d.a. levy Poem Written While Flying Over Hanoi from the series Zen Concrete 1967
© d.a. levy
d. a. levy—an anti-establishment poet and publisher of alternative literature—embodies the gritty, nihilistic experimentalism of the 1960s underground. His mimeographed flyers and booklets, which he passed out for free on the streets of Cleveland, anticipated the development of zine publications within the punk movement and other dissident subcultures. Several of the works that make up the Zen Concrete series began as typewritten texts but were subsequently eradicated with black ink. The resulting abstractions bear an abject quality, evincing the bleak aesthetics of auto-destruction. With little or no legible words left behind, the prominent titles take on central importance. Works such as Poem Written While Flying Over Hanoi, ACID YANTRA, and GALACTIC WAYSTATION (for Ron Jump & Bud Hassink) rely on the titles’ metonymic interaction with the imagery they accompany to evoke open-ended associations with anything from the destruction of war to interstellar travel.
Identification
Title
Poem Written While Flying Over Hanoi from the series Zen Concrete
Production Date
1967
Object Number
2016.275
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, acquired from The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Copyright
© d.a. levy
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2016.275
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Ink, mimeograph, and typewriter ink on paper
Dimensions
11 x 8 9/16 inches
Visual Description
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Poem Written While Flying Over Hanoi from the series Zen Concrete by d.a. levy is a text-based piece made in 1967. It is made of ink, mimeograph, and typewriter ink on paper. It measures roughly eleven inches by eight and a half inches and is hung in portrait orientation, meaning its shortest side runs parallel to the floor.
This black and gray composition on gray aged paper is a series of typed letters that make up an impression of cross hash horizontal & vertical stripped patterns on the left side of the composition in a column. After a faded interruption at center, there is a gradient of letters overlapping and fading in & out of the right-hand side of the page. The composition does not seem to develop into any particular shape or pattern as a whole. The center space is voided for the most part leaving dark type on the two sides. The top of the page is also left fading into view due to low ink of the typed words. This opening on top could be described as a smoke cloud rising to a peak before dissipating. The bottom of the composition has a narrower faded space also panning horizontally across the about an inch away from the last line. In addition to a smoke cloud the type can loosely be mistaken for a black and white snow mountain landscape.
The work is topped by the title: Poem Written While Flying Over Hanoi with each word underlined individually. At the bottom right of the piece the artist’s name appears written: d.a.levy
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