Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

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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
tended to be slower and softer. Transfer and therefore separation of texts to slides for one performance (in West Berlin) showed me how close text and text-in-the-book’s-format were one and the same.
Page 2 and 3: Commentaries on Bo
Page 4 and 5: Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introdu
Page 6 and 7: Acknowledgements An earlier and sho
Page 8 and 9: That first essay, from over 30 year
Page 12 and 13: Bob Cobbing at The Voice Box Cobbin
Page 14 and 15: Bob Cobbing at The Klinker (29th Ap
Page 16 and 17: Co-editing Word Score Utterance Cho
Page 18 and 19: It took Cobbing 10 years—or 20 ye
Page 20 and 21: • Do you use machines/technology
Page 22 and 23: I would like to see the visual inte
Page 24 and 25: Introduction of Bob Cobbing at the
Page 26 and 27: tonight at Bob’s instigation, a f
Page 28 and 29: I shall quote now from a slightly-c
Page 30 and 31: espect. The contents are linear poe
Page 32 and 33: the level of the book rather than a
Page 34 and 35: medium may leave us more flexibilit
Page 36 and 37: Introduction to Bob Cobbing at Sub
Page 38 and 39: Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Cobbing.
Page 40 and 41: silent. Then he turned intense atte
Page 42 and 43: Bob Cobbing: A Worker in Progress I
Page 44 and 45: It was during that time that I met
Page 46 and 47: Funeral Oration for Cobbing (11th O
Page 48 and 49: Celebrating the Memory of Bob Cobbi
Page 50 and 51: Bob Cobbing: A Talk Given at Boat T
Page 52 and 53: As well as the simplicity of approa
Page 54 and 55: The Destruction in Art volume recen
Page 56 and 57: themselves and not a completion in
Page 58 and 59: Reissue of Kroklok Kroklok was an e
Page 60 and 61:
Republication of Bob Cobbing’s Li
Page 62 and 63:
and the foreground of the image; an
Page 64 and 65:
has been more difference in aesthet
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It might be that he changed his min
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So far, within a page, Cobbing has
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Review of With Our Tongue Our Drils
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criteria before being sure of them;
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Collaborations for Peter Finch Lawr
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The working order of pages changed
Page 78 and 79:
Introduction to Bob Cobbing and Wri
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The supposed improvement in product
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inevitable. I am not sure it was so
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ut eye elements! A notional alien n
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However, there is functional writin
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There are those poets who inherit t
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I have included less on the 1980s
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word or any inflection of it; nor d
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making poetry than he had been. And
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he did formally, in a context of th
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And now as poetry more and more bec
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Another Story of Bob Cobbing Welcom
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Yet, as I have said before, Bob Cob
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Both afford ample evidence of Cobbi
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Bob Cobbing: A Talk Given at Boat T
Page 108 and 109:
3. Published by Writers Forum in 20
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