Concrete Poems Research Articles

Da State of Pidgin Address

I wuz inspired for write dis piece aftah I saw Balaz's Hawaiian Concrete Poetry series on display.1 One time I wen fo' check outJoe at one of his readings and I toll 'em Joe brah, your concrete poems, dey pretty SOLID. He go laugh. So den I wen ax 'em, Eh, you eva tot about making one Pidgin Concrete series And he tot about 'em fo' awhile den he wuz all like Eh Lee, YOU should go try. So I wuz tinking shooots, I go chance 'em. Now, wen you look at Test Your Pidgin P.O.V. tell me wot you guys see? Wot?! Oooo, so much negativity brah; no can. I use dis poem wen I go around for talk to classrooms, public, private, intermediate school, high school, college, anykine, and das da first answer dat students usually give me too-NO CAN. So many Pidgin pessimists. Can you come up wit one more positive way of looking at dis piece o'wot? Try tink. Right on. Ho, you get 'em. Das how. We get ONE Pidgin optimist in da house. I like dis piece, not ony cuz I wrote 'em, but cuz da ting mirrors actual life. We's brought up for believe dat we cannot do certain tings if we talk Pidgin. So ass why upon da initial examination, da negative reading is wot most people arrive at first. In da real world get planny Pidgin prejudice, ah. Dey, da ubiquitous dey, dey is everywea brah; dey say dat da perception is dat da standard english talker is going automatically be perceive fo' be mo' intelligent than da Pidgin talker regardless wot

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

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

De miskenning van Theo van Doesburg; zijn bijdrage tot de ontwikkeling van de konkrete poëzie

More literary critics outside Belgium and the Netherlands have written about Theo van Doesburg than from inside these countries. The first important monograph on him appeared in English - Theo van Doesburg - Propagandist and Practitioner of the Avant-Garde, 1909-1923, by Hannah Hedrick. Van Doesburg’s poetry developed in the direction of concrete poetry - the type of poetry in which the spatial, acoustic and visual characteristics of language are maximally utilized towards the creation of the poem. Word as sound and as image is foregrounded in concrete poetry, while the imaging of persons and subjective experience is eliminated as far as possible. The anecdotal or the epic component of the concrete poem is minimal and the language of this sort of poem has been reduced to the minimum. In the spirit of the theory of concrete poetry Van Doesburg advocates the liberation of art from all the commitments imposed upon it. That with which Van Doesburg began was continued by other poets, especially in Germanic literature by poets of the so-called neo-realism.

Poetry of visual enactment: the concrete poem

Abstract The poetry of visual enactment can be traced back to this century's general dissatisfaction with the cognitive structures oflanguage as well as to the distrust of the truth-value of representation; hence it might be viewed as the embodiment of man's search for ‘Truth’. One can explain it by the conviction that sight holds a primacy among the senses as well as with the assumption that the ocular is ‘the sine qua non of truth, its own evidence’ .1 One might link it to the objectivist-concretist impulses born out of the avant-garde ‘revolution of the word’, or treat it simply as a minority technique of free verse prosody punctuated by the regained emphasis on visuality and typography. One might also relate it to the hermetic tradition, to word magic and to the original meaning of the word poet, maker. Indeed, concrete poetry allows all these explanations, histories and theoretical frameworks. But, I am convinced, its most important aspect — the one that is not independent of the above listed ties and connections but rather brings them together into an integral unity — is the performative nature of concrete poetry.

Concrete Poetry: A Linguistic Technique for the Foreign Language Classroom

ABSTRACT Concrete Poetry is a visual poetry form which may be used in the foreign language classroom. It is an ancient form popular still in modern times and in all languages. This article explains what concrete poetry is, and discusses how to teach the creation of a concrete poem to foreign language classes. It begins with an introduction of how concrete poems were presented in various language classes, continues briefly with the history and background of concrete poetry, and concludes with techniques for implementation.

