“There is a primal book as there is a primal voice, & it is the task of our poetry & art to recover it” says Jerome Rothenberg curator of the amazing visual ethnopoetic trip through history over at UBUWEB.
Rothenberg says that “while the initial focus of ethnopoetics was on orality and performance, the discourse turned as well to the visible aspects of language — writing & inscription — both as a persistent contemporary concern & as an often unacknowledged kingpin of a revitalized & expanded ethnopoetics.”
The image above was done in the mid-nineteenth century and is attributed to Timothy Randlett a Shaker living in New Hampshire. In his 1940 book The Gift to Be Simple noted Shaker historian Edward Deming Andrews talks about the 13 years between 1837 and 1850 that were known as the “Era of Manifestations.”During this time the Shakers composed, “or where the recipients of”, hundreds of visionary drawings.
The caption at bottom of the image above identifies it as a song while the vertical writing seems to be comprised of either some sort of wordless text or musical notation.
Here is another Shaker visual piece done in the early 1840’s. It is not hard to see Dada and Surreal elements though both movements were still more than a half century away.
Amazing stuff.
The book Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs published by the Drawing Center is the monograph on the subject.
Thanks to Deeplinking for the lead