Shape Poems a Note
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical
arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as
the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm,
and rhyme and so on.
It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry; a term that has evolved to
have distinct meaning of its own, because the words themselves form a
picture. This can be called imagery because you use your senses to
figure out what the words mean.
The term was coined in the 1950s. In 1956 an international exhibition of
concrete poetry was shown in São Paulo, Brazil, by the group Noigandres
(Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Ronaldo Azeredo)
with the poets Ferreira Gullar and Wlademir Dias Pino. Two years later,
a Brazilian concrete poetry manifesto was published. One of the earliest
Brazilian pioneers, Augusto de Campos, has assembled a Web site of old
and new work (see external links below), including the manifesto. Its
principal tenet is that using words as part of a specifically visual
work allows for the words themselves to become part of the poetry,
rather than just unseen vehicles for ideas. The original manifesto says: "How well her name and Army doth present,
In whom the Lord of hosts did pitch his tent!”
"Anagram" from the 1633 edition of George Herbert's The Temple. Although
the term is modern, the idea of using letter arrangements to enhance the
meaning of a poem is an old one. This style of poetry originated in
Greek Alexandria during the third and second centuries B.C. Some were
designed as decoration for religious art-works, including wing-, axe-
and altar-shaped poems. Only a handful of examples survive, which are
collected together in the Greek Anthology. They include poems by Simias
and Theocritus. Early examples of typographically-based poetry include
the following poem by George Herbert (1593-1633) (here in a scan of the
1633 edition of Herbert's The Temple), in which the poem is merely a
comment on the title, which presents the poem's principal meaning
typographically:
 Another early precursor from Herbert is "Easter Wings", in which the
overall typography of the poem is in the shape of its subject. Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll contains a similar effect in
the form of the mouse's "Tale," which is in the shape of a tail. In the
early 20th century, artists and poets comprising the Futurism movement
used concrete poetry as a dynamic expression of their anarchistic
philosophies. F. T. Marinetti was the most prolific poet among them, and
created several works that destroyed all typographic conventions. More
recent poets sometimes cited as influences by concrete poets include
Guillaume Apollinaire, E. E. Cummings, for his various typographical
innovations, and Ezra Pound, for his use of Chinese ideograms, as well
as various Dadaists. Concrete poetry, however, is a more self-conscious
form than these predecessors, using typography in part to comment on the
fundamental instability of language. Among the better known concrete
poets in the English language are Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dom Sylvester
Houédard and Edwin Morgan. A well-known concrete poet in the Hungarian
language is András Petöcz. Several important concrete poets have also
been significant sound poets, among them Henri Chopin, and Bob Cobbing.
The French poet Pierre Garnier, collaborating with the Japanese poet
Seiichi Niikuni, also used the term spatiality in relation to concrete
poetry, implying that the white space between words also holds meaning.
Mechanic, phonetic, semantic and visual poetry also approach the idea of
concrete poetry. Poets emphasized that language is not only a means of
communication, but that language also has a material dimension.
Hence these attractive and amazing shape poems are much popular
nowadays.
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