{"id":35674,"date":"2018-05-06T14:12:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T20:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35674"},"modified":"2025-10-24T07:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:02:06","slug":"alex-caldiero-is-an-idiot-performing-the-chapbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/alex-caldiero-is-an-idiot-performing-the-chapbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Caldiero is an Idiot: Performing the Chapbook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Caldiero is an idiot.<\/h4>\n

That\u2019s not my assessment, but the judgment of the \u201cfrendly naybohood Sonosopher\u201d himself:<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

ALEX CALDIERO IS AN IDIOT<\/h4>\n

wiser folk have said as much<\/h4>\n

could I do anything less? I\u2019ve also<\/h4>\n

been called an asshole, which<\/h4>\n

designation I\u2019m not willing to<\/h4>\n

accept. I\u2019d rather insult my<\/h4>\n

intelligence than my innocent<\/h4>\n

buttocks. . . .<\/h4>\n

and all this because this morning<\/h4>\n

I dared to waken from a decent<\/h4>\n

nite\u2019s sleep and first thing I had<\/h4>\n

an idea and that was a mistake<\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve been doing my best to avoid<\/h4>\n

. . . and it was<\/h4>\n

the expression of the aforesaid<\/h4>\n

idea that set into motion all sorts<\/h4>\n

of catastrophic emotions whose<\/h4>\n

consequences I must live with &<\/h4>\n

which further evince & prove that<\/h4>\n

I am undoubtedly an idiot, & if<\/h4>\n

you are not yet convinced I must<\/h4>\n

point out that you are worse than<\/h4>\n

an idiot \u2013 but I take it back \u2013 it\u2019s a<\/h4>\n

bad idea as all ideas are bad,<\/h4>\n

even the so called good ones,<\/h4>\n

like the one that Alex Caldiero is<\/h4>\n

an idiot.<\/h4>\n

27 Dec 09<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Yes, I\u2019ll have to agree. Alex Caldiero is an idiot. He\u2019s my kind of idiot. And if the ideas I take up here are \u201cbad ideas as all ideas are bad, \/ even the so called good ones,\u201d then maybe I\u2019m worse than an idiot and the better for it.<\/h4>\n

The word\u00a0idiot<\/em>\u00a0stems from the Greek for a private person, a layman without professional skills or public standing. Years ago I wrote about an exhibition of Caldiero\u2019s works on paper and wood and concluded that, \u201cif Caldiero were a better painter he would be a worse artist.\u201d Open, inventive, searching, and a bit raw\u2014the paintings surprised and inspired me. My thoughts about the possibilities open to an untrained artist were echoed in 2014 by Austrian writer Peter Handke just days before he accepted the Norwegian International Ibsen Prize. He claimed that he didn\u2019t know how to write plays and argued that \u201cin no case can an artist be skilled, art is a matter of working without skill.\u201d Good artists are idiots.<\/h4>\n

Caldiero arrived in Brooklyn at the age of nine and began to learn English and unlearn Sicilian in a series of strict Catholic schools. One day his father received a book from Sicily; Alex\u2019s Aunt Letizia had published her first novel. His father read it respectfully. Caldiero says he personally took no interest other than to think how nice of his aunt to send him the book. Nonetheless, Caldiero\u2019s youthful fascination with the arts led him not to college but to a multi-year apprenticeship with Michael Lekakis, the New York sculptor who was a friend of e. e. cummings and Ezra Pound. Caldiero began a lengthy correspondence with poet Cid Corman and, years later Bob Arnold published an exquisite edition of 10 of Caldiero\u2019s poems at Corman\u2019s suggestion (Islander<\/em>, Green River, Vermont: Longhouse, 2007). At a reading\/performance of his own early work in Brooklyn, Caldiero met polyartist Richard Kostelanetz, who printed Caldiero\u2019s \u201cfoam and sand\u201d in his anthology\u00a0Text\u2014Sound Text<\/em>\u00a0(along with work by Emmett Williams, Jerome Rothenberg, Allen Ginsberg, and others). He also included Caldiero in his\u00a0Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes<\/em>, writing that \u201cSicilian-born, New York-reared Caldiero has created distinguished sound poetry and performance, as well as visual art. . . .\u00a0Or<\/em>,\u00a0Book o\u2019 Lights\u00a0<\/em>ranks among the most imaginative and ambitious visual-verbal books of the 1990s.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The final image from\u00a0Or, Book o\u2019 Lights<\/em>, produced in a numbered, signed edition of 25, asserts that human beings are linguistic animals . . . and that language is a human animal.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Practitioners of the avant-garde are idiots.<\/h4>\n

