Concrete Poetry

From W100Wiki

concrete poetry

A kind of picture made out of printed type, and regarded in the 1950s and 1960s, when it enjoyed an international vogue, as an experimental form of poetry. It usually involves a punning kind of typography in which the visual pattern enacts or corresponds in some way to the sense of the word or phrase represented: a well-known early example is Guillaume Apollinaire's poem ‘Il pleut’ (‘It rains’, 1918), in which the words appear to be falling down the page like rain. The Scottish artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay is one of the few significant practitioners in English; his works come closer to sculpture than to two-dimensional art. Most concrete poems are apprehended instantaneously by the viewer as visual shapes, since they dispense with the linear sequence demanded by language; these therefore have little claim to the status of poetry. Others are closer to the traditional form of pattern poetry, in which typographical presentation supports an already coherent poem.

"concrete poetry" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Christopher Baldick. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Temple University. 1 February 2007 <http://shelob.ocis.temple.edu:4104/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t56.e199>

An Example:

[[Image:http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=4294&searchid=10099&tabview=image]

Ian Hamilton Finlay, "Star." 1966. From the Tate Collection: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=4294&searchid=10099

JT 22:55, 31 January 2007 (EST)