From Haiku to Lyriku: A Participant's Impression of a Portion of Post-2000 North American Kernular Poetry
Interview with bob grumman
Bob Grumman (2 February 1941 – 2 April 2015) was a mathematical poet and critic of what he called "otherstream" poetry. He was a columnist for Factsheet Five from 1987 to 1992, and wrote a regular column for Small Press Review beginning in 1993. He was a participant in international mail art since 1985. His work was represented in a number of museums and archives devoted to concrete and visual poetry. Considerations of his work have appeared in Meat Epoch, Factsheet Five, Taproot Reviews and elsewhere.
Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, he lived for around 15 years in North Hollywood, California, before moving to his present home in Port Charlotte, Florida. He earned an Associate of Arts degree at San Fernando Valley Junior College (1979), and a Bachelor of Arts in English at California State University, Northridge (1982). He served in the U.S. Air Force as a Medic during the Vietnam War from 1960 to 1964, and was a member of the USAF Tennis Team. From 1971 to 1976 he worked at Datagraphic Computer Services in North Hollywood, beginning as a delivery boy and later as a computer operator. He worked as a substitute teacher for 14 years starting in late 1994, mainly at Charlotte High School. He retired in 2008.
Work
Grumman's first book, Poemns was published in 1966. He went on to publish several books of visual poetry before moving on to mathematical poetry. Grumman describes mathematical poetry as "poetry that does mathematics, rather than merely discusses mathematics (or uses mathematical algorithms to choose its content, as in the Oulipo movement)." Grumman's own "mathemaku" are influenced by the haiku form. Many of them "investigate the results of the long division of such quantities as the actual color blue by such quantities as the dictionary definition of 'blue'" but a few employ other mathematical operations.
In his essays Grumman seeks to foster and promote avant-garde and especially minimalist practices in poetry. His essay "MNMLST poetry: Unacclaimed but flourishing" explored the subtleties in very compressed poems such as Aram Saroyan's single word works. He divides minimalist poetry into two main categories, "infra-verbal" minimalism and "pluraesthetic" minimalism. The former involves fissional, fusional and mutational verbal techniques. The latter includes visual, mathematical and sound poems.
Professional Positions
Columnist for Lost and Found Times, 1994 to 2005
Contributing Editor for Small Press Review, 1993 to 2015
Contributing Editor for Poetic Briefs, 1992 to 1997
Columnist for Factsheet Five, 1987 to 1992
Publisher, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1983 to 2015
Co-Editor with Crag Hill of two anthologies, Vizpo auf Deutsch (1995) and Writing to be Seen (2001)
Professional Affiliations: Member, National Book Critics Circle, National Coalition of Independent Scholars
Representative Shows
IV Bienal Internacional de Poesia VisuaVExperimental, 1993 Moterrey, Mexico
Paradise Mail Art Exhibition, Belfast, Northern Ireland, c. 1995
V Bienal Internacional de Poesia VisuaVExperimental, 1996, Mexico City
Visuelle Poesie, Berlin, 1997
VI Bienal Internacional de Poesia Experimental, 1999, Mexico City
02txt,Art Academy of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2002
An American Avant Garde: Second Wave, Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, Ohio, 2002
Writing To Be Seen, New York Center for Book Arts, 2002
Others in Edmonton, Beacon NY, Port Charlotte FL, Miami, Australia
Publication Credits
Score, Kaldron, Lost & Found Times, Modern Haiku, The Experioddicist, Transmog, Meat Epoch, Industrial Sabotage, The Subtle Journal of Raw Coinage, Juxta, The New Orleans Review, Kalligram (Budapest, 2000), Das Haupt (Kiel, Germany, 1995), Freie Zeit Art (Vienna, 1992), Sub Bild (HeidelBerg, 1991), Das Haupt (Kiel, Germany, 1995) and numerous other zines and magazines. Also poetry (mathemaku) and a critical essay (on contemporary minimalist poetry) on-line at Karl Young's light&dust website, and 3 entries in The Facts on File Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry (2005).
Publications
Poemns (visual haiku), privately printed, 1966; reprinted by the Runaway Spoon Press, 1997.
Preliminary Rough Draft of a Total Psychology (theoretical psychology), privately published, 1967.
A Strayngebook (children's book), Score Publications, 1987.
An April Poem (visual poetry), Runaway Spoon Press, 1989.
Spring Poem No. 3,719,242 (visual poetry), Runaway Spoon Press, 1990.
Of Manywhere-at-Once, Volume One (memoir/criticism), The Runaway Spoon Press, 1990; 2nd edition, 1991; 3rd edition, 1998.
