(the) absent word
In the network of research on the
visualized word one may find forms of absent words.In “Tristram Shandy” Laurence
Sterne has sometimes recourse to eccentric solutions. In chapter 12,
book I, a black rectangle occupies all the page, by way of tombstone:elsewhere
blanks open in the text to stand for censured words; in chapter 40, book VI,
there appear five zigzag lines which according to the author hint at the
descriptive movement of the earlier books. At the end of chapter 4, book IX a vertical
line with snakelike curves is worth, according to the author, more than a
thousand syllogisms in favour of celibacy. A splendid example of wordless
poetry is the “Fisches Nachtgesang” (Night song of the fish, Galgenlieder
1905) by Christian Morgenstern: the long and short scheme of quantitative
poetry replaces the words, thus creating a pattern of visualization of the time
element within the space framework.
A notable case of text removal is
“Successivement” by Marinetti (in “Nuovi poeti futuristi”, 1925) where words or
short interspaced phrases seem to form an incoherent speech while they
translate into a time sequence the ‘ removed’ description of a sunset at sea.
In 1924 Man Ray creates a “Lautgedicht”
(sound poem) achieved by carefully cancelling with a felt-tipped pen the words
of a poem printed on the page.
Nanni Balestrini has composed several texts
with gaps made up of syntagms treated as material verbal objects.
Heinz Gappmayr, Austrian, have produced a
text entirely covered by a black square ; top left there appears, cut in half
by black, the prefix ‘ver’, which in German is joined to verbs, nouns and
adjectives to stand for a concept of loss or removal.
Pictures 105 – 112
accumulative diagram
It consists in listing several elements,
and in mentioning them again at the end, using the same word and keeping the
same order in which they were originally listed. It is a figure of enumeration
of the terms and paratactic in its syntax.
It is analogous to rapportatio but differs
from it both in composition and meaning, which is the opposite, since while
rapportatio is a decompositive figure of speech, since it takes apart both the
continuity of the elements of the clause and that of the clauses in the
sentence, the additive diagram, on the contrary stresses its unity. See Groto’s sonnets “I fior pigliano odor” and “Di
produr perle”.
Picture 138
acrostic
(beginning of line)
You have acrostic in a verbal work if a
secondary linguistic meaning is created. The position of the elements
designating the acrostic may be the initial position in the line (acrostrophe)
or the final position (telestich) or a middle position (mesostich).
A fourth position is the notaricon, in which the second meaning is born
progressively, along the linear horizontal course of the first message.
Acrostrophe, mesostich and telestich cut vertically the text of the first
message, the notaricon horizontally. The element designating the acrostic may
be the phoneme, the syllable, the word. Acrostic is the reverse of rhyme and
its counterbalance. It must be heightened by the hatching with upper-case
letters, colours, and so on. It is a very ancient figure, being already present
in Babylonian literature.
adynaton
(impossible)
A figure of speech aiming at exalting an
event or a person by comparing it with something inexpressible, or else by
declaring the impossibility of finding the right words . Ex.: “Words fail me”.
AEIOU, or vocalic poem
If the initial position of the phoneme is
combined with a specific selective criterion, four figures may originate:
- If the whole series of the letters is
privileged by the selection,we get the
alphabetical poem;
- If the whole series is combined in the
linear projection of the language we get
the pangrammatical lines.
- If only the vowel series is chosen, we
get the AEIOU figure.
- Initial phonemes may be connected
together to form a second meaning, once
the intermediate linguistic body is
removed; then we get the notaricon.
- When a phoneme is removed from a text on
purpose, we get the lipogram, which
is a negative figure.
Lodovico Leporeo systematically plays with
the vocalic series. The sonnet “Amata m’ardi” is a three sound alphabetical
sonnet (three rhymes each line), that can be transposed (each line can be
transposed), unrepeated (all rhymes are assonant), anaphoric (all the fourteen
lines begin with the same word).
