rob: As far as swiftness goes, read some Barry McKinnon, or Sylvia Legris poems. An essential part of their work is the slowness, the enforced pauses through strong, short phrasing & white space. Be careful: there's more than one way to spin a toaster. I think you have to be able to give the potential reader more credit; should never "dumb it down" for anybody. I've got pieces my programming buddies get that writing folk just miss, when its the writing that's the issue. A lot of the connections have to be made in the reader's head, & the reader has to be willing to work for it; I think the writerhas to be able to allow the space for it to happen. I mean, why give it all away?
donato: That visual sense of poetry you mention is obvious as early as Notes on Drowning; you have a weirdly calligraphic sense of the poem-as-image. For that reason you can sometimes write poems with almost no image-content, poems almost of pure 'voice', while figures like your "w/" and "&" carry a lot of energy.

rob: I consider that part of the point, whether visual for the page, or sound for the performance; you have to play with the notions inherent in the form. It feels built in, the presumption that the visual sense is important to the poem as a whole, when it sits on the page. What makes it interesting, too, is when you can push or combine these notions, such as what bp was doing with notation & the page. Because he was involved so heavily with the physical process of making some of his books, with Stan Bevington at Coach House Printing, he was able to challenge the notion of the page, & the book as a whole.
I find it strange, having previously been given grief over my
stylistic choices, the "w/" & "&", as though I have no historical context. One editor went so far as to try to remove them completely from a manuscript, saying they distracted from the work. I consider them part of the work. If I was going to work in full sentences with proper spellings, I'd write fiction, or journalism. The shape of a poem & the poetry book as a whole, is very important to me, & each one lives or dies by its own internal rules, whatever they might be. What needs to happen, then, is for them to be seen & considered on those same terms.
donato: Here’s rob’s poem ‘Milk’ which we were talking about:

MILK

the carcass of the old house after she moved
to the apartment. damp,
& rot. was the only one i knew who made
tomato soup w/

milk, the cloudy white stirrd in

slowly, continuous. uncle bob crushing premium plus
w/ his spoon. renovated the kitchen & the back after

husband died, his winter body brought in
after discovery in the snow, lay there cold
& stiff on the table

until the ambulance arrived, knowing
they neednt hurry. this much

is sure, is what

i know, how long

years can reach out thru, from
behind, & grab

at your neck like you were seven a second time,
scanning magazines in the wrong part

of another uncles house, black marks

over the parts of female anatomy you knew,
even then, were interesting.