"Concrete Prose" in the Nineties: Haroldo de Campos's "Galaxias" and after

Abstract

n the face of it, concrete poetry and prose poetry (or poetic prose) would seem to represent two extremes, with the lyric (lineated text framed by white space) as middle term. The concrete poem is, by common definition, a constellation in which, as the Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry published by the Noigandres poets of Brazil put it, graphic space acts as structural agent (Solt 70-72).1 Indeed, in the words of Dick Higgins, the concrete poem characteristically defines its own form and is visually and, if possible, structurally original or even unique. And further, unlike the Renaissance pattern poem or the Apollinairean calligramme-forms which are in many ways its precursor-the concrete poem's visual shape is