Picture 4
allegory
(another’s talk)
A figure of speech of thought. It consist
in a finished speech, made up of symbols or images with which one intends to
express a different and innermost content, mostly of an abstract or ideal
character, through the literal sense of the words. Therefore it is called also
a “continuous metaphor”, because it is prolonged during the whole course of the
action described. For example Dante relates in the “Divine Comedy” about an
imaginary travel in the next world, which allegorically means the itinerary of
a soul towards the Christian salvation.
alliteration
(sound repetition)
It consists in repeating, in the clause or
in the strophe, the same letters in the same position (mostly the initial
position) in different words and often in order to get an imitative harmony. For ex. : “Esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte” -
“Tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota” (Dante).
Intensified alliteration, that is to say an
alliteration with a greater sound effect: “o Tite tute Tati tibi tanta turanne tulisti” (Ennio); “veni vidi vici” (Caesar);
“florum flos florens, florea flora fluens” (Venantius Fortunatus).
alphabetical, poem
A poem whose lines or strophes
progressively begin with a different letter and all together they compose the
alphabet. The single words of a work may be involved by progression.
The most ancient models are found in the
Bible, for example in Jeremiah’s “Lamentations”. The most ancient Christian
document is “Psalmus contra partem Donati”, by Saint Augustine, wherein the alphabetical choice has been imposed by
mnemotechnic reasons for the sake of the simple people. Other examples can be
found in Folengo (“Zanitonella”’s sapphic ode). Today’s examples in Cacciatore
and other poets. It is also known as alphabetical poem.
Picture 1, 2, 3
amphibologies, sentences
(ambiguities)
Ambiguous sentences, such as it is possible
to understand them in two different ways, owing to a wrong collocation of the
words. Ex.: (from Petrarca) “Vincitore Alessandro, l’ira vinse”. Alexander won
anger, or anger won Alexander? Many Sybilline responses were contrived as
amphibologies.
anacoluthon
(involving a break in coherence)
A syntax figure of speech, used in the
spoken language, or by an author he aims at obtaining some particular effects.
It consists in a breach of the syntactical rules, since it consists in
beginning the period with a construction and then going on with another
construction, often by changing the subject. Ex.: “Non sapete che i soldati è il loro mestiere di prender fortezze”
(Manzoni).
anacyclic lines, or palidromes
(read backwards)
A word, a clause, a line which may be read
backwards: “recai piacer” (Boito). The most ancient example is by Sidonius
Apollinaris: “Roma tibi subito notibus ibit amor”. A palindrome is also,
extensively, a linguistic combination that may be read backwards, word after
word, so long as the same meaning is not lost or at the most when what has been
affirmed before is denied afterwards. It is also known as “sotadic” and the
“recurrent lines” are analogous, too. For
ex.: “Fortezza e senno Amor dona non tolge/Tolge non dona Amor senno e
fortezza”; or else: “Giova, non noce al ben, non al mal chiama/Chiama al mal,
non al ben, noce, non giova” (L. Groto, “Rime”, 1557).
Pictures 6, 104
anadiplosis
(doubling)
A contrivance by which the second of two
contiguous words repeats the final part of the precedent word, provided that
such part has an autonomous meaning. Ex.:
“assenso senso-so”; “che fai tu, Eco, mentr’io ti chiamo? -Amo” (Poliziano);
“chi darà fine al gran dolore? -L’ore”; “come ho da vincere chi è spergiura?
-giura” (Daniele Barbaro).
Picture 50
anadiplosis, lines
Also called “recisi” or “ribattuti”
(cut-off or repeated or crowned). This figure consists in the repetition of
part of a word in a context. Ex.: In mundos-mundos, tormentis mentis.
Pictures 51 and 136
anagram
(letter transposition)
It is a permutation, consisting in
transposing the phonemes of a word or of a major linguistic formation in order
to get another expression or many other expressions, provided with a different
meaning (roma-amor-ramo-armo-mora). The basic formation is called program. The
anagram involves a shift in the meanings, from one to the other significant.
