Information poetics: communication and combinatorics in concrete poetry

Abstract

ABSTRACT While Max Bense advocated information aesthetics primarily in his theoretical works, many Concrete poets applied the principles of information theory and modern communications technologies to their poetry, whether or not they explicitly embraced Bense’s analytical framework. As Eugen Gomringer (the ‘father’ of German-language Concrete poetry) wrote in his manifesto ‘from line to constellation’: ‘our languages are in the process of formal simplification. reduced, terse forms are emerging’. But Concrete poetry was notable not only for its concision, or for the visual and spatial emphases generally said to characterise it; rather, many Concrete poets also employed algorithmic or combinatoric methods or used repetition and variation in ways that mirrored the functions of redundancy and entropy in Claude Shannon’s theory of communication. With Bense’s information aesthetics as background, this essay will explore how the concept of information shaped the practice of these Concrete poets.