Craig Dworkin, a professor of English at the University of Utah, is a bright star in the avant-garde conceptual poetry movement.  Conceptual poetry is the opposite of what most people think of when they think of poetry.  Rather than using expressive language to explore the human condition, conceptual poets design their poems according to rules or plans, often by repurposing or remixing existing text.  It’s a post-Internet idea that has been termed “uncreative writing,” and in his introduction to the online UBUWEB :: Anthology of Conceptual Writing, Dworkin asks, “What would a nonexpressive poetry look like? A poetry of intellect rather than emotion? One in which the substitutions at the heart of metaphor and image were replaced by the direct presentation of language itself, with ‘spontaneous overflow’ supplanted by meticulous procedure and exhaustively logical process?”

So, the type of poetry Star Trek’s Mr. Spock might write.  It’s fair to ask, is Dworkin’s poetry any good? Is it even readable?

Take the poem “Feldspar” for example.  It was originally composed for letterpress at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library Book Arts Studio to be printed on a complexly folded sheet of paper so that the words make grammatical sense read in any permutation, or as Dworkin describes it in the notes, “a verbal landscape filtered through the strata of the Oxford English Dictionary.”  As a person who holds an undergraduate degree in geology, this concept appeals to me—the poem is supposed to be like a phase diagram; external geochemical conditions determine which particular mineral assemblages and crystal morphologies form, to generate sentences like,

Fold grown feldspar in spathe fields sprat pleats failing to pare.

A tongue-twister, and as the words and phrases recur the whole poem takes on a formal quality like a nonsense villanelle.  I would be curious to see “Feldspar” in its original origami form (maybe Alkali could have included a fold-in like Mad magazine?) but even without literally taking crystalline form the themes in “Feldspar” are recursive throughout the book.  In other words, when you remove human sentiment from language you might get science.

“The Crystal Text,” a poem after Clark Coolidge, reads as if Dworkin were trying to re-create Coolidge’s book-length poem from distant memory.  While Coolidge wrote, “What I discover in writing comes out of the mess, the mix,” Dworkin’s remix includes a line credited to the French poet Fancis Ponge:

A rose encodes. The crystal quills. It evinces a will to formation, and the impossibility of forming any other way.

So while Dworkin’s crystal is a geological object it is also a crystallized example of conceptual poetry—like “Feldspar,”  “The Crystal Text” is literally a text that is also a crystal.

Dworkin has a keen ear for language.  His poems are full of puns and wordplay.  For instance, the title of the poem “Haligraphy” (writing about salt) could be a pun on haliography (writing about the sea) and, since it is followed by a short, unintelligible poem titled “All Saints,” perhaps also a pun on hagiography.  Translated into geological terms, salts fall out of aqueous solution due to evaporation to form minerals according to geochemical conditions.  In “Haligraphy,” these evaporites form patterns on the landscape as if salt itself were writing in a kind of nonsentient language.  Or as Dworkin writes,

Some pinnacled salts maze with manacled molecules;/Chlorides, in fragile shackles, concatenate; traceries of/ natric lattices encase the pan in lace.

These natric lattices appear again in “The Falls,” a poem about the expenditure of potential energy and patterns created by statistical chance.  This poem contains an excerpt from Robert Smithson’s description of the salt flats on the edge of Great Salt Lake where he built “Spiral Jetty”:

And then – as one’s downward gaze pitches from side to/ side, picking out random depositions of salt crystals on the/ inner and outer edges – a vertiginous keel.

Later in the poem, chemical solution becomes an analogy, Salt: Water :: Love: Time:

Love acts as a kind of amnesiant, making us forget that emotion, /including its own, is completely soluble, however slowly, in time.

Dworkin’s linguistic tricks are often transparent.  The poems come right out and explain themselves:

Felt understood as the past-tense of fall; left as the past-tense of leaf.

With fourteen pages of notes to credit his sources (many in non-English languages) these poems seem to have precipitated like salt crystals from the oversaturated solution of Dworkin’s mind.  Kenneth Goldsmith, who is the most famous of the conceptual poets, has said, “Conceptual writing is good only when the idea is good.”  The idea of poetry as mineralogy seems good to me, but then again, you don’t have to sell me on rocks. I’m already a fan.