Phoneme transposition involves a kineticism effect, which is intensified by the
fact that the eye, during the research of the different permutations, runs
onwards and backwards. In the third century B.C. Lykophron anagrammed the name
of the king Ptolemaios in “apo melitos”(honey). Anagram is one of the most
widespread contrivance, from the cabala to the humanistic Quattrocento, in
Ronsard’s France and until the end of the XVII century. The
anagram decomposes an established diagram and composes new linguistic
formations. In the baroque epoch the two basic motives of this figure were
theorized: metamorphosis and the mixing up, metamorphosis as word alchemy. In
the anagram we find two separate textual entities, one is fixed, the program,
the other mobile.
anaphora
(repetition)
A figure of speech consisting in repeating
several times the same word in the same period or initial member of a clause. Ex.: “Per me si va nella città dolente,/per me si va
nell’eterno dolore,/per me si va tra la perduta gente” (Dante).
anapoetical, writing
A handwriting without fixed rules, totally
free, suggested by Oberto Martino. Each written contribution by Oberto is a
deviation, always remaining at the state of project: “je ne suis pas encore” is
the title of one of his exemplary works.
anaptyxis
(insertion)
A metrical figure: it is the inserting of a
vowel between two consonants, to form one syllable more, commonly to simplify
pronunciation, in the dialect or colloquial use. It is a vocalic epenthesis.
Ex.: “averebbe” instead of avrebbe.
anarheme
(shifting)
It consists in the possibility to transfer
words into a certain linguistic formation, without change in the meaning and
also in the prosodic pattern, if lines are involved. It is equivalent to the
anagram as far as the permutational mechanism is concerned, but it permutes the
words, instead of the phonemes, and its opposite on the level of meanings, since
these do not change in spite of all the permutations. Ex. The anarheme of the
Flemish Jesuit Bernaro Bauhus (from “Epigrammatum libri”, 1615): “Tot tibi
sunt dotes, Virgo, quot sidera coelo” lends itself to 1022 variations, as many
as the fixed stars known in 1600; learned debates of mathematicians ensued.
Picture 9
anastrophe
(reversal)
Grammatical figure consisting in reversing
the natural order of two or more words within a clause. Ex.: (from Tasso) “O belle agli occhi miei tende
latine”. Or else: “eccezion
fatta”, “vita natural durante”.
antimetabole
A figure of speech consisting in repeating
the words of a statement changing their order. Ex.: “Ut sine invidia culpa
plectatur, et sine culpa invidia ponatur” (Cicero).
antiphrasis
(opposite to)
A figure of speech consisting in using a
word or a phrase in a sense opposite to the proper use, for euphemism or irony.
Ex.: “what a nice figure we cut!”
antithesis
(opposition, contrast)
A figure of speech consisting in placing
two concepts in contrast, to enhance the expression. Ex.: “Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra;/E temo e
spero ed ardo e sono un ghiaccio;/E volo sopra il cielo e giaccio a terra;/E
nulla stringo e tutto il mondo abbraccio” (“peace I don’t find and war I don’t
wage/ I fear and hopo/ I’m all fire and all ice/I fly above the sky and lie on
earth/I clasp on nothing and embrace the world”).
antonomasia
(substitute the epithet for the name)
A figure of speech, whose content consists
in designating a famous personality by a common noun, preceded by the article,
instead of designating him with his proper name. The person is designated with
an appellative referring to his main virtue: “the poor man of Assisi” (St. Francis); “il cantor di Laura” (Petrarca); “the
Pelides” (Achilles). On the contrary, instead of indicate a person or thing by
a common noun, a proper name may be used, symbolising a certain quality: “a
Cicero” (an orator); “a Maecenas” (a protector of artists); “a Venus” (a
beautiful woman).
apheresis
(subtraction)
A grammatical term indicating the fall or
the suppression of a syllable or a letter at the beginning of a word. It may be
a phenomenon of popular evolution of the language: for ex. Italian “storia” as
compared with Latin “historia” or it may be a poetical licence (but in English
“story” and “history” have acquired a different meaning : nota d.T.)
aphorism
(definition, maxim)
Dante’s “l’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci”
(“The flower-bed that makes us so fierce”; Karl Kraus’ “one of the most
widespread disease is diagnosis”.
apocope
(cutting off)
A metrical figure indicating the loss of
one or more than one final sounds in a word. It covers also elision. “Elision”,
suppression of the last vowel in a word, so that the remaining letters at the
end of the word combine to form a syllable with the initial letter of the
following word, in order to offer the ear a more harmonious sound: “l’eterno”,
“l’amico”, “l’amore”.
