Hymn to Glyphs

by Ed Sanders

A Glyph has the power to shake the spirit.
It emblazons shapes, lines, colors, space
and words into an intense zone
of enhanced visualization.

A Glyph can stand out or it can
blend in almost as a word into the text.

Many of my glyphs are arrayed with words,
but some of them stand by themselves as
visual poems.

So, a Glyph can be observed very quickly,
or be an object of quiet study for an
extended time.

Colored Glyphs can be keyed to associate
with emotional states.
Glyphs in the future will be able
to move and change colors.

I began putting Glyphs into my poetry
early in my career.

I found that often while writing
I began making drawings on the page of text
on which I was working,
as I paused to reflect and to think.

Throughout my writing life I have drawn Glyphs
in various Investigative Poetry projects
in the writing of histories in verse such
as Chekhov, a Biography in Verse;
The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg;
1968, a History in Verse, and the 9–volume
                            America, a History in Verse.
& now, for several years I have created
a sequence of books combining Glyphs
and text.  One such book
traces the history of the Peace Eye Bookstore;
another traces the life of poet Charles Olson.

Shapes have power
to shake the spirit
and the bard can draw those forms
for use in the flow of vowels and consonants

since the Visual is rising in the Mix
& glyphs can tremble the brain
or even help bring alive the structures
of gnosis!

The promise of a new living hieroglyphic
is of a similar order
as when the ghost of William Blake’s brother
gave him the idea for
reverse copper etching
for the Songs of Innocence.

Faces and visual determinatives
as in the ancient Egyptian
can come to verse.

A glyph instead of a name
in a story poem, for instance,
or totems for towns
in lieu of the letters.

All my bardic life I’ve drawn them!
It began in 1961 when I was in jail
studying Egyptian
after trying to board a Polaris submarine
in a peace demonstration
when I made flash cards
in my cell
to learn the ancient words
and then for the next forty five years
I drew glyphs all the time
wherever I was: on planes, in discussions,
at political meetings, anywhere and everywhere
in quick, instant flows of my many pens!

O glyphs
please enter my visual pathways
and form yourself into my spirit

O glyph of the ancients
who sought to feel a sacred shape
please enter my skin
my heart    the soft strip
where visual artifacts form

O glyphs
commingle with my pen
and come up with the shapes
& forms that Plato described
& Matisse cut with his scissors!!!

                         All Hail the Glyph!

                        ••••••