Post-Cubism

A lot of my approach to the art of poetry is based on a “box within a box” typography I heard once in a poetry class. The poet’s name was Yi Sang; the poem was called "Supermarket"; his approach was Cubist. Shortly thereafter, I began developing a Cubist approach to writing poems. Much of this was visual and you can see it play out in the Gospel of Echo. In The Book of the Damned, the approach is more subtle; in The Devourer, it is less subtle because each poem is laid out in a textbox. The "uterus within utero" poem in TGOE is a direct homage.

For me, Cubism allowed for a subtle critique on “naming as encapsulation.” A lot of Sang’s work (as I understand it) details the cruelty of this artificial form of segmentation that undergirds even our relationship to ourselves and especially our relationship to our environment. 

In carrying forth a legacy, you want to do so without making it an awkward robbery or appropriation. Sang was already being influenced by Western writing which is how he got to Cubism. It was part of a cross-cultural exchange. What Yi Sang did with cubism is considerably more interesting than what English language poets had done up to that point.

So, Yi Sang’s work was pretty foundational to developing a Cubist poetics for the English language.