Literary theorists Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

have identified visual poetry as a development of

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

but with the characteristics of

intermedia Intermedia is an art theory term coined in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe various interdisciplinarity art activities that occur between genres, beginning in the 1960s. It was also used by John Brockman to refer to work ...

in which non-representational language and visual elements predominate.

Differentiation from concrete poetry

As the literary and artistic experiments of the 1950s that were at first loosely grouped together as concrete poetry extended further into the ambiguous sphere which

Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was a ...

described in 1965 as 'Intermedia', it became apparent that such creations were further and further divorced from the representational language with which poetry had hitherto been associated and that they needed to be categorised as a separate phenomenon. In her survey, Concrete Poetry: A World View (1968), Mary Ellen Solt, observed that certain trends included under the label Concrete Poetry were tending towards a “New Visual Poetry”. Its chief characteristic is that it leaves behind the old poetic function of orality and is therefore distinct from the ancient tradition of shaped poetry from which Concrete Poetry claimed to have derived. Visual poetry, on the other hand, is to be distinguished by its deployment of typography. Solt included in her proposed new genre the work of

Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was ...

, John Furnival and Hansjörg Mayer. Her definition was extended by Marvin A Sackner in his introduction to the Ohio State University 2008 collection of Visual Poetry: "I define concrete poems as those in which only letters and/or words are utilized to form a visual image, whereas visual poems constitute those in which images are integrated into the text of the poem". He also separated out artist-generated picture poems and artists' books as an allied category, citing the work of

Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

. Also to be found in the university collection is Tom Phillips'

A Humument ''A Humument: A treated Victorian novel'' is an altered book by British artist Tom Phillips, published in its first edition in 1970 and completed in 2016. It is a piece of art created over W H Mallock's 1892 novel ''A Human Document'' whose tit ...

, as well as an assortment of handwritten but non-linguistic texts. In the light of these assertions, a new genealogy of forerunners to Visual Poetry emerges that includes

Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...

's poem-painting ''Le corps de ma brune'' (1925),

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

's incorporation of

Michel Seuphor Fernand Berckelaers (10 March 1901, in Borgerhout – 12 February 1999, in Paris), pseudonym Michel Seuphor ( anagram of Orpheus), was a Belgian painter. Seuphor established a literary magazine, ''Het Overzicht'', in Antwerp in 1921. He moved in ...

's text in ''Textuel'' (1928), and prints (') by H.N. Werkman using elements of typography. The last also used the typewriter to create abstract patterns (which he called '), using not just letters but also purely linear elements. Created during the 1920s, they anticipated the intermediary 'typestracts' of the Concrete poet

Dom Sylvester Houédard Dom or DOM may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dom (given name), including fictional characters * Dom (surname) * Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto * Dom people, an et ...

during the 1960s that would equally qualify as Visual Poetry. Klaus Peter Dencker also stresses the continuity to the new genre in his theoretical paper "From Concrete to Visual Poetry" (2000), pointing out its "intermedial and interdisciplinary" nature. The two are also interdependent and "without concrete poetry the current forms of visual poetry would be unthinkable". However, the academic Willard Bohn prefers to categorise the whole gamut of literary and artistic experiment in this area since the late 19th century under the label of Visual Poetry and has done so in a number of books since 1986. From his reductionist point of view, "Visual poetry can be defined as poetry that is meant to be seen – poetry that presupposes a viewer as well as a reader".Bohn 2001
p.15
/ref>

References

Bibliography

*Bohn, Willard
''The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928''
University Of Chicago Press, 1986 *Bohn, Willard
''Modern Visual Poetry''
Associated University Presses 2001 *Bohn, Willard
''Reading Visual Poetry''
Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2010 *Dencker, Klaus Peter

Kaldron On-Line and Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry, 2000 *Higgins, Dick

1965/1981. Also published as a chapter in his ''Horizons, the Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia'' (Southern Illinois University, 1984). *Hill, Crag & Vassilakis, Nico (editors
''The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008''

Fantagraphics Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint. History Founding Fantagraphics was found ...

, 2012. *Solt, Mary Ellen
''Concrete Poetry: A World View''
Indiana University 1968

External links

UbuWeb
which hosts a large amount of concrete poetry
The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
{{Authority control Poetry by genre

Differentiation from concrete poetry

See also

References

Bibliography

External links