This book is just soooo00000ooooo exceptionally good. I came across it in Greg Thomas’s review on SPAM Plaza, which provides context and analysis of a writer whose impact and importance has long been undervalued. This reissue on Primary Information & Ugly Ducking Presse will hopefully change that.
Available in the UK at the London Centre for Book Arts.
When a song’s lyrics are a concrete poem.
Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba
Bat Macum
Batman
Bat
Ba
Bat
Bat Ma
Bat Macum
Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê
Bat Macumba ê ê
Bat Macumba ê ê, Ba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat
Bat Macumba ê ê, Batman
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macum
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba oh
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
Bat Macumba ê ê, Bat Macumba obá
‘The sonnet was obviously a most significant formal concept, for it appealed to the imaginations of poets in many languages in many cultures, but we can’t write sonnets any more because we no longer live in the sonnet’s world.’
Mary Ellen Solt, Concrete Poetry: A World View (Indiana University Press) available here
The Cold Tap Sings 