Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

Review of Pattern of Performance
(April 1980)
A4 portrait; 10 pages; duplicated; ISBN 0 86162 256 1; Writers Forum; 12/79
Pattern of Performance confirms that Bob Cobbing is capable now of producing work of major
significance influence beneficial usefulness whatever. This hesitation on my part over the correct
word is not vagueness but an unsuccessful sifting. Each of the words I tried carries connotations of
systems of artistic appreciation and assessment with which I disagree and which I see as being
associated with artistic malaise. [1]
The process employed in the making of this book is the photo-stencil. And Cobbing long ago found
ways to expand the technical possibilities of that—as planned by the manufacturer—boring
machine. I think that some of the source material is photographic—photographs perhaps from
magazines and newspapers etc have been put into the scanner regardless of whether or not they
had been screened—as well as monotypes made with crumpling stencils. The result is a fine set of
texts providing contrasts of tone rhythm and line that are largely new to Cobbing while, seen as a
whole, each page and the book itself is obviously his; almost typical one might say? These pages
are very exciting visually without being particularly figurative.
In this book, Cobbing has abstracted his texts almost completely from their sources, making them
new. The source material has been assimilated. It is recognisably Cobbing and yet unfamiliar.
Cobbing entering new territory using well-tried techniques.
The A4 format is interfered with by the rough border; each poem has its own indefinite area—but
the poem’s shape exists separately from that area which is like the selection of a camera’s lens
rather than a space which had to be filled. The poem passes before the viewer and would provide
the poet raiding his poem with an opportunity to step right through the space in the page into the
audience/performer space and leave the record of the text behind, making the imagined text
spread beyond the border of the print, really improvising. Opposing pages match and contrast—
one pair is the same stencil I think but printing (duplicating) variations cause visual stereophony.
The space illusioned is three-dimensional as consistently and convincingly as anything he has
done. Here is voice. Many strong voice a long time and varying and foreshading. Material voice
perhaps—perhaps—against author’s judgment neither transcendent nor transcendental but
interstices of interaction—hopefully with himself rather than the god be with you and with you
multivoice.
Fine duplicating. Areas this black with this much contrast are hard indeed to print in quantity. [2]
The ink still comes off on the hands and smudges. The three staple binding’s as humble and
efficient as could be.
My last excitement like this over a Cobbing book was Jade Sound Poems and his first performances
of it… Those first performances were high power and rapid, as are the texts. Later performances