Surprised that Concrete Poetry remains so obscure a subject, and weary of persisting to summarize a conceptual direction with the handy catchphrase "poems made to be seen more than read", I've assembled this collection of selections from the stacks of blessed interwebs; an incomplete survey of works and substantial contributions to an ever-evolving poetic modality, broadly sheltered by an umbrella of CONCRETE, so described elsewhere, providing terminology and useful metaphor-machines for an ongoing study in dada calligraphics and visual poetics. For theoreticians drawn to or compelled by such whimsical sophistries, the joke doesn't grow old.
Assembled here are scattered selections, exploring a medium with familiar but not simple constraint and readily available material of inked language; the penstroke and page-form. An ungoing hunt, chasing the generative anomaly, engaging engines of repeition variation and selection, emergent loops, easily spread in the midcentury by arrival of cheap photo-copier technologies. Surrealist 'zines and mail art kept vital the emergent poetic arts of the mechanized gesture; counter-culture without obsolescence. What follows are 'pataphysical studies in experimental phonetics and typographics, a conceptualist typoglyphy for calligrammarians. All the formal components of a language, denatured of any primary necessity for operational structure, unburdened of any prerequisite for historically meaningful encryptions of persuasive rhetoric. In an effort to map and comprehend the snakey field-energies of a Concrete 'pataglyphics, I submit this ongoing survey...
El Lissitsky. About Two Squares. 1922.
bpNichol. Allegory #29. c.1970. [color enhanced.]
Christian Bök. H for bp Nichol. c.2005.
jwcurry. c.1960s?
Henri Chopin. Dactylopoèmes. c.1950.
Derek Beaulieu. untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy). 2008.
Steve McCaffery. Carnival. 1967-70.
Barrie Tullett. Typebook. 2005
Kelly Mark. Jazz. 2001.
Justin Quinn.
John Cage. Mesostics. 1967-72.
Donato Mancini. Subjecthood and the Light Verb. Aethel. 2007.
Donato Mancini. Can Poetry Be Matter? Aethel. 2007.
Julien Blaine.'Poëme métaphysique n° 12897' (Ed. Spectres Familiers) 1988
jwcurry. c.1980?
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bp Nichol. Aleph Unit Opened. c.1970.
bpNichol. Allegory #30. c.1970
published by the Cement and Concrete Association in 1979
If abstraction had been a quantum physics of painting, then Concrete was a materials science for poetics. The component building-blocks of language, in concentrated form. The language virus in its concentrated state. Just add water and attention. A catalytic spore preparation, primed for permanent and radical neuroplastic state-change; anticipatory material of new constructions; potentiating compounds, component admixtures from which larger units of comprehension are poured, molded, and stacked, building foundations for all the levels of reality. Fortress cities surrouding the soundstage cinemas within of ourselves. Material roots of all civilizations, the books of the architects, intergenerational transpersonal vector, the historic document, concrete bedrock, archive and mausoleum of culture, libraries preserved and optimized thru millennia of conflict and persectution. Concrete built a fallout-shelter, a physical and psychic defense against propagandistic psy-ops of the cold and secret [culture] wars: it's rock-solid methodologies are still fully operational. Cypher of plain sight, a satirically nuanced brutalist-minimalist nomenclature, still useful sixty years on. Concrete was built to last, and today it still stands, holding us all up. On the shoulders of giants...
Under the softer, warmer, wetter conditions of the new century, we may find the emergent molecular ecology of relational interperformativity (to extend a mixed metaphor) will have yet to have claimed a catchier, more bioplastic euphemism. Still, among other problematic structures introduced by modernism's inquiries, the momemtum of these trajectories maintaines its energy. Concrete's proofs have yet to be resolved. These potential literatures remain stored. We march forward too quickly to have digested the lessons of the [great]grandparents [or so maintain some amateur futurians]. As our print-oriented anglo-germanic lexicography turns motion-graphic, and is more rapidly interfused with Sinese-Arabic-Indo-Persian sensibilities, each bearing cultural traditions deeply tuned to subtler respect for the calligraphic practice and the poetic sensibility, and also for the syncretic freedoms of [post]modernism, so the popular relevance of abstract and non-representational ideographic forms will again and everywhere resurface and give yield to startling bounties, as it does.
Exploring and expanding the known subtextual landscapes, a thrumming fibrous tension structure negotiates between various modalities of visual-literacy: writing/reading, listening/voice, and consciousness. The set-space of Concrete still lies insufficiently mapped. Terrain remains. At very least, this curator's own fascination for the possibilities of concretist visual poetics remains fever piqued. Fresh discoveries are made daily. Hence, the present intervention. A gesture of respectful desire to share this love, participate, and expand the Index.
This plagiarist-assemblage visual history is provided with no special claims to authority or perspectival completeness... a long-term research work under perpetual reconstruction... all writers interested are invited to play ... please enjoy responsively:
