Page 25 - Studio International - February 1966

festations in which various events were described with premise of concrete poetry. In concrete poetry, in its
the aid of drawings, letters representing sounds, letters strictest definition, language is used as material rather
used for their visual qualities, and undisguised puns. than the means of emotive personal expression—
The alphabet was fragmented and rearranged, and in spatial arrangement and phonetic possibilities, rather
so far as the letters became both pictorial and sound than syntax, being the connecting links between the
elements in any given composition, one could say that different elements.
Marinetti used type, words, and letters as basic material There is a considerable difference between the use of
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Une assemblée tumultueuse of which each element had a number of specific type and letters in order to stress the semantic meaning
(sensibilité numerique)
functions. This process, forty years later, became the of the text, and where the word elements are used for
Milan 1919
their specific inherent qualities. If the word 'star' is used
in a concrete poem it will not primarily refer to an
astronomical phenomenon, nor the writer's feelings
about it, but to the graphic presentation of the word on
the page. There is a logical connection between
concrete art and concrete poetry and texts. They would
both fit under the following definition : It is a concep-
tual creative activity which involves the process of
building up a structure from certain prepared elements
according to a certain idea or system. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the work of Max Bill and Josef Albers is
close to that of the Brazilian concrete poets, the
Noigandres Group—in both, structure equals content.
This, however, is not true of the work of the Lettristes
from France, whose paintings are transformations of
letter and word forms; nor the experiments in calli-
graphy of the contributors to the magazine Rhinozeros;
nor the more figurative and lyrical treatment of letters
and words in certain compositions of Dom Sylvester
Houédard and Ian Hamilton Finlay.
The area covered by concrete poetry is considerable—
it can belong to any point between literature, the visual
arts, and music. Sometimes it may be closer to literature
where semantic meaning is of primary importance

Dom Sylvester Houédard Ferdinand Kriwet
Typestract 1964 Zwanzig und vier motive, Rundscheibe XIV, Zweite serie 1962-3
Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire Verlag M.DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1964
57