JOHN M. BENNETT - Blanksmanship. Light Steams single
John M. Bennett’s BLANKSMANSHIP is a totemic representation of something impossible: a linguistic object containing a totality. Written and recorded in the early 1990s and released as a sound poetry cassette and chapbook, BLANKSMANSHIP begins and ends with a ten word mantra, distilling the poem’s ten cantos that act as phases of an extended meditation. Performed by the author accompanied only by minimalist shakuhachi flute and bell, a narrative emerges from a mythic place, spoken by a single voice that eventually multiplies into a horde of selves. The author states that BLANKSMANSHIP refers to a state of mind, the "empty yet swarming void from which the poem’s voice arises, as if it were the voice of completeness itself“.
An unheralded masterpiece of American avant-garde writing, this is a poetry that has its roots in the most ancient and enduring forms of poesis. Remastered from original tapes, the LP includes a 24 page poetry booklet containing the full text of BLANKSMANSHIP. Edition of 200 copies.
* The first ever reissue of 1994 sound poetry masterpiece BLANKSMANSHIP, a high point in the work of legendary avant garde poet and artist John M. Bennett. Editions Basilic and Luna Bisonte Prods previously collaborated on A Flattened Face Fogs Through: Selected Sound Poetry (1986-1994), an anthology of Bennett’s sound poetry released in 2022 to widespread acclaim.
* Whereas A Flattened Face Fogs Through featured Bennett in collaboration with various sound artists, BLANKSMANSHIP is recorded solo, with Bennett’s words left to hang out in the open and accompanied only by Bennett’s Shakuhachi flute and bell.
* Bennett, born in Chicago in 1942, was raised in Japan for three years as a child in the late 1940s, and studied Latin American literature in Mexico and California in the 1960s and 70s, before settling in Columbus, Ohio. Bennett has been active in the underground poetry and avant garde music scenes since the 1970’s, prolifically writing, publishing, and recording sound poetry, often on his own imprint Luna Bisonte Prods.
* Bennett’s sound poetry has recently been featured in Wire Magazine, The Quietus, and Bandcamp Daily, and his writing and visual poetry is collected in The Museum of Modern Art and The Smithsonian among other major institutions. He remains a steadfast proponent of the underground avant garde and continues to write and perform today.
* BLANKSMANSHIP was remastered from original tapes by John Also Bennett and is presented with an updated design by Jeroen Wille.