Despite his New York roots and literary connections, in Utah Caldiero slipped into a kind of regional exile. He lays out the dilemmas of this self-imposed condition in\u00a0At Home with the Cannibals<\/em>\u00a0(2007\/2015): \u201cIt occurs to me just how much I want to disappear. Too famous for some, too local for others, too this too that, & the work goes on & on for the most part unnoticed, & I want it to disappear along with my bones. Not enuf of a national reputation, not enuf publications, not enuf\u2014as if enuf was enuf to explain & justify one man\u2019s bleeding. . . . and the work, what about the work? The day to day work?\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Ryan Trimble<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There has been plenty of day-to-day work, one aspect of which is embodied in books published by Signature Books (1998), Dream Garden Press (2010), Elik Press (2013), again by Signature Books (2015), and by saltfront (2016).<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

People also know Caldiero as a performance artist, as a visual artist, as the Senior Artist in Residence at Utah Valley University, and as the subject of and contributor to Travis Low\u2019s and Torben Bernhard\u2019s brilliant film\u00a0The Sonosopher<\/em><\/a>. And there is more, it turns out, much more.<\/h4>\n

In his 1995 Salt Lake Art Center exhibition \u201cThe Food That Fits the Hunger,\u201d Caldiero displayed a twine-wrapped pine bookcase with some of his notebooks crowding the shelves.<\/h4>\n
\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Jim Taylor<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For the exhibit catalog, I mused that \u201cthe books on the shelf are performed as unperformed. They are ordered there in a library\u2019s obedient temporal line, the material history of the poet\u2019s makings. . . .\u00a0Source Book<\/em>\u00a0is the quiet study before the explosion.\u201d More than two decades later, the anticipated explosion is well underway.<\/h4>\n

A few weeks ago I attended a reading by Caldiero from\u00a0Where is the Dancer, What is the Dance<\/em>, a book written, drawn, sanded, and soaked while floating down Utah\u2019s Cataract Canyon. The event was sponsored by\u00a015 Bytes\u00a0<\/em>and featured the\u00a0winners of the magazine\u2019s annual book awards for poetry<\/a>: Katherine Coles (Utah\u2019s former Poet Laureate) and Caldiero were finalists and Paisley Rekdal (Utah\u2019s current Poet Laureate) was the winner. After the poets read, someone asked about forthcoming work. The prolific laureates described books scheduled to appear in the coming months. Caldiero answered simply that he was \u201ccooking with gas.\u201d The modesty is typical. He might have pointed out that a second volume of\u00a0Sonusuono<\/em>\u00a0is being readied by Elik Press. And he might have explained just what it is he is cooking with gas.<\/h4>\n

Over the last couple of years, Caldiero has produced several dozen chapbooks, some running to more than 100 pages, many of them pictured here:<\/h4>\n

\"\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Caldiero designs the chapbooks himself and prints them in editions of 20 or 30. They are ingeniously laid out reproductions of his notebooks, with typed poems inserted where the handwriting is difficult to decipher. The books are laced with drawings that often include words (or is it the words that include drawings?).<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The chapbooks fall into chronological sets, like this one from his 2007 notebooks:<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Caldiero explains the production and dissemination of chapbooks in a letter accompanying a package that included the three volumes called\u00a0It rains even on who\u2019s wet: POMS 2005<\/em>.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