In English the word “apocope” also means
suppression of the final unstressed syllable or the final unstressed vowel of a
word before another word beginning with a vowel or with a consonant. Ex.:
“signor presidente”, “saper vedere”, “mal di mare”.
apophthegm
(saying)
A memorable saying, or short and witty
motto. Ex.: “tot capita, tot sententiae”,
“dal ditto al fatto c’è un gran tratto” (seeing is believing).
apostrophe
(turning away)
A figure of speech consisting in suddenly
abandoning the expositive form of discourse and to addressing directly and
emphatically a person or a personified thing, also if they are far-off but
imagined as being present. Ex.: “Ahi, serva Italia, di dolore ostello” (Dante).
applied, lines
see: rapportatio
artist’s book – book-object
Let’s report some notes on this matter by
Giovanni Fontana (from the magazine “Territori”, june 2006, n. 14, XII year,
Frosinone):
“Artist’s book: an object that materialises
the transversality of language and techniques, that marks the retrieval of the
pluri-sensorial aspects of aesthetic communication and that (…) affirms again a
handicraft dimension, which was disappearing and a manual skill that seems to
testify the will to look for calmer rhythms to oppose to the speed of the
digital universe (…). The artist’s book may be a verbo-visual occasion and as a
narrative in plastic terms, as a shadow theatre and as a matter show, as a
magic box and as a wonder-chamber, as a training ground of total adventures and
as a playground, as a meter of mental themes and as a journal of the senses, as
a expendable gadget and a fetish, as a find to keep and a gift to love, as a
trace, as a dumb testimony of the gesture, as a sign to be dispersed, as a
puzzle to be assembled, as a labyrinth to be gone through, as a perimeter to be
defined, as a ritual object and as a technological sounding-lead, as a contaminating
tissue but also as excrements and a trash catalogue, as an exemplary indication
and as a vulgar tool, as a voiced poem, as a score to be performed, as a
container of crystallized sounds or as a really sonorous instrument, as a place
to live in and a nest to hatch, but also as a machine of the transversal
surprise, as a digital card, as an intermedial device, as an electric and
electronic circuit or at the opposite as a sacred theca, as a secret ark, even
as a grave-stone and as a confessional and then as an object of transgression,
as an erotic object, as a carnival disguise or as a tragic mask, as a grotesque
testament and as a dissipated heritage, as a map to be decoded and as a travel
passport, as a lost occasion an as a recovered memory and so on and on with
the typologies, the sorts and the varieties. The artist’s book is an object
that must be gone through not only by looking and reading, but touching the
pages, appreciating their wrinkles, unfolding them loudly, feeling the good
smell of the paper, breathing its atmospheres, manipulating its body and
enjoying all its pregnancy, even savouring its taste (Carlo Belloli offered the
public some artist’s pages with the form and with the substance of eatable
poems; Lora-Totino and S. Cena proposed in Turin in 1971 their “pappapoems”).
To the artist’s book everything must be allowed, beyond any limit; it is enough
to think that this is the only book among all other books that can afford to be
unreadable, for ex. “Piero Manzoni the life and the works”, 1962: a book of
blank pages, and the unreadable books by Bruno Munari, where the text leaves
the space to the visual or touch communication, which happens through the
nature of the paper, its thickness, its transparency, the page format, the
colour, the texture, the softness and the hardness, the bright and the opaque,
the punchings and the folding (…). So the book communicates itself and not a
text that has been printed on it”.
