music and art-making. I've recorded flute improvisations, a bamboo or cane flute being one of the oldest musical technologies on the planet, directly onto my laptop.

I've used my typewriters in more than one photo shoot. I have some other images like the one shown here, which are similarly iconic. I also have a set of close-ups I've been thinking of marketing as a CD of royalty-free images for other designers to buy and use.

I've also used my typewriters for the design purpose which I originally intended: to illustrate my catalog of original typefaces. I run White Dragon Type Foundry, a mostly amateur business, in which I give most of my work away. I design typefaces. I design them for fun, and because I'm fascinated by the history of letterforms. But I've also designed typefaces professionally, and occasionally lucratively. My font pages contain a wide range of my type design work, and several examples of the often-whimsical artwork I've made using my old typewriters.

I've been too busy moving and sorting through other belongings—and traveling—these past few months, to really do much more with my typewriters. But I might still add to the collection, if the write instrument comes along. Most of my typewriters still work, too; I've thought off and on about doing some type design based on their built-in forms. I could type out a phrase, digitize it, and go to work. (The old and new merging together again, as in the piece I talked about above.)

I did actually do this, once already, sort of, with my typeface Smith&Wesson Corona. I took this same typewriter and photographed it, with a sheet rolled onto the platen, as above, with sheet this time being the typeface's own sample-sheet. A fun bit of recursive illustration.



And I might set up all the vintage typewriters to be photographed again. I do find that re-doing the same subject, years later, gives one a different perspective on it. I don't like to repeat myself, artistically or personally. But revisiting old friends is not the same thing at all.