TO WHOM IT MAY PERHAPS CONCERN (2nd<\/sup>\u00a0iteration)<\/em><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve spent the greater part of a life in three pursuits: raising a family, struggling with the material question, and making language. These activities left me little or no energy to pursue a career as writer or artist.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Consequently, the main venue for circulating works has been thru performative means. In addition, I\u2019ve self-produced chapbooks to circulate as gifts or distribute thru select bookstores. These circulations are inspired by mail art and the poetry & art zines of the 50\u2019s, 60\u2019s, and 70\u2019s, such as\u00a0<\/em>Semina,\u00a0<\/em>Beatitude,\u00a0<\/em>Origin, and\u00a0<\/em>Clown War.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Today I find myself in a self-made quandary. For every work formally published, piles of archived work never reach anyone. Recently, I decided to magnify my efforts by circulating various notebooks from this hoard in the guise of chapbooks. Intermittently, you may receive chapbooks via snail-mail or by hand.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Of my many hopes, the only sure one is to share with my fellow humans these documents of our common presence. . . .<\/em><\/h4>\n

Holographs display for all to read the improvisations of writing. In a further sense, an improvisation is an \u201cimprovvisata\u201d: a surprise. In this way, the interplay of holographs & typed texts bears witness to the mutability of these word-image-sound activities. Suddenly and at once they mark, speak, extend, and live the very being that made them. . . .<\/em><\/h4>\n

. . . the gifted object, whereby TO GIVE IS TO BE, is vital in the development of a \u201cgratis currency\u201d, that is, an exchange of \u201ccurrents\u201d without bond or obligation.<\/em><\/h4>\n

In closing, I send you my best wishes, and do remain yr frendly naybohood sonosopher,<\/em><\/h4>\n

(Alex) F. Caldiero<\/em><\/h4>\n

Although Caldiero distinguishes between performance and the production of chapbooks, I see the chapbooks themselves as a kind of performance, a re-creation of the original performance on the notebook page.<\/h4>\n

Why, I ask Caldiero, this sudden and prolific performance of your notebooks?<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe impulse is complex,\u201d he answers. \u201cI wanted to reach out, to create a current and a currency, a gratis currency to exchange what I call documents of our common presence. Inspired, as I say in my letter, by some vital zines that asserted their independence from the normal avenues for publication, and goaded by the sheer quantity of my work that remains unshared, I turned to chapbooks as a medium for dissemination. And, I should add, a death sentence lent impetus to the project. In 2014 an acute attack of diverticulitis nearly killed me. They removed a foot-long section of my colon, which prompted you, wag that you are, to note that now I had only a semi-colon. I didn\u2019t die, but the event brought me face-to-face with my mortality. And I realized I had work to do.\u201d<\/h4>\n

And thus the multitude of improvised texts that constitute a gratis currency, of chapbooks that \u201cmark, speak, extend, and live the very being that made them.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The chapbooks present abundant images drawn by the poet\u2019s hand. They are populated by hand-written words and phrases shaped like poems, vibrant embryonic creatures scarcely differentiated from the poet himself. The word-images are both the initial and the final work, testament to and products of the creative act. Reproductions of the creations in their nascent stage, as pages of the notebooks where they came into being, offer rare immediacy of experience for a reader. The work has not been reworked, polished, edited, and fixed by publication. It appears, rather, as an improvisation performed, for example, at 6:04 am 20 Apr 09:<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As is the case with all improvisation, the word-images are not created\u00a0ex-nihilo<\/em>\u00a0but grow out of a vast store of experience\u2014much like a jazz improvisation out of the musician\u2019s mastery of scales and based on sequences of chord changes. Adrienne Rich delineates the repertoire from which a poet draws: \u201cTo track your own desire, in your own language, is not an isolated task. You yourself are marked by family, gender, caste, landscape, the struggle to make a living, or the absence of such a struggle. . . . Look into the images.\u201d And that\u2019s exactly what Caldiero does in the chapbooks. He looks into the images, and in the case of an orange-eyed self-portrait, he does so at 5 am 9 July 08:<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The variations on the tune A. (Alex) F. Caldiero found in these chapbooks are improvisations based on chords ranging from an ancient Sicilian creature with lairs in Brooklyn and Orem, the Utah city where he currently makes his home, to a more modern creature shaped by Catholicism, Mormonism, and an overarching mysticism. They modulate familial scales reaching into the past and anticipating the future. They re-sound compositions of Blake and Dante and Mallarm\u00e9 and Ginsberg and Cage and Utah-based writer and podcaster Scott Carrier and Salt Lake filmmaker Trent Harris, and a multitude of others.<\/h4>\n