Paradoxically, the most ancient artist’s
book was the “Panegyric to Emperor Constantine” by Optatianus Porphyrius,
formed by a series of “versus intexti” pages which are correlated to one
another by a tight correspondence. The original, a gift to the emperor, was
lost, but we have a synthetic description in the dedication: “Ut oculorum
sensus inter distincta colorum pigmenta delectent, ostro tota nitens scripta
argento auroque coruscis notis” (so as to attract the sight through the
different pigments of the colours, a book all shining with purple and written
in silver and gold with a sparkling relief) in a Klimt-like Byzantinism. Other
examples from the Caroline epoch are some books on parchment with mystical
texts and versus intexti, exquisite works by Rabanus Maurus (one is at the
national library in Turin, the letters are tempera painted).
Leaping over the centuries, we find the
“Livre vertical” made in pochoir serigraphy in 1913 by Blaise Cendrars and
Sonia Delaunay on Cendrars’ poem “La prose du Transsibérien”. Then by El
Lisitskij in 1922 “The two squares to all the children, a suprematist tale in
six constructions” and by the same author “For the voice” on Maiakovskij’s
poems. Also by El Lisitskij a Picture-card portfolio in a plastic
configuration, illustrating the show “Victory over the sun” on a text by
Kručënych (Hannover, 1923).
Going on to the futurists, “Il libro dei
bulloni” (The bolt book) (1927), a masterpiece of plastic-verbal imagination by
Fortunato Depero. Then the famous “litolatta” “Free olfactory, tactile thermal
words” by F. T. Marinetti (1932), a serigraphy on tin-plate sheets, and also
“L’anguria lirica” (The lyrical water-melon) by Tullio d’Albisola, graphically
edited by Bruno Munari. To be mentioned also an artist’s book project signed
in 1923 by Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg, with the title “Een
roemoerige soirée”, later carried out in in Holland in 1973.
Other artist’s books are the collage-novel
“Neurosentimental” (1972) by Stelio Maria Martini; by A. Lora Totino the three
plastic-verbal situations of 1969, the “poetry bodies” by Carlo Belloli (see)
and also by Lora Totino “A ferro e fuoco”, ten Verbotetture on steel,
aluminium, copper, brass and zinc tables (Studio Morra, Naples, 1988).
asyndeton
(unconnected)
A grammar figure which is present when
several elements (words or clauses) are coordinated without any conjunction,
but through commas. The omission of conjunction, particularly in enumerations,
is very common. Polysyndeton is the opposite of a. Ex.: “On the battlefield
dead bodies fragments motor vehicles fires”.
athletic poetry
In 1974 Arrigo Lora Totino began gymnastic
poetry at Nuove Proposte Gallery in Martina Franca. It is a kind of integration
between words and gestures, a mime-poetry “The futurist declaimer must declaim
with his legs as well as with his arms – had written Marinetti in his
‘Manifesto of dynamic and synoptic declaiming’ (1916) – in order to express the
dynamism of free words”.
In the catalogue of “International week of
performance” (Bologna, 1977) Francesca Alinovi wrote that the artist (Lora
Totino) had offered “an excellent show of mimed and declaimed poetry, moving
about with supremely graceful style and making all the shrings of his body
vibrate, which he transforms into a perfect musical instrument”. These
lightning-swift gymnastic poems are true verbal mimed gags, sometimes
performed in duo with the artist Sergio Cena. Lora Totino has staged about one
hundred fifty such performances from 1974.
Picture 67
audiopoème
Thus the title given by Henri Chopin to his
soundpoetry, which is formed by the dense overlapping of body sounds, most of
all by mouth sounds. The risult is a thick sound paste.
calligram
A word that was coined by Apollinaire,
designating his figured texts, where the contours of a drawing are represented
by a row or written text, not by hatching. According to Giovanni Pozzi the
calligram is derived from the transformation of versus intexti, formed by
acrostics running through the underlying text, reproducing a figure. By taking
away the supporting text, the versus intexti rest upon the void of the page. In
the baroque epoch the use exstended to bending in curves the lines formed by
the words. The first calligram might be the “Pyramid” by Eugene Vulgare (950 A.C.).
