Karla Van Vliet combines art, poetry, and asemic writing
Artist, writer, and poet Karla Van Vliet published three works this year: Colors of the Grittiest God, a collaboration with Kristine Snodgrass in August; and two in September — Bone Scribed and Wildwood Devotions. I recently read the two from September, but before I started them, I had to look up a word.
The word is asemic, as in asemic writing, which Van Vliet practices.
Described as “the coolest writing you can’t read,” it has been defined as abstract text that conveys ideas as opposed to meaning. In fact, its literal definition is “having no specific semantic content” or “without the smallest unit of meaning.” It can be traced back to the ancient Chinese, but its more recent versions derive from abstract art (think Wassily Kandinsky and Cy Twombly) and the postmodern literary theories of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Roland Barthes (1915-1980), credited with the concept of “deconstruction” and “The Death of the Author.” “Asemic” was first applied to art in 1997 by two visual poets, Tim Gaze and Jim Leftwich.
Looking up “asemic” is like clicking on a hyperlink that takes you to the entire literary internet.
I read Bone Scribed first. While I was prepared for abstract, visual texts, what I discovered was recognizable language and beautiful language paired with her abstract artworks. The combination works, even to my own conventional mind. (It might be important that lately I’ve been discovering an interest in abstract art.) Most of the artworks are asemic, incorporating abstract language. The poems — in recognizable text — serve as Van Vliet’s interpretations of her art. Yet they’re not the only interpretations; readers will have their own.
Van Vliet divides the 22 poems of Bone Scribed into two parts. The first is “Compendium of Notional Words,” which includes subdivisions like “noun,” “gerund,” and “verb.” The second is “Medicine of Blues,” which combines poems with artworks depicting different shades of blue.
This poem is paired with three artworks, all of which contain both abstract texts and various shades of blue.
Cerulean:
I swallow sky / blue vault strewn with bird /
so far the horizon / thin calligraphy of mountains
/ between here and there / I am song / or soaring
/ a boundless surge of script / these crane bodies
flying / his voice’s tenor / rustling flight / I am
riding the poem’s thermals / a snow field melts /
intimate mist holds close / blooming orchid’s
fragile grace
The poem is impressionistic, a textual response to the artist’s own works. What comes to mind is your response to the art and then comparing it with what Van Vliet has written.
The artworks and the poems of Bone Scribed invite you to create both your own understanding and your own meaning. The focus shifts from the artist / poet to the reader. The collection is not so much provocative as it is thought-provoking.
Wildwood Devotions is similar and yet decidedly different. It, too, includes asemic artworks combined with poems with traditional text. (The cover provides a good example of asemic art, including the abstract text.) The artwork, however, is less abstract, with recognizable images of wildlife — coyotes, deer, a bear, and birds.
Here, it is the text of the 18 poems that invites personal interpretation, perhaps because the images themselves are less abstract. Each artwork incorporates an abstract text and is paired with an impressionistic or interpretative poem.
This poem is placed opposite an artwork of three deer on top a hill or mountain, with abstract text next to the deer. The unreadable text suggests an explanation of the artwork, which the poem and two poems that follow seek to provide.
Second Thoughts
Like a flock of field sparrows,
I am back in the meadow, in grasses
and blue of chicory, the dappled white
Queen Anne’s lace. That kind of a day,
always that kind of day, with you.
True, I flew like a bird, I loved, I soared.
The rain changed pitch, shifted in
the downpour. I think of walking
out my back door, walking, walking,
letting myself soak through.
Wildwood Devotions is presented precisely as its title suggests — a series of devotions centered on nature and wildlife. The poems suggest a strong personal identification, a oneness, with nature (“I flew like a bird, I love, I soared”). The artworks invite you to write your own poems, again placing the reader in the center of the collection.
Karla Van Vliet
Van Vliet previously published She Speaks in Tongues, Fluency: A Collection of Asemic Writings, From the Book of Remembrance, The River From My Mouth, and Fragments: From the Lost Book of the Bird Spirit. She’s won several awards and recognitions for her work, including the Bacopa Literary Review’s Visual Poetry Award. Her poems and asemic writings have been published in such literary journals and magazines as Acumen, Poet Lore, Green Mountains Review, Crannog Magazine, Still Point Art Quarterly, Women Asemic Writers, Indelible Literary Arts Journal, Harbor Review, and more. Van Vliet is a co-founder of deLuge Journal and serves as editor and founder of the Van Vliet Gallery. She also serves as administrator of the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf, Middlebury College, in Vermont. She received her B.A. from Goddard College and her M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
I’ve seen asemic art before; I simply didn’t know what it was called. As both Bone Scribed and Wildwood Devotions demonstrate, asemic writing is a natural fit for asemic art. The personal response becomes more important than the artist’s and author’s meaning or intent. The poems and the artworks, and the collections overall, become hyperlinks in your mind, evoking deep responses and taking you to unexpected places.
Photo by USFWS Mountain Prairie, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
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—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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L.L. Barkat says
What a great explanation of asemics, Glynn! Maybe I will try them out during the upcoming Creativity Café that Bethany is going to host for us. 🙂
I LOVE Karla’s work. So beautiful, in every way.
Karla Van Vliet says
Thank you, Glynn, for such a close reading of my work!
Sandra Heska King says
A whole new term for me—and a new writer.
“I swallow sky / blue vault strewn with bird”
I could just sit with those words for a while.
Thanks, Glynn.