While improvising on these chords, Caldiero is creating himself. He searches for answers to \u201cWho Is?\u201d (the title of one chapbook) as he draws and as he writes (although I\u2019m loathe to differentiate between writing and drawing when writing about Alex Caldiero). He looks into the mirror with ready pen:<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Surprised to see you<\/em><\/h4>\n

You stand in front of me<\/em><\/h4>\n

With your pen and notebook<\/em><\/h4>\n

And only the mirror can tell us apart.<\/em><\/h4>\n

. . .<\/em><\/h4>\n

My only hope is that<\/em><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve not gotten in<\/em><\/h4>\n

Over my head & yes<\/em><\/h4>\n

It\u2019s not a metaphor<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1:30 am 11 Apr 08<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As his improvisations blur the line between work and self, the books Caldiero distributes freely blur the lines of publication, acting as an exchange that generously squanders and disseminates the fruits of spirit. Scholar and essayist Lewis Hyde writes in his modern classic\u00a0The Gift<\/em>\u00a0that, \u201cwe nourish the spirit by disbursing our gifts, not by capitalizing upon them.\u201d Creative gift giving, Hyde continues, \u201cdraws each of its participants into a wider self. . . . Works of art are drawn from, and their bestowal nourishes, those parts of our being that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, from the group and the race, from history and tradition, and from the spiritual world.\u201d \u201cTO GIVE IS TO BE,\u201d Caldiero writes, and Hyde echoes the thought: \u201cIn the realized gifts of the gifted we may taste that\u00a0zo\u00eb<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0life which shall not perish even though each of us, and each generation, shall perish.\u201d<\/h4>\n

As Caldiero ponders his identity as a poet\/maker and explores the tensions between his desire to be read (which is dependent on publication, on being known) and the benefits of circulating chapbooks as gifts, he admits (or perhaps asserts is a better word) that \u201cfrom the very beginnings, before emotion or intellect, for me writing has been a biological function. So what does publishing have to do with it? Nothing.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Caldiero\u2019s chapbooks, for my sensibilities, are works of genius.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Ryan Trimble<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dove Song Poetry Salon,\u00a0<\/em>readings from an anthology on the Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry, featuring Alex Caldiero and many others, Ladies Literary Guild, 850 South Temple, Salt Lake City, Friday, May 11, 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
Scott Abbott<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
Scott Abbott\u2019s books include Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel (1991), Repetitions and Vampires & A Reasonable Dictionary, both with \u017darko Radakovi\u0107 (2013, 2014), and Wild Rides & Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes, with Sam Rushforth (2014). His meditations on the death of his brother John of AIDS appeared as Immortal For Quite Some Time (2016), winner of the 2017 15 Bytes Book Award in non-fiction. With historian Lyn Bennett, he recently published The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire (2017). Translations include Peter<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Caldiero is an idiot. That\u2019s not my assessment, but the judgment of the \u201cfrendly naybohood Sonosopher\u201d himself: ALEX CALDIERO IS AN IDIOT wiser folk have said as much could I do anything less? I\u2019ve also been called an asshole, which designation I\u2019m not willing to accept. I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1591,"featured_media":36423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2412],"class_list":["post-35674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","tag-alex-caldiero"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/alex_caldiero.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 15:50:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36421,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35674\/revisions\/36421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}