Pictures 12, 13, 14
cancrine or palindromic vers
The contrivance consists in reading
backward word after word. If lines are heterometrical the backward reading must
allow a prosodic rectification. In a distich by Sidonius Apollinaris (430-479 A.C.) the pentameter is changed into hexameter and
vice-versa; the same is the case in the XXVIII composition of the “Panegyric to
the Emperor Constantine” by Porphyrius.
Pictures 15, 16
chance poetry
Leonardo saw figurative matter in the
dynamic appearing of shapes in the clouds or in the informal staticism of the
mildew stains on walls: a Picture found ready-made. Franco Vaccari captures
with his camera the marks which anonymous artists draw on the plastered walls
of houses and in public lavatories: poetry to be found ready-made
Picture 173, 174
chiasm
(x form)
A figure of speech consisting in proposing
two words or more in a reverse order with respect to the order in which they
have been previously set; a crosswise collocation of two inter-connected
concepts: Ex.: “All for one, one for all”; “odi greggi belar, muggir armenti”.
chirographic poetry
Handwriting has acquired a specific
verbal-visual expressiveness for it lives in the gesture: while it writes the
hand manipulates the thought which takes shape in a different way from what one
thought it would, it is a manual thought. Variously declined, individual
handwritings become more readable or less readable on the page. For example in
Oberto Martino’s graphic anarchy or in Emilio Villa’s sibylline handwriting or
in Carfriedrich Claus’s hallucinated landscapes: grapholalies expressing the
conscious and the unconscious, writing as action and not as the description of
the already conceived and done. The handwriting of poets is not unlike the
forms of a certain type of sign painting which, starting with Paul Klee, as the
twentieth century goes on, progressively gathers such names as Hans Hartung,
Mark Tobey, Gastone Novelli, Cy Twombly, Mathieu, Wols, Tancredi, Bryen and so
on. Handwriting is also Claudio Parmeggiani’s, from his “handwriting tables” to
his “analphabetic papyrus” (1969) to “deiscrizione” (1971) exhibited in a Milan gallery: a man sitting on the ground in the position
of the well-known Egyptian statue of the scribe, with all his skin covered with
archaic scripts from the cuneiform to the hieroglyphic. Also Luciano Caruso
claims for the gesture of writing an autonomous semantic function. His is an
anti-writing “ for ever engaged around a non- speakable text …where the
‘verbum’ is by now irredeemably incarnated in things… and becomes tactile and
is transferred anywhere from the string to the bark of a tree, to the stone
etcetera” (S.M.Martini, from “Le porte di Sibari” Belforte catalogue, 1994).
Magdalo Mussio’s chirography is pure
private gesture, a continuous flow of re-invention of everyday life which
often merges into the indecipherable and turns into fragmentary journal memory
in an endless continuum.
Pictures 139 -142
chronogram
A contrivance we have when in a sentence
the letters fit to designate numbers (for example CDL etc. in Latin) compose,
once the values they represent are summed up, a desired amount. It is also
known as chronostic or eteostic. Ex.:
Ecce potest animi mores effingere palma
16 405 89 255
163 112
If the transposition involves that the
letters from ‘a’ to ‘i’ represent units from 1 to 9, the letters from ‘k’ to
‘s’ the tens and the remaining letters from ‘t’ to ‘z’ go from 100 to 500
(Pascasio di S. Giovanni, in “Poesis artificiosa”, 1674).
chronostic
see: chronogram
collage
The collage technics in poetry, borrowed
from cubist-futurist poetry, is associated with the birth and the development
of literary avant-gardes. At the same time it is supported by the technology of
the assembly of the juxtapositions, inaugurated by Blaise Cendrars (see virtual
simultaneity) by putting side by side phrases non congruous with each other;
also in Tzara’s “latent” poetry (see) and in the “composition field” style by
Pound and Eliot. Basically it is a modern form of metaphor.
comparison
(see: simile)
concordant, lines
A contrivance consisting in comparing words
that have a different initial part and the same final part or vice-versa.
Usually the two parallel expressions are written on three rows, and the middle
one gives the common element.
