And it was a happy result, though, like any anthology, it has a few duds (but is blessedly free of stupid claims of "best poems" or "full coverage"--though it does include a fair spectrum of internationally-known--and first-rate""verbo-visual artists, including American Jackson Mac Low, Arrigo Lora-Totino of Italy, Austrian Ernst Jandl, Ukrainian Myroslav Korol, Hiroshi Tanabu of Japan, Uraguayan Clemente Padin, Pierre Garnier of France, German Franz Mon, Patricia Farrell of England, and Canadian Mark Sutherland). It is also marred, albeit only slightly, by a rather simple-minded introduction by Robert Sheppard that spends too much space quoting academic banalities on the materiality of language, etc., out of the writings of Steve McCaffery, Joanna Drucker and Marjorie Perloff, and too little delving into what actually goes on in any particular artwork.

What goes on in Mac Low's two poems, which he is good enough to carefully explain in his commentary, particularly interested me. His "verbal" poem, "Prime Apartment Now," is basically a jump-cut poem (consisting, according to Mac Low, of what I'd call "found thoughts"). It starts in high coherence, however telegraphic (" . . . the bears'      numbers will dwindle/ the Aleutic may lose everything they cherish      tore-those-letters-up"), then spills severely surrealistic at times (e.g., "Offenbach - tutu interplanetary lobster subway - assemblage") but remains unified by the apartment-image to the end, regardless of how multi-crazed-around that image gets (and I regressively feel all poems need some unifying principle). Along the way it flurrs often into a lyricism both high-cultured ("Kandinsky rain     limited-reflection abandoned indoors"), plain-cultured ("the flight of a garter-snake astonished a smiling cat on the edge of the/ Ganges") and both ("imitation Rothko casual/ eatery handsome door at six"). In brief, a fine poem--but, although containing, as an aid for performers, notation marks I didn't reproduce and spaces I tried to, not especially fascinating technically. Except for the use of it Mac Low makes to fashion his second poem.

What he does is take the first word in his first poem that has a "p" in it and make that the first word of poem #2. He makes poem #2's second word the next word in poem #1 with an "r" in it--and so on until he, so to speak, spells the title of poem #1 ("Prime Apartment Now") three and a fraction times. Meanhwile, he typographically enhances his text with underlining, through- lining, and different sizes and font-styles; and adds letters before, or removes letters from, his words from poem #1, in order to place his key letters properly according to his system, which dictates that "p" must be the first letter of the text it inhabits, "r" the second letter of its text, "i" the third of its, and so forth. All this gives his derivation a verve that is both visually appealing and infra-verbally resonant (as in "AK APRICE FEAR OVERTY mplete"--which, by the way, "spells" "apart," by Mac Low's code).

The poem holds together beautifully not only because it's made up of Mac Low's own already rich words and tones but, in my view, because it is systematically accidental--and its system shows through. It thus provides a kind of framing security, an earth for the wildlife of its words to war across.

I'd say that at least 75% of the other artists in this anthology merit as much (admiring) discussion as I've incompletely given Mac Low. Suffice it to say that, as a verbo-visual artist myself, I've already found a wealth of devices to steal in it, such as Upton's remarkable use of white fragments of letters over a layer of black fragments of letters; John Cayley's similar use of white fragments, but of typewriter-letters (apparently) rather than Upton's larger Madison-Avenue letters; Bill Keith's simple-seeming but pulsatingly under-currented arrangements of words into fused triangles, and fused rectangles; the "superimposed segments cut from xerox overprints" of Peter Jaeger's "acoil"; and the use of different-sized o's that the late dom silvester houedard (to whom the anthology is dedicated) used against each . . . no, wait; I've already stolen that idea.

Word Score Utterance Choreography, in conclusion, is an ideal source for anyone starting out in visual poetry, or long in it, but eager for new ideas, or nimbly-executed old ones. It also should make an excellent text for students of contemporary craft-extending poetry, if there are any places that subject is taught.