DiMichele's work, in my terminology, is visiocollagic poetry, which is to say that its verbal and visual elements are separate on the page but blend in the mind as opposed to the verbal and visual elements of visualloyic poetry, which are merged on paper as well as in the mind. Throughout DiMichele's still-not-out-of- date romp through the possibilities of poetry are micro-triumphs like the combo "briarsand brains" (sic), "molybdenum of the nightingales," and "pain and space." Most of his graphic images are from iconophilic religions and mysticism. Do-re-mi charts of consciousness development (or whatever they are) occur--in about the only crisp print in the generally misty/mysticky sequence. On the next-to-last page, "of purpose making" is printed with "purpos" upside-down, "em" sideways and going up from "purpos"-- and turning into "aking," with "of" sideways and going down just right of "em." The letters of this text are blown up to about quadruple normal type size, and parts of them are missing. The "r" and "u" of "purpos" are joined to give the upside version of it a shape recalling both "sound" and "sodium," while the "po" of "purpos" continues naturally into "em," the "s" moving a little past the line "em" is on. Then there's "aking" as "aching" and as "a king." "Sodium" might seem a little out of left field here, but to me it suggests salt, which I deem a major secondary element of human existence, behind the primaries, fire, water, earth and air. The main text on the last page says, "sing, perplexing and bewildering to an honest"--and there it stops.

In the visiocollagic poetry sequence Rosenberg has composed for Xerolage 25, she treats double-pages as the windshield of a car traveling through her life. Teeming with letters, words, drawings, occasional photographs, each page seems a summary of the possibilities of visio-textual art. Here are just a couple of the surface highpoints: the word "SILENCE", large and in outline (i.e., nearly invisible), spent two letters at a time on the last four spreads save one, which is dominated by stop signs and the word "STOP," and, amusingly, "STOPPAGE"; the first page's "ST" towering above the word, "ART," and soon making "STEP" and "STORY"--and, among other things, setting up the final ST-pages; a great ink&wash drawing of a fire hydrant; the footnoted relationship of "SHOUT" to "south" . . .

Incidentally, Rosenberg has recently put together a new artist's book, QUERY, QUEST, & QUASI that I think worth publicizing. As a limited-edition collector's item, it is a bargain at ten bucks. Here's what I wrote Marilyn after receiving a copy of her book three days before my birthday (give or take a phrase or two): "Your mousefully delightful book picked a great time to get here. I have no brilliant first thoughts about it. I just like the design & (as always) the words within words (e.g., "sUPpose" . . . "supPOSE"), none of them ever not elegantly wedded to the overall thrust of the work. So many narratives to fun around in, the main one being--I take it--human querying, investigation, sniffing through existence like mice [several masterful drawings of which Rosenberg has scattered through the book]--but lots more."

Steve McComas's contribution to the Xerolage series, The Book of not Seeing Things, consists mainly of visual collages--but with enough texts mixed in for me to call it (barely) visiocollagic poetry. Close to its beginning it is actually visualloyic, for its second page consists chiefly of the large-lettered text, "GENE/ SEES" (a play on "genesis"/"geneses" and, illumagistically, symmetry and near-symmetry). On the page before an Assyrian-looking ancient holds a giant cut-away schematic of the human eye on one shoulder. The following label runs down his front to indicate the tone of much of McComas's sequence: "i, atlas, never shirk or wear a shirt or jockstrap. i, atlas, supporter of lost causes. i, atlas, bearer of a new vision." McComas takes a few comic swipes at the Bible, too, reproducing passages from "The Book of Genesis" with key repeated words replaced with amusingly inappropriate/appropriate ones, in an enlarged typeface of a wrong-looking style: e.g., "garden" three times becomes "DETAINMENT FACILITY"--as in "Therefore Lord God sent them forth from the DETAINMENT FACILITY of Eden."

But as he wryly explores the nature of seeing and not seeing (with, for example, a series of pictures of various "texts"--such as Tarot card-faces, traffic signs, Indian sign language, bee- signals--crossing the page from a mouth to an ear), McComas is as thoughtful as he is comic, even occasionally approaching lyricism. I was particularly taken with one simple, precise but highly abstract outline of (perhaps) a Chinese temple with three tilted black lines that looked to have been finger-painted above the temple that made me think of Chinese ideograms (or the beginnings of writing) ascending from (and referring back to) the sacred. In short, The Book of not Seeing Things is multi- faceted and deep--as are just about all the specimens in the Xerolage project.