"I have always been far more drawn to uncertainties than certainties, as the former compels us to continually question ourselves about the world around us," writes Angela Caporaso concerning Dots, her new digital chapbook of visual poetry published by Half Day Moon Press (No. 11).* In certainty, nothing further need be said; but with uncertainty, questions are asked, whether reframed or repeatedly. This rings true of literature. If there is only one golden key to understanding a text, then it isn't literature. It wouldn't invite discussion nor even be reread for that matter. A keen awareness of this is what moved her to the create the eight collage-like works of visual poetry (VisPo) in her new collection.
While there is some continuity from image to image with respect to reoccurring colors, shapes, and materials, they are reassembled, reformulated, and rearranged. Each work is haunted by whisperings of phrases ending either in space or abruptly cut-off margins. Some "passages" are even hole-punched through. Incoherent phrases or rows of repeated letters and/or letter-combinations create a further layer of mystery. One would think that the straightforward one-word titles typed below each image would lend some solid clues, but they only partially do. Take for instance the piece titled "Foglie" in which one can indeed detect some abstractions of leaves. The mind by default does afterall tend to grasp for certainty.
Caporaso, however, invites us to accomodate her half-finished pieces, as a house might provide the space for twisted and "torn cobwebs". Not cobwebs to be recoiled from nor swept away, however. The cheerful and inviting pastels, the snippets of Italian phrases, and half familiar shapes and forms throughout help to alleviate any fears we may harbor of the indeterminate.
---Joseph S. Aversano
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*personal communication: Infatti sono sempre stata molto più attratta dalle incertezze che dalle certezze essendo proprie le prime che ci spingono ad interrogarci continuamente sul mondo che ci circonda.
