Ultracontemplations: Experiments in Poetic Abstraction

Another and more structurally-advanced example of John O'Loughlin's 'nonreaderly' style of abstract poetry or, depending on your point of view, poetic word art and/or sculpture, 'Ultracontemplations' (1994) is comprised of some sixty-four 'poems' which have been entirely constructed with the use, along monosyllabic lines, of upper-case characters, thereby passing beyond the mixed-case style of 'Supercontemplations' (1993) and the lower-case absolutism of 'Contemplations' (1985) to what could be regarded as a conceptual plateau of poetic abstraction which, like its predecessors in the genre, only requires to be contemplated, as though it were a work of art - say, a biomorphic sculpture or abstract painting. - A Centretruths editorial