Alkali
Craig Dworkin
Counterpath
2015
$18

Up and Upcoming: To The North
Exhibition Listings in Northern Utah
Prepared by 15 Bytes staff unless otherwise indicated. UPCOMING and UP listings should reach us by the last Wednesday of the month. Readers using the guide are cautioned to check with the exhibitor if the accuracy of the listing is crucial. Please send listings for this page to editor@artistsofutah.org.

PARK CITY
The Park City Gallery Stroll takes place on the last Friday of the month, 6-9 pm. Visit parkcitygalleryassociation.com for more information.

Kimball Art Center UP: Illiminations of Africa's Wildlife: Its Beauty, Its Struggle to Survive: Photographs by Beverly Joubert. Big cats, rhinoceros, and elephants are in crisis, facing extinction after years of rampant poaching and habitat loss. As artists, conservationists, and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, Beverly and her husband, Dereck Joubert, have spent decades fighting for these beloved creatures. Through their internationally renowned wildlife films and other conservation efforts, the Jouberts celebrate the stunning beauty and power of these animals, urging viewers to recognize the consequences of inaction. Through April 24. UPCOMING:

Gallery MAR UP: It is all Just a Love Contest, work by Nina Tichava. Through April 27.

CODA Gallery UP: Karen and Tony Barone's large scale sculpture and paintings that create a visual adventure to challenge one's sense of scale and spacial reality. Through April 25. AND: Dawn Renee's raku ceramic sculptures that examine how light and shadow caught and refracted by individual components create movement, and give form to, the larger integral work. Through April 22. AND: renowned architectural photographer Leland Y. Lee who passed away earlier this year. He documented the work of many great 20th century architects and designers, and he was the first to photograph the famous Elrod House, designed by John Lautner, overlooking Palm Springs. Through May 1.

LOGAN
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art UP: Transcendence: Abstraction & Symbolism in the American West. Highlighting works from the NEHMA Collection, this exhibition explores how artists have employed the use of abstraction and symbolism in the American West over the past century (see our review in the November 2015 edition). Through May 7. AND: A Matter of Taste: Art, Kitsch and Culture. Showcasing a wide range of kitsch, kitsch-like, or kitsch-inspired objects dating to the 20th and 21st centuries, this exhibition reveals the permeable and porous boundaries between fine art, kitsch, and popular culture. Through May 7.

BRIGHAM CITY
Brigham City Museum of Art and History UP: Building History II. Fifty historic photographs by an unknown photographer depicting pioneer in the Box Elder Creek area from around 1900. The exhibit includes photos of early Victorian and log homes including the still-standing Mayor's home; shops that helped build the thriving community; and early churches of different faiths. Through June 8.

OGDEN AREA
The Ogden First Fridays Art Walk takes place every month on the First Friday of the month. Galleries will hold receptions 6-9 pm.

Eccles Community Art Center UP: Ogden School District's Festival of the Arts. Through April 9. UPCOMING: Selected art work created by secondary students in Ogden City & Weber County. Through April 30. Weber School District student awards announced on April 26 during a reception from 5-7:30pm.

Shaw Gallery UP: We are the People, guest curated by Wendy Red Star, brings together a group of contemporary indigenous artists from both the United States and Canada who are changing and shaping pre-conceived notions about history, rituals and spiritualism. Featuring: Amelia Winger-Bearskin,Elisa Harkins, Tanis S'eiltin, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Duane Linklater, John Feodorov, Peter Morin, Raymond Boisjoly. Through April 8.

BOUNTIFUL
HOWA GALLERY UP: Work by Chauncey Secrist. Mercurial, contemplative oil paintings and mixed media pieces by aprimarily self-taught Utah artist whose intuitive creative process involves discovery and experimenation. The resulting work is a piece that evolves through audience response. Through May 7.

BDAC UPCOMING: 42nd annual Secondary Student and Art Educators Exhibit. Selections from Davis County's eight high schools and several Jr. High Schools will be displayed. The art educators have a separate exhibit in BDAC's Underground Gallery. Opening reception on April 8 from 7-9pm. Through April 29.

These listings only include fine art exhibitions. If you are looking for information on lectures, art talks, classes, workshops, calls for entries, employment opportunities and more, visit our message board.