"Now what the DEFFIL can that mean!": The Latin American Roots, Rhetoric, and Resistance of Concrete Poetry

Abstract

This article focuses on concrete poetry, the international avant-garde literary movement of the 1950s known for making visual appeals through a graphic use of space, print, and design, and argues that the theory and aesthetic of Concretism embody traits and evince themes that are distinctively and importantly Latin American. This argument resists a more common tendency to situate Eugen Gomringer—one of the founders of Concretism, and a Bolivian-born Swiss—within a context of German-writing poets instead of his Latin American contemporaries. It also analyzes the contributions of the Noigandres group of Sao Paulo to the worldwide theorization of concrete poetry. first part, The Constellation, sorts through the varying accounts of the movement's beginnings and argues that concrete poetry, in spite of its broader popularity in German-speaking Europe and its inclusion of writers of various nationalities, has notably Latin American beginnings. second part, The Heritage, explores the theoretical unde...