Charles Sanders Peirce and Eugen Gomringer: The Concrete Poem as a Sign

Throughout his manifestoes and theoretical writings, Eugen Gomringer, founder of European concrete poetry movement, emphasizes character (zeichencharakter) of concrete poem, referring to poems themselves as schemes (schemata von zeichen) or systems (systeme) (GWKD:286).' But there is no evidence that he ever made a systematic study of semiotics. Implied throughout his statements, though, is a semiotic theory of poem that needs only to be articulated, and at some points clarified and corrected, to make evident striking parallels with theory of signs of Charles Sanders Peirce. Gomringer himself suggests that contemporary poet might well investigate new discipline of semiotics. My purpose is to take him up on this suggestion and to attempt a reading of his poem ping pong applying Peirce's theory of signs. Peirce's view of process of semiosis is triadic. What is involved is mediation of a or representamen between object it represents and interpretant. Peirce defines or representamen as which stands to somebody in some respect or capacity. The something which representamen (or sign) stands is its object. It is not necessary that it stand for that object[. . .]in all respects (2:228),2 but it should bring about in mind that perceives it an interpretant that can function as the of that [object] of which it is itself sign (M599:RR38).3 The representamen and interpretant will stand in a cor-

The Concrete Coin of Speech

Instigating question: What does a concrete poem communicate? In the widest sense, one could answer that a concrete poem communicates the same things as any other kind of poem. That is, it does not communicate the same things as discourse, using this word in the sense given it by Susanne K. Langer as language in its literal use (1957:71). A large part of Langer's work has been devoted to the demonstration of the non-discursive, symbolic nature of art and poetry as opposed to the discursive symbolism of literal language. Susanne Langer prefers not to speak of communication with reference to poetry, in order to distinguish qualitatively the function and the effects peculiar to it. Poetry exercises what Langer calls a formulative function of language, normally coincident with the communicative functions, but largely independent of them [ ... j (p. 149). Some quotes from Problems of Art will clarify her theory:

Res Poetica: The Problematics of the Concrete Program

WENTIETH-CENTURY poetic manifestos-both avant-garde and mainstream-have shown remarkable similarity in proposing an poetry. T. E. Hulme called for poetry of hard, dry things;' Archibald MacLeish claimed that a poem should not mean/ But be;2 Pound demanded visual poetry modeled on Chinese ideographic writing in which we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching things work out their fate.3 But the poetry resulting from these notions, divergent as it was from the sententiousness of Victorian literature, is poetry that refers to things, rather than thing-poetry. The only literal interpretation of physical poetry, as John Crowe Ransom disparagingly termed it, had to wait for much more recent trend, poetry.4 And it is the awareness among poets of linguistic and semiotic theory that has helped them to discover what art, rather than mere reference, entails. As one of its founders, Augusto de Campos, wrote after discussion of Sapir, Cassirer, Langer, and von Humboldt, the concrete poem is an object in and by itself, not an interpreter of exterior objects and/or more or less subjective feelings. its material: word (sound, visual form, semantic charge). its problem: problem of functions-relations of this material.5 Semiotically, of course, art is contradiction in terms. Paintings and poems by definition are signs rather than things, except in the sense that ultimately sign is thing; poem that is literally

The Orange and Other Poems by Roger Weaver (review)

318ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW Roger Weaver. The Orange and Other Poems. Portland, OR: Press-22, 1978. 52p. The mandarin charm of Roger Weaver's first book of poems, whose previous publications are documented in the front matter, is reflective of its durable intellectual construction. The exoticism no doubt complements the poet's work as editor; Roger I. Weaver and Joseph Bruchac edited Aftermath: An Anthology of Poems in English from Africa, Asia, and the Carribbean (Greenfield Review Press, 1977). The prefatory poem on "The Orange" establishes the main theme of The Orange and Other Poems: the prime, conceived as indiscrete or delicately separated segments of a curved spectrum that moves from the primary by means of an only qualitative leap to the optimal, and so on, to the primordial. According to the poet, the ultimate is not of necessity achieved, for it always is. Thus, the orange is a metaphor for life in its myriad manifestations, and "The Orange" is an invitation to the reader to cultivate in a quasi-Eliotian rose-garden-like space the secretjoy felt by the Kierkegaardian knight of faith, and finally, to celebrate the sanctity of childhood, partly because it is a time of discovery. In this collection of poems, each verse conveys a refreshing perception, each poem a wholesome integration of image or idea. The vitality of the book is due to the variety of subjects taken up in the limited number of 450 lines of verse. Though the open free-verse stanza form remains constant (with the exception of the concrete poem "Totem Pole"), the range of material extends from a cerebral look at "Men" to "Issei Bicentennial" ("The marooned azaleas in Mr. Ito's garden") to "Another Writing Problem" ("Tell whether your idea of the Infinite"). The book's focus on American heritage surfaces in such lyrics as "American Poetry," "Sexual Politics," "Beethoven Was Deaf," "Tribuía, Tribulatum (for James Agee)," "The North American as Landscape," "Blues for Eric, Age 4," and "1897 Picture." Every poem in the text challenges the reader. The book uses what Ezra Pound calls Logopoeia, the dance of the intellect among words. The concepts tendered may very well provoke "irregular murmurs rare as the exotic / gathering in Caucasian eyes." JVAiVCY WATANABE University of Oklahoma Anthony Trollope. The Complete Short Stories. Vol. I, The Christmas Stories. Ed. by Betty Jane Breyer. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1979. 248p. This beautifully-designed book is first in a series making available the almost forgotten short stories of the nineteenth-century English novelist Anthony Trollope. Of its eight stories, four deal with small domestic crises: Is mistletoe worth the embarrassment it might cause a girl with her family's house guest, an acquaintance she secretly admires? Is a man who dismisses Christmas as a bore worthy for a suitor? Can love overcome two fathers' objections to prospective sons-in-law of lower status than they had anticipated for their daughters? Can a brother-in-law, offended when asked to cosign a promissory note, forgive and be forgiven? These four stories, slight as they are, nevertheless demonstrate Trollope's skill in depicting and differentiating young women. The other four stories have a wider scope. "The Widow's Mite" concerns a symbolic self-deprivation during the "cotton famine," when severe depression affected England because cotton was unavailable for manufacturing during the ...

Aspects of Orality: A Short Commentary

EFORE COMING TO GRIPS individually with the eight essays in this issue, I have a terminological-or conceptual-preamble, which I hope will contribute a little to discussion of problems about oral compositions in words, oral performances, and oral cultures. Following Nelson Goodman,' I use the word script for a (compound) character in a linguistic symbol system, for a written text-rather than for a system of writing.2 Scripts are composed of words-or if we wish, we can also include concrete poems that may contain few, if any, words but are at least composed of letters. But when we speak of words and letters as characters, we do not of course mean particular inscriptions (such as the marks on this page), but types or kinds of inscription: the letter A or the word the which is the same word that appears on many pages. A character can be regarded as a class of inscriptions (waiving certain technical difficulties). A script is what is commonly called a A script is connected by rules of pronunciation with sequences of verbal sounds. The production of such a sequence of sounds in accordance with a script is a sounding or oral performance of that script. And just as we distinguish between scripts as characters and their individual inscriptions, so we can form the concept of dicts as spoken characters which may have as instances innumerable individual utterances. Each time a correct inscription of Invictus is correctly read aloud or recited, we have an utterance; the class of all such utterances is the oral composition, the dict, that corresponds to the script. So much, I think, is harmless. My next step is divisive, and I don't insist on it, though I think it extremely useful: it is to say that a text is a sequence of words in a certain order, so that scripts and dicts are both texts; moreover, a particular script and a particular dict may be the same text. I know that Father Ong objects to this way of speaking, but I note that Mr. Ngal adopts it in one place. It is true that the term implies a certain fixity and prescribes a rigid concept of identity through time-since even to mispronounce one word in reading a script is to produce a distinct dict from that which correctly corresponds to it. It may even be that in oral cultures, complex dicts tend not to reoccur exactly, as each successive speaker learns the text imperfectly, or is unconcerned about minutiae, and so passes on a slightly different version of what he or she receives. Under those conditions, there may not be so much use for the rigorous concept of a dict, and instead we may have to speak of plots or stories which have a looser principle of identity through timestory-utterance B is a retelling of story-utterance A if it describes the same sequence of events, though in very different words. Still, we need the concept of a dict, I think, even if only to compare two performances and to note that they are, strictly speaking, instances of different dicts.

