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VII

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They make new and difficult 
demands on readers.

--Kirsch


Mondrian: New York City

 It's a fair point, and I like the irony that not so long ago, many C&W theorists were close to certain that the net was ushering in a new age of radical democracy. Still, and obviously, "fascism," in this discussion, has to be understood as a strategic hyperbole: surely there is no escape from choosing 

Visual Ten, please,
and cue Sound Seven.

and/or structuring in any act of creation. Sometimes a writer is only a writer.

We might as well fault Cornell for leaving his work untitled.

Sound Seven:
 

Huff huff.
Where's the interpretive responsibility?
Conceals the writer's intent.
Huff huff.
Multivocality?
Different opinions in a single text?
Mere novelty.
Entertainments.
Readers lack the interest and training 
to read experimental texts. 
No fulcrum for critical practice.
Huff huff.Huff huff.


In a sense, this is the irreducible difference between the verbal and the visual: the verbal desires and the visual declines--to articulate. 

Cue Sound Eight.

In his poem "Joseph Cornell," Octavio Paz writes

Sound Eight:

. . . you constructed 
boxes where things 
hurry away from their names.
 
. . . minimal, incoherent fragments: 
the opposite of History; creator of ruins, 
out of your ruins you have made creations

(Paz)


 What is the meaning of snow on the beach? 

Cue Visual Eleven 
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