I have heard and read regrets from poets Judith Copithorne and Steve McCaffery for mixing concrete and expressive rhetorics in their earlier works. For Copithorne it is the nature of the sentiments carried in works that combine the written line and the drawn line; for McCaffery, specifically in certain panels that make up his massive Carnival (1967-75), it is the inclusion of words that say things.
In Speechless (2017), Lorna Simpson combines collaged text atop the head of a photographed subject. Except for the letters "SO," most of the text is black. As for the image background, it is white, as is the model's headgear. The model is Black, her top grey.
"SO," how are we to read this? What is Speechless saying?
Stop reading? Keep listening? Both? Yes, I think -- and feel -- it can be.
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