"Circus": An Exercise in Semiotics

In the opening pages of La dissemination Derrida notices that: la forme du livre est d6sormais soumise ' une turbulence g6nerale.1 This remark is most fitting for Circus by Maurice Roche.2 At first glance, Circus might appear to be a display of various types of writing (alphabetical, ideographic, and scientific) or perhaps a collection of concrete poems.3 A closer look, however, reveals that the book is an impressive juxtaposition, mixing, and meshing of various types of signs. It is possible to recognize both dead and spoken languages in their original script-Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Aztec glyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphs; artificial languages in their appropriate representation-road signs, chemical formulas, mathematical and physical symbols and formulae, short hand, proof reading symbols, labels of products, extracts of pieces of music, symbols of the Michelin guide, signs of the Zodiac. In addition Circus is a typographical festival featuring various kinds of printing such as italics; bold face, large, small and capital letters, horizontal, vertical, and side-ways writing; parentheses; underlining; passages put in brackets, braces, and boxes; arrows; oscillograms; etc. As in a circus where one can observe an heterogenous spectacle composed of wild animals and their tamers, tightrope walkers, horse-back riders, trapeze artists, and clowns; all appearing successively on stage with fast tempo, and exhibiting stunt, virtuosity, and prowess; Circus offers a succession of pages which contain various linguistic juxtapositions and various types of typographical and spatial organization. The whole book is a continuous display of such virtuosity; but is it a semiotic Babel? Is it just tricks and gimmicks? Is it just an entertaining linguistic and typographical exhibition? A closer interrogation of the turbulence inflicted within this book will answer these questions.

Aesthetic Theory and Concrete Poetry: A Test Case

examination of the nature of art in general; if such examination is successful, it may help educate that larger public to the virtues of the art they rejected, or even confirm that rejection. At the very least, it may teach us how to react to these new works of art. A concrete poem, for example, represents a deliberate denial by its creator of what a poem is thought to be. Its analysis, if taken seriously, raises anew the question of what a literary object is, its ontological structure, and its relation to the other arts. And if we find that poems are to be seen as well as read, while paintings are to be read as well as seen, then the arts can be viewed in a new and fruitful perspective in relation to education in appreciation. Although I hope to suggest that as aesthetic objects poems are not so different from paintings as we might think, discussions of the ontological status of the work of art by twentieth century Anglo-American philosophers have tended to deny Horace's dictum Ut pictura, poesis. Typically this denial contrasts a painting, identified with a physical object or event or class of such objects or events, with a poem or

Concrete Poetry in the Beginning Foreign Language Class

ABSTRACT In the beginning foreign language class, concrete poetry offers students few, if any, grammatical problems but, rather, it involves them directly in the thought processes of the foreign language. A concrete poem is a linguistically simple arrangement of words or sounds which forms an object of play or of thinking. In dealing with such a poem, the student must participate actively, either by reading, hearing, speaking, or rewriting, in the construction of the poem and must supply a conceptual interpretation himself since none is given. The appearance and sound of the poem are one with its meaning. Therefore, while the student is looking at, reading, and reciting the poem, he is learning from his own direct experience what the foreign sounds mean. This linguistic and conceptual unity forms a nucleus for introducing related grammar and vocabulary items and, consequently, for using them in the meaningful context already established. This nucleus can form a very short segment of classroom time or lead to extensive study. In either case, concrete poetry offers an excellent opportunity for students to participate meaningfully–and immediately–in the foreign language.