Envelope Artifact
By Mark Young
Mark Young is a New Zealander who has lived most of his life in Australia, and he is known primarily as a poet. As a visual poet, he brings a vibrant literary sense to the text as visual object. He has arrayed phrases and individual words upon a field that takes the form of a traditional chess set, compelling the reader to construct meaning out of the various ways a string of words can be constructed. The reader can read up, down, diagonally, and even in a continuous spiral. In the end, the poem becomes a textual movie—every block upon the page a single frame in that movie—and the film flickers before us, sending our minds in different directions, exciting the retina, and teasing the mind. Meaning is not easy or certain in this visual poem. Instead, it surges toward us and swirls away, both brazen and coy. This is a poem about thinking, meaning, and the isolated and collective beauty of words.—Geof Huth
Copyright Credit: Used by permission of the author.