Nods to Aram Saroyan and Robert Grenier is a collection of twenty-two pastiche poems after Aram Saroyan’s Complete Minimal Poems and Robert Grenier’s Sentences, gathered in a double-sided pamphlet.
 
It pays tribute to both poets’ minimalist poetics.
 
Obliquely, it is also an homage to Robert Creeley.
 
32 pages, size 140x200 mm, b/w digital print on 120 gsm paper, full colour cover, saddle stitch
 
"Aram Soroyan's minimalist poetry first started to appear in the early 1960's. To some they were revelatory — to others – trash. Speaking about his one-word poem lighght he said 'Even a five word poem has a beginning a middle and end. A one-word poem doesn't. You can see it all at once. It's
instant.'

Robert Grenier's anti-book Sentences was published in 1978 in an edition of 200. It contains 500 5 x 8 index cards each containing a discrete lyric poem. It asks us how to read — what is a poem — what is a book? Grenier said 'I certainly don't think of myself as a Minimalist Poet whatever that
means. I'd just like the things to stand on their own, without assumption of necessary content or even of one persons voice or authority / authoring...I'd really like the reader to participate in the work, such that both make an experience.'
 
Bruno Neiva nods in the direction of these two writers but also Larry Eigner, Robert Creeley, Emily Dickinson and bpNichol. He asks the reader to collaborate — not only in what he has written — but in the history of what has been said. Out of this engagement with the past new species of words and ideas are formed. A perfect poem would contain no words. Would be wordless. But here are poems of emptiness. Of silence. Discrete lyric poems or conceptual sequence? An alphabet or a ouija board? Connect the dots — follow the lines — then burn your socks."
Stephen Emmerson
 
"In Nods to Aram Saroyan and Robert Grenier, Bruno Neiva masterfully captures the essence of Robert Grenier’s and Aram Saroyan’s innovative poetry. With the smallest gestures, mirroring Grenier’s exploration of rhythm, sound, and fragmented expression, Neiva’s poems offer a fascinating and thought-provoking homage. Echoing Saroyan, by distilling language into its tiniest units, highlighting its intrinsic visual component and inherent fragility, Neiva creates a series of striking concrete poems. All paying a beautiful and compelling tribute to Saroyan’s minimalist poetic brilliance."
Charlotte Jung
 
(Photographs by Charlotte Norling)