"Reading has become an active, participant-directed process rather than
passive, author-directed ... the rational-visual act of reading has become an
experience of sight, sounds, and colours."
CONCRETE TO COMPUTER:
The future of visual poetry.
by Paul Kloppenborg
Visual forms- lines, colours, proportions etc -are just as capable of
articulation i.e. of complex combination, as words. But the laws that
govern this sort of articulation are altogether different from the
laws of syntax that govern language. The most radical difference is
that visual forms are not discursive. They do not present their
constituents successively, but simultaneously, so that relations
determining a visual structure are grasped in one act of vision."
-Suzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (1942)
CONCRETE POETRY (Then)
The concrete poetry movement had been started in Europe and Brazil in
the 1950s and 1960s. In the mid-fifties, Eugene Gomringer in
Switzerland and a group of poets working together in Brazil, defined
concrete poetry as writing that "begins by being aware of graphic
space as a structural agent", so that words or letters can be
juxtaposed, not only in relation to each other but also to the page
area as a whole. The Brazilians - Deico Pignatari, Augusto and Haroldo
de Campos-defined "concrete" with an emphasis on the word as a unit
Traditional verse forms internalise a poem through its language so
that meaning becomes clear when read and assimilated. Consider this
poem by Gomringer, the father of concrete poetry, which can be read or
felt along any of its axes.
"Wind" by Eugene Gomringer.
This type of writing highlights the movement of words and the
balance between form and content.
The visual and semantic elements constituting the form as well as the
content of a poem define its structure so that the poem can be a
"reality in itself and not a poem about something or other."
"Ping Pong" by Gomringer shows the tension between similar words that
can create feeling to the reader. There is an acute balance of meaning
possible because of the word arrangements available to the poet.
Their principles are that concrete language structures do not follow
tradional verse forms and are largely visual. As such, the content is
strongly related to the question of attitudes towards life in which
art is effectively incorporated and hence concrete or visual language
is parly reflected and partly unreflected information which often uses
Importantly, visual language is reduced language;
this is achieved primarily through an acute awareness of graphic space
as a structural agent within the composition of the piece. Finally,
visual poetry aims at the least common multiple of language. It is
simple mind presentation and uses a word arrangement and linguistic
means (such as sounds, syllables, words) which are independent of and
not representative of objects extrinsic to language.
Consider these three famous examples of concrete poetry:
Edgard Braga (1963)
poema = poem
po = dust
mo = millstone
Freidrich Aclleitner (195?)
Here the plot thickens when the poem is seen with each "rot" in a
Claus Bremer (1966)
The letters of a simple text, "for you and for me", are arranged in
the last five lines to their alphabetical priority.
The concrete poetry movement of the 1950s and 1960s had its roots both
in Surrealism and Dada and prior to that in the writings of the French
symbolists, especially Apollinaire. All these movements are related in
some way to the upheaval of thought and events that characterise the
dramatic differences between the 20th century and the preceding one:
advances in the technology of transportation, communication, and
warfare; new concepts in philosophy and psychology, and the resultant
confusion and change in the behaviour and even the structure of
In a sense, they were artistic movements taking advantage of the
tremendous changes in the nature of everyday life at the beginning of
the twentieth century. While the Impressionists acknowledged the
importance of grasping the fleeting moments of experience, the
tendency in the painting of that movement and of the
Post-Impressionists was to freeze those moments rather than to glorify
the inherent motion. Similarly, the poetry of the Symbolists,
Surrealists and the Cubist movements represented in many cases a
withdrawal from the activities of an industrialised society and the
seeking of a new form of poetry that would communicate emotion in this
"brave new world."
Consider this example of Apollinaire where he has used his own
handwriting to make the letters of his figure.
COMPUTER POETRY (Now)
The publishing industry has remained virtually unchanged since 1455
when Guttenberg first printed the Bible. Not only the publishing
industry, but also the act of reading, unchanged for several
centuries, is now being altered. In the case of computer CD-ROMs,
reading has become an active, participant-directed process rather than
passive, author-directed: turning pages in a book has been transformed
into hypertext links. The rational-visual act of reading has become an
experience of sight, sounds, and colours. As would seem obvious,
writing techniques are also being profoundly altered. The poet of the
future will have to be a more complete and unspecialized artist who
will need to blend his writing skills with oral and artistic abilities
and even more so with technological-computer knowledge. This, together
with computer software that allows active participatory reading and
even the introduction of modifications made by the reader in the work
of art, will perhaps help to rehumanize literature and achieve the
Surrealist, Cubists and Dada poets and writers's unfulfilled dream of
merging art and life.
Consider these examples of animation through the use of Java software
where the words employed in the poem are set in motion.
Or, a poem written with binocular reading in mind where the poem
presents different letters and words to each eye simultaneously.
Binocular reading takes place when we read one word or letter with the
left eye and at the same time a completely different word or letter
with the right eye.
Colour is important in computer poetry. Have a look.
Here colour is not fixed. The poem changes colour and shading.
Discontinuous space computer poetry is where the static presentation
of the three-dimensional space of a poem is broken down into different
spaces that may or may not overlap in space or time. i.e a poem can be
Another trend of computer poetry is discontinuous syntax where the
words/syntax alter throughout the reading.
Other future directions are the Hyperpoem which is a digital
interactive poem based on hypertext that branches out as the reader
makes choices along the way. Hyperpoems promote a disengagement of the
textual distribution characteristic of print.
In common with the great concrete poets of the 1950s and 1960s,
computer poetry is composed more for the eye than the ear. The form
of the poem on the page or compuer screen affects how we read it and
so affects our experience of its meaning. In computer poetry,
however, the image or text becomes an object of comprehension "within
itself". In common with the past this is achieved by syntactic
techniques within the text and the use of white space;
juxtapositioning of images and ideas as well as the use of other
printed mediums within the visual poem.
Computer poetry will and does employ these techniques. Moreover the
Internet and associated software has opened poetry, and in particular,
visual poetry, to a feast of new possibilities including animation,
clip-art, hypertext links, rhythms of perception and new
possibilities of spatial form.
A final question: Will the future poet need to be as much of a
computer software expert as they are artist or craftsman? The future
will tell us.
Richard Kostelanetz, Wordworks, N.Y. BOA, 1993.
Seaman, David, Concrete poetry in France, Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1981.
Sharkey, John (Ed), Mindplay: An anthology of British Concrete Poetry,
London, Lorimer, 1971.
Williams, Emmett(Ed), An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, N.Y., Something
Solt, Mary Ellen (Ed), Concrete Poetry: A World View, London, Indiana,
Levenston, E.A. The stuff of literature: physical apects of texts and
their relation to literary meaning. New York, N.Y. U. Press, 1992.
Gumpel, Liselotte, Concrete poetry from East and West Germany; Yale,
New Haven, 1976.
Jackson, K.D (Ed)., Experimental-Visual-Concrete:
Avante-Garde poetry since the 1960s, Atlanta, GA, 1996.
Paul Kloppenborg is married to Deb and has 2 children,
"and it's this family who has to put up with my passion for writing and
Paul wasn't always as passionate about poetry. When he left University
in the early 1980s, he wanted to establish a career. So with his History degree under one arm and a Diploma in Librarianship under the other, he started work in a variety of
libraries, both public and technical, helping people find and use
information. It was this constant drenching in
words, paper, books and information that kick started him
along the road to writing.
Paul is involved in a number of writing/poetry workshops and has seen his work published in
numerous paper and electronic publications, including "A Year on the Avenue", a joint poetry book published last autumn by Two Dog Press. He is the Fiction Editor at "Recursive Angel."