This week: Concrete Yet Fluid: Visual Poetry Forms Edited by: Jayne  
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Hello, I'm Jayne! Welcome to my poetic explorations. My goal with these newsletters is to journey through the forms, devices, and concepts that make poetry so powerful. Sometimes, a series of newsletters will interconnect, while other issues will stand alone. I strive to ensure they are informative but fun and do my best to spark your curiosity. Don’t forget to check out this issue's curated selection of poetry!
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If you’ve written or come across a poem wordsmithed into a recognizable shape, you’ve encountered visual poetry—and possibly Concrete Poetry. However, it’s also possible you’ve not encountered Concrete Poetry, and the only way to know is to understand where one form of visual poetry starts and another ends. However, once you have a handle on the differences between the different forms, it’s pretty easy to figure out what you’re looking at.
The Origins of Concrete Poetry
Let’s clarify one thing: Concrete Poetry is not new, and it wasn’t new in the 1950s when it was named. In fact, it’s thousands of years old, and you might know it as Shape Poetry.
Concrete Poetry falls under the broader umbrella of visual poetry (not to be confused with Visual Poetry. We’ll get to that in a minute). The Concrete moniker was picked up in the mid-1950s when a group of poets displayed their abstracted poetic imagery alongside the artists at the National Exhibition of Concrete Art. When I say ‘abstracted,’ I’m not being hyperbolic. The original Concrete Poems rejected identifiable shapes and avoided any sense of allusion. It’s not that there weren’t typographical elements; the point of the poetry was the visual and how the idea behind words could be ideograms. As such, reading the work aloud was an exercise in futility—without the visual, the poem didn’t work.
Concrete Poetry is Visual, but not all Visual Poetry is Concrete
Throughout the 1960’s, concrete poetry evolved from an abstract visual art form into a distinct poetic form embracing typography over abstraction. In reaction, some artists broke with the new concept of Concrete and began using the term "Poesia Visiva" (Visual Poetry) to refer to more experimental integrations of text and imagery. I told you visual poetry wasn’t Visual Poetry.
While both Visual and Concrete poetry manipulate form and language, Visual Poetry emphasizes the importance on the presentation itself. In contrast, Concrete poetry’s imagery typically mirrors the text's meaning. Since Visual poetry’s meaning is in the presentation itself and is generally more abstract, it frequently needs more decoding by the reader and is more open to subjective interpretation.
Typically, both forms lose most, if not all, of their meaning when read aloud.
Patterned Concrete?
If you thought this whole form was now set and ready to walk on, we need to add one more fork to this path. Whereas Poesia Visiva and Concrete Poetry generally lose any meaning when read aloud, much of today’s Concrete Poetry falls under Pattern Poetry instead, where the lines create a recognizable shape but can still be read out loud to great effect.
So, if the visual is the meaning, you’ve likely created Visual Poetry. If the visual mirrors the content but loses its meaning if it’s read aloud, it’s probably Concrete. If your visual mirrors the content and it can be read aloud in a meaningful way, you’ve got yourself some Pattern Poetry.
Writing Concrete and Pattern Poetry
To complicate things a wee bit more, some circles don’t differentiate between Concrete and Pattern; Pattern is just Concrete that happens to read well out loud. Others consider it a subgenre of Concrete. I suppose it only matters if you’re a purist hanging your career on one particular form.
For example, these are two common poems cited as Concrete, but if you use the definitions in the strictest sense, they appear to be Pattern:
Lewis Carroll The Mouse's Tail
Dylan Thomas Vision and Prayer
Yet, this example comes up frequently as Pattern:
George Herbert Easter Wings
In contrast, here's a classic that is much closer to the Concrete definition:
E.E. Cummings r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
Taking it even further, here's A Whole Exhibit of Modern Concrete Poetry that is based on the form's roots. It could even be argued some fall further into subgenres, particularly calligrams.
No matter which position you take, there’s little difference between Concrete and Pattern regarding writing conventions and devices. However, it’s important to remember that Pattern Poetry retains its meaning when read aloud, and Concrete (usually) doesn’t. This means that while shape is important to the content of both forms, it’s even more critical to Concrete.
The most common element you’ll find in these two forms is enjambment. You’ll need to cut lines in strange places for the poem to take the proper shape. Since Concrete is expected to be about the form, you have some flexibility with how your word choices travel from line to line. You also have the ability to play with words in ways that wouldn’t work in traditional poetry. Enjambment is still needed in Pattern Poetry. Otherwise, your shape won’t work. However, your word choices are critical due to placement limitations; the lines need to work together in a way that allows them to be read aloud. Regardless of which form you choose, you need to be deliberate in shaping it.
The vast majority of Concrete and Pattern poetry is free verse and with good reason. Trying to stick to a rhyme scheme or meter within the confines of the planned shape is extremely difficult—the need for enjambment compounds this difficulty. While nothing is impossible, and rhymed Concrete poetry exists, you may find working with other devices or even imperfect rhyme more fun.
Rhymed or not, all forms of visual poetry are challenging, but when done with care and purpose, they are visually stunning and leave a lasting impression on your readers. Give it a try, and show us what you come up with!
Today’s Terminology
Allusion: Allusion is an implied or indirect reference to a person, event, or media, generally without reference to the source.
Calligram: A type of art where the words are arranged to form a related image. Calligrams can be used for poetry, prose, scripture, or a single word. The emphasis is on pleasing visuals and thematic relationships, not readability.
Enjambment: Enjambment ends a line before its natural stopping point and continues the thought on the next line. It is generally done without punctuation and with purpose. By forcing the reader to continue to the next line, it’s an effective way to pace the poem, add emphasis, or twist a thought. It can be used in many types of poetry and is one of the most common devices used in free verse.
Free Verse: Poetry that does not rhyme or follow a specific metrical pattern. This doesn’t mean free verse lacks structure. Many of the best free verse poems have plenty of poetic devices to create rhythm and an internal structure that isn’t always evident right away.
Ideogram: a written character symbolizing an idea without indicating the sounds used to say it. It differs from a pictogram in that pictograms are generally more literal.
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Concrete poem about our mutilation of trees. From Dan Sturn's Bottle in a River.
#1463227 by Dan Sturn  |
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Poetry: June 26, 2024 Issue [#12604]
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