abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (1963)

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (“Alphabet Poem”) (1963)
Emmett Williams
Scroll in three parts printed offset on laid paper. H2228 x W60 mm. Acquired from Ozanne Rare Books, 29 September 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Permission to display from Ann Noël Williams.

More than seven feet in length, this alphabet scroll was originally published around 1961 by Verlag Kalender, the same publisher that published the Kalender Rolle, whose form influenced this work. Intended for performance, the scroll is gradually unfurled and read aloud. The “Alphabet Poem” was sold on its own and as a part of George Maciunas’ Fluxus 1. Other views online can be found in the Galerie Krinzinger archive, New York’s MoMA and Swarthmore College.

Exactly how the “Alphabet Poem” would be performed is unclear. Presumably read left to right line by line? How are the gaps to be handled? Should the reader pause for each letter missing in the gaps? Performance aside, the form and structure entice more of a visual engagement in the way that concrete and conceptual art and poetry most often do. The letters fall according to rule and constraints. The rule is to maintain the alphabetic sequence vertically, horizontally and in a zigzag diagonal. The constraints are the width of the paper roll, the spacing between letters in the top row and the spacing between lines. The visual patterns that result pull the eye away from the alphabetic/spatial rules, and it searches for entirely other pareidolic patterns — faces, constellations, etc. Just the way the eye discovers letters and shapes in everyday surroundings, the clouds, etc. All of which bumfuzzles our hemispherical brains — no doubt the concrete/conceptual intent?

There is no letter z!

Under Further Reading, other artists associated with Fluxus and visual (or concrete) poetry can be found in the Books On Books Collection. Beyond the collection, Hansjörg Mayer’s alphabetenquadrate (1966), in particular, should be compared and contrasted with Williams’ scroll. Like Williams’ scroll, Mayer’s leporello reads left to right and vertically. But where Williams’ alphabet seems to flutter away algorithmically and languidly into blank space at the end of the scroll, Mayer’s alphabet takes on a curving pattern that fills in a grid of 26 x 26 character spaces and finally overprints the completed grid to the point of illegibility.

SOLDIER (2014 [1973])

SOLDIER (2014 [1973])
Emmett Williams
©The Estate of Emmett Williams
Perfect bound paperback. H200 x W151 mm. [96] pages. Acquired from Zédélé Éditions, 9 May 2024.
Photo credit: Books On Books Collection.

As if there weren’t enough for which to thank Clive Philpott and Moeglin-Delcroix, we have their efforts through Zédélé Editions to reprint early classics of book art, including SOLDIER by Williams, Jan Dibbetts Robin Redbreast ‘s Territory (1969) and hermann de vries’ White (1960/80) among others.

Between 1966 and 1970, Emmett Williams (1925-2007) was the editor, with Dick Higgins, of Something Else Press, which published a large number of books by artists linked with the Fluxus movement. A pioneer from the Fifties of a new form of poetry called “Concrete Poetry”, in reference to Concrete Art, in 1967 Emmett Williams assembled the first collection of works by international poets and artists, An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, simultaneously published by Hansjörg Mayer in Europe and Dick Higgins in the United States. He defined it in his introduction as “direct” poetry, “using the semantic, visual and phonetic elements of language as raw materials”. In contrast with the subjective expression of traditional poetry, this approach sought to use a minimum of resources, focusing on systematic composition processes based on repetition, permutation and mechanical development, governed by a pre-established protocol.

In 1973, again with Hansjörg Mayer and Something Else Press, Emmett Williams published four long autonomous poems, including SOLDIER, composed the previous year at the California Institute of the Arts, and collected in a single volume entitled A Valentine for Noël. The book was dedicated to his young pregnant wife, Ann Noël, whom he had met in 1968 when she was working for a year as Dick Higgins’ assistant, and who, as director of the graphics workshops at CalArts, helped the artist overcome the technical difficulties of changing over from manuscript to printed poems.

Later, Emmett Williams said: “My first ‘dying’ soldiers poem dates from 1970 during the war in Vietnam.” This first version of SOLDIER is a silkscreen print in red and blue. It is obvious that the later version — a sequence of 40 pages during which the reader sees the three red letters, DIE, gaining one line on each sheet — is visually more striking and politically more effective: by the simplest of means, it makes the inevitable advance of death in the column of soldiers typographically visible. For this re-edition, it also seemed obvious that the publication of the poem in a separate volume restored its implicit function as a flip book. The “playful” aspect present in all Emmett Williams’ works seems to have taken refuge here in the childlike form of these animated books, designed to give the impression of continuous motion. Far from undermining the tragic nature of the subject, the flip book form accentuates the protest against war as a killing machine. A flip book for adults, which remains highly topical. — Publisher’s insert.

Noël Williams, Ann. 2020. Spirale. Berlin: Argobooks. “The design for the artist’s book SPIRALE was developed to accompany the performance of the same name, performed by Ann Noël and Emmett Williams at the Sprachen der Künste festival at the Akademie der Künste on 4 February 1984. The alphabet with names of artists, Berlin squares, song fragments, streets and restaurants was created through Emmett Williams’ and Ann Noël’s habit of making alphabet lists to fall asleep at night. The artist couple prepared their word and name lists for the performance independently of each other and then challenged each other on stage.” — publisher’s description.

Perloff, Nancy. 3 April 2020. “A Look Inside the Archive of Emmett Williams, Avant-Garde Poet and Artist“. Iris Blog. Getty Institute. Accessed 1 September 2021.

Phillpot, Clive, and Jon Hendricks. 1988. Fluxus : Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Sackner, Martin and Ruth. 2015. The Art of Typewriting : 570+ Illustrations. 2015. London: Thames & Hudson. P. 342.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Ann Noël Williams

Books On Books Collection – Emmett Williams

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (1963)

SOLDIER (2014 [1973])

Further Reading