Unable to identify this poet in a Google search. Russell Kierzkowski contributes a brief history and definition of concrete poetry as quoted as follows. "Concrete poetry has taken root in the literary soil of the United States. Small presses are attempting to establish and develop this fresh medium. Concrete poetry is a positive response to an earnest demand for adequate methods of communication. For advanced methods of thought, typography and design are the essential tools of this international.rnovement that is exercising the many dimensions of poetry which have long been suppressed by the antiquated hierarchy of literature. Arnold Linton is a local artist concerned with this emerging art. A free-lance graphic designer and typographer, he utilizes his press - the hermit press by participating in the movement to validate concrete poetry as an artform. The hermit press is one of the many small presses making an important contribution in addition to the work in concrete poetry the press is involved in experimental typographic design and publishing new forms of verbal-visual communication. The concrete poetry movement can trace its origin to the naked stone walls of the cavemen who expressed themselves through simple sketches and graphic designs. The Chinese used this method of communication in their pictorial language this simplicity and purity of intercourse has been obscured by man's innate ability to complicate. South American and Western European poets were the first to initiate concrete poetry as an organized movement. Eugen Gomringer from Switzerland and the Noigandres group from Brazil were the first to publish various works that much to their surprise brought international recognition. Isolated small presses spread about the globe have been experimenting with this form of poetry without the knowledge of its world-wide appeal these first anthologies produced by Gomringer and the Brazilian group were the necessary conditions needed for the budding small presses to bloom and shed their petals of concrete poems and to develop into an internationally established artform within the last two decades. The concrete poem is an object within itself. Coherence is based on physical appearance and spatial structure its appeal is to the eye rather than the ear affecting both the heart and the mind. The poem's impact is quick and absorbs the perceiver while he is absorbing the poem. Concrete poetry permits the typographer, designer, student of language, and poet to take up the tools of their trade and sculpture their poems. The members of the concrete poetry movement have torn down the traditional walls that restricted poetry to an impenetrable temple of formulas and sacred laws. Arnold Linton's concrete poems attempt to create an awareness that a word is an individual organism with its own life and character that becomes revealed through a breakdown of language, words, thoughts, concepts, sounds - spoken or natural that don't necessarily have a tangible appearance can be given form through typographic means. An incomplete thought can be finished by the reader through his own personal experience. Thus, the physical object is left to be perceived by the explorations of the eye and the self translation through the heart and mind." Trade book buyer Russell Kierzkowski has been working for the University of Pittsburgh Book Center since 1966. He says the Book Center benefits from the captive audience and the inevitable foot traffic that the campus location brings. "Our customers are the staff, faculty and students of Pitt. And our focus is on supporting and listening to the university community first"”we exist to meet their needs." For Kierzkowski, no campus event is too big or too small for him to send someone with a table of books to sell, and a professor with a new title gets the royal treatment when having a book party, signing or lecture at the Book Center. The Book Center is one of a dwindling number of college bookstores in the country that has not been bought out by Barnes and Noble. "Faculty who transfer to Pitt are often very grateful," observes Kierzkowski, "because the chains are not responsive to the needs of the academic community they're supposed to serve. Anything that is not going to be big profit for them, they tend to ignore." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner. https://aspace.lib.uiowa.edu/repositories/5/archival_objects/893188 Accessed May 02, 2024.