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Concrete Poetry

Open and Experimental Verse

A poetic form in which the typographical arrangement of words and letters on the page carries as much of the poem's meaning as its verbal sense, so the shape, spacing and layout of the text is part of what the poem says rather than a decoration around it. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Place of Origin
Formalized in the early 1950s among poets linked to the Noigandres magazine in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with an earlier isolated precedent in Vasily Kamensky's 1914 Russian Futurist ferro-concrete poems. 1
Structure
A visual, typographic arrangement in which the placement of words on the page depicts the subject of the poem, developed from an older tradition of shaped verse; there is no fixed meter or line-length requirement as in ordinary verse forms. 1
Notable Example
Vasily Kamensky's Constantinople, a ferro-concrete poem from his 1914 book Tango with Cows, coining the term years ahead of the movement's formal, internationally recognised founding. 1
Connections

Form Of Genre

Lyric Poetry, Genres

A visual/typographic form within the broader lyric tradition.

Source Concrete Poetry (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Concrete Poetry (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Opening paragraph
    Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance.
  • Post-war concrete poetry section
    During the early 1950s two Brazilian artistic groups producing severely abstract and impersonal work were joined by poets linked to the Sao Paulo magazine Noigandres who began to treat language in an equally abstract way.
  • Development section
    Constantinople, a ferro-concrete poem from Tango with Cows by the Russian Futurist Vasily Kamensky, 1914.
  • Lead section, first sentence
    Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance.
  • Form Of Genre: Lyric Poetry
    Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance.
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