Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

However, I think it may be harder to express just how aesthetically remarkable the “later” work is
because one lacks a shared vocabulary.
But the Coach House anthology of 1976, bill jubobe, and the later bob jubile speak for themselves.
(The more recent kob bok is a little disappointing.) Just take either of those books and use it slowly
as a flip book and you will see not just the astonishing range of forms which the poet has invented
but also the equally astonishing range of relationships between form and content.
This line of inquiry might be continued by a consideration of the range of sources and chosen
circumstances, the techniques employed, the media involved. Yet those books are a selection from
a larger oeuvre and were made some time ago. His tape work deserves attention too; and his solo
and collaborative improvisation. Again, the range alone is striking.
Bob and I largely lost contact during the 80s, but we have collaborated hugely in the 1990s. On
how good or bad that writing is, I shall express no opinion beyond saying that I think it is of some
importance, which is not the same thing. I would point, however, to the quantity of it, (one
collaboration, Domestic Ambient Noise, is 300 pamphlets of 6+ pages each) and the range of
approaches (including form, technique and materials), both within D.A.N and between all the
sequences, including D.A.N. And I would point out that, as D.A.N was getting under way, Bob was
turning 75.
Robert Sheppard has made astute observations on Cobbing’s transition from the ink duplicator to
the photocopier both as printing machine and as means of image production and modification;
and on the energy, dexterity and imagination of his processual series. Whether solo or in
collaboration, Cobbing remains mentally dynamic and animated.
One other thing. Bob Cobbing is married to a remarkable woman. Her name is Jennifer Pike. If you
would know Bob Cobbing then you must take account of the importance of Jennifer’s benign
influence, companionship and support through the decades.
In my judgement, she is equally outstanding in her different artistic achievements. And she
performs with Cobbing, interpreting his work in movement—she too is an octogenarian but you
wouldn’t know it—and providing bodily calligraphy for Bob to interpret in improvised sound.
The more “theatrical” performances of Birdyak (Cobbing, Pike, Coxhill, Metcalfe) and Domestic
Ambient Buoys/Ghoyles (Cobbing, Pike, Upton) are generally the products of her plans and propmaking.
I do not for a moment mean to detract at all from Cobbing’s achievement. On the contrary! Both
Bob and Jennifer, separately and collaboratively, devote each of their days to producing new and
often arresting work. When one sees the totality of that shared commitment in practice, I think the
quantity of Bob’s output seems less inhuman than it might! And one is free to consider what one
human can achieve with determination and a degree of opportunity.