Picture 21
concrete, poetry
Concrete poetry, preceded by Carlo
Belloli’s (see) visual poetry and even before by Marinetti’s “precise poetry”,
originates with the publishing of “Konstellationen”, in 1953, by the Swiss
poet Eugen Gomringer. The crucial element is the use of the graphic space of
the page, no longer as a mere support, but as a structural element of the poem;
here the lesson of Mallarmé’s “Coup de dés” is evident, and also that of the
historical avant-gardes, mostly futurism and dada. In “Silencio” (Konstellationen)
the poem is originated by a single word and the empty space in the centre gets
the semantic value of absence.
In concretism form is equivalent to content
and the materials are sound, typographical form and the semantic grade of the
word; its placing, which is semantic, sound and visual at the same time.
Another facet of the concrete poem is extreme concision in the use of lexical
elements, so as to facilitate comprehension to whoever comes from other
linguistic areas. The Noigandres group of St. Paul, Brazil (Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, Décio
Pignatari) arrived at a near Gomringer’s stylistic position. In 1935 Pignatari
meets Gomringer in Germany and verifies the affinity between their
respective poetical practices. Both decided the foundation of the international
movement of concrete poetry. In a short time other centres were founded: from
1957 to 1959 the “Darmstadt
Circle”, which published the
“Material” magazine and the first international anthology of c.p.; starting
from 1961 the philosopher Max Bense, in Stuttgart, published the “rot” series of notebooks and Mayer “future” series,
in a large format. Concrete style is defined, by Bense, as a functional, not a
symbolical use, of lexical material; the meaning depends on the placing of the
word on the page surface. The Wiener Gruppe, in Austria, composes phono-visual
ideograms and carries out an avant-garde cabaret form, while Ernst Jandl gives
rise to the “Sprechgedichte” (poems to be recited), in which concrete poetry
approaches soundpoetry; in Czechoslovakia the duo Bohumila Grögerova and Josef
Hirsal compose, from 1962, the “jobboj” book (Job’s fight, issued in 1967), an
extraordinary laboratory of linguistic contrivances; also in Czechoslavakia
Ladislaw Novak and the poet and painter Jiří Kolár contrive new solutions,
by using mainly collage. In France Ilse and Pierre Garnier issue in 1963 the
magazine “Les Lettres”, which becomes an exhaustive review of international
concretism and propose the typewritten “Poésie Mécanique” (see). In Japan
Kitasono Katuè transforms the “Vou” magazine into a news-sheet of concretism
and Seiiki Niikuni composes polished concrete structures in ideogram form. Paul
De Vree, Flemish, opens to concretism the “De Tafel Ronde” magazine. In
Scotland Ian Hamilton Finlay issues the editions of the Wild Hawthorn Press and
the magazine “Poor.Old.Tired.Horse”. In the States Emmett Williams issues, in
1967, “An Anthology of Concrete Poetry” (Something Else Press, New York) and in 1968 Mary Ellen Solt “Concrete Poetry, a
world view” (Indiana University Press, Bloomington). In Italy Arrigo Lora Totino published in 1964 an international
anthology of concrete poetry in the “Modulo” magazine (Genoa)
and in 1969 another anthology, with D. Mahlow, for Venice Biennale, and gives
the title of “Verbotetture” (see) to his own concrete works.
Pictures 22 - 36
correlative or corresponding, lines
see: rapportatio
consequent, poetry
With this name, Kurt Schwitters theorized
in 1923 the phonetic poem, based on the alphabet letter declamation. It is
possible to apply this theory both to Schwitters’ poetry, like the well known
“Ur Sonate” (ancestral sonata) and to Raoul Hausmann’s sound poetry. It is the
reduction of poetry to the mere sound of the phonemes and it was an
anticipation of lectrism (see).
cross-reading
see: cubic, poem
crowned, lines
see: echoing, lines
cubic, poem
It is a work where a text is transcribed so
as to be read in whatever direction, starting from a central point. One of the
first examples is Moschion’s stele, I century A.D. The cubic poem produces an
effect of optical disturbance and maybe it was used in magic-esoteric contexts
for such reasons.
Pictures 39-44
cut-off lines
see echoic lines
