VISUAL POETRY CAN BE DEFINED BASICALLY AS POETRY THAT IS MEANT to be seen. Although it assumes a great many forms, it inevitably possesses a pictorial as well as a verbal aspect. Combining poetry and painting, the genre presupposes a viewer as well as a reader. How a composition looks, therefore, is as important as what it says. Words no longer serve as simple notational devices but as building blocks in a visual edifice. Known to the Greeks as technopaigneia and to the Romans as carmina figurata, visual poetry possesses a lengthy and fascinating history. From the very beginning, it appealed to religious and philosophical poets in particular. During the Renaissance the genre experienced a widespread revival, but it was largely neglected thereafter until the beginning of the twentieth century, when it experienced a dramatic rebirth. Intrigued by its seemingly endless possibilities, poets and painters have experimented with visual poetry ever since. Without pretending to provide an exhaustive survey, the present study examines some of the more significant developments that occurred during the twentieth century.
Like visual poetry, which continues to reinvent itself year after year, criticism of visual poetry has undergone an astonishing transformation during the last three decades. As recently as 1978, for example, an astute critic like François Rigolot could dismiss visual poetry as a frivolous pastime. In an article published in a prominent French journal, he asserted that writers who experiment with formal devices tend either to live during unimaginative periods or to lack imagination themselves.1 Since I have responded to this accusation elsewhere, which dates from the eighteenth century, there is no need to address it here.2 Suffice it to say that such a statement would be unthinkable today, at least by a reputable critic. Since 1978, visual poetry has come into its own as a legitimate genre with a long history and respectable theoretical credentials. At least a dozen books have appeared in the last thirty years devoted to the study of this intriguing art form. In addition, visual poetry is currently undergoing an enthusiastic revival. An Internet search turns up more than seventy-seven thousand references to contemporary visual poets all over the world. And for those who lack poetic ability, a website called the Poem Generator is available to create works for them.3 University credit is available not only for courses about visual poetry but also for courses, like Nick Carbó’s at the University of Miami and Mairead Byrne’s at the Rhode Island School of Design, on how to create visual poetry. The genre has even acquired its own museum: the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, which houses more than seventy thousand items.4 Visual poetry is proliferating at such a rapid rate, in fact, that it is impossible to keep track of all the recent developments.
The explanation for such widespread enthusiasm is not hard to find. We live in a visual society, where instantaneous messages are the norm. Although the written word has not yet become obsolete, it has continually lost ground to visual techniques associated with advertising. “In the billboard culture [of today],” Marjorie Perloff explains, “the ‘successful’ text is one that combines high-speed communication with maximum information.”5 In other words, the successful text is one that imitates art to the best of its ability. Since verbal communication is sequential, however, it is impossible to bridge the gap separating the two modes of expression. The best that literature can do is to reduce that gap by enlisting art on its behalf. The most successful strategy is to create a symbiotic relationship between word and image. By acquiring some artistic traits, visual poetry satisfies our hunger both for visual and for verbal knowledge. As the biblical metaphor in my subtitle suggests, the word in effect becomes flesh. The linguistic skeleton acquires a palpable presence that exerts an immediate effect on the viewer. In contrast to the written (or spoken) message, this effect is direct, instantaneous, and unmediated.
Not surprisingly, since visual poetry represents a hybrid genre, it embraces a great many styles. Certain compositions, like Goy de Silva’s “Silencio” (see chapter 2), are almost completely verbal. Except for a cruciform pattern that suddenly appears, the poem is unremarkable. Other compositions, such as Alberto Hidalgo’s “Jaqueca” (see chapter 3), are almost exclusively visual. Although the poem is composed wholly of letters, their value is purely decorative. A few works, none of which are examined here, contain no verbal elements whatsoever. This describes the Brazilian Concretist Décio Pignatari’s experiments with “semiotic poems,” for example, which rely entirely on visual sign systems. Abandoning the linguistic realm, the concept of visual poetry becomes problematic at this point and serves primarily as a metaphor. While some works resemble conventional poems and others resemble paintings or drawings, most fall somewhere between these two extremes.
Although there are some notable exceptions (see chapter 6), reading a visual poem usually involves three distinct operations. The first thing one perceives is the composition’s design, which may either be simple or complex, difficult to make out or easily recognizable. While the image imprints itself on the retina instantaneously, it takes a certain amount of time to interpret the image. Perception is not a passive experience, Rudolf Arnheim explains, but a highly active process.6 In order to recognize a particular shape, the observer must grasp its most important structural features and compare them to a catalogue of perceptual constants. At this stage, therefore, the reader simply functions as a viewer. Before trying to decipher the written text, he or she needs to absorb as much visual information as possible. As Arnheim remarks, “Perceiving accomplishes at the sensory level what in the realm of reasoning is known as understanding.” While most visual knowledge is acquired consciously, unconscious cues are often useful as well. For this reason, one needs to be aware of the image’s gestalt, which may play an unsuspected role in the poem. Although it appears initially to be insignificant, the long, thin shape of Ignazio Scurto’s poem turns out to be important (see chapter 5). The same observation applies to the aerial views in both of Tullio Crali’s poems, where the placement of certain words is dictated by top-ographical features on the ground. “A picture,” W. J. T. Mitchell observes, “is a very peculiar and paradoxical creature, both concrete and abstract, both a specific individual thing and a symbolic form that embraces a totality.”7 This amazing complexity is precisely what makes visual imagery so interesting to analyze. Indeed, there sometimes seem to be as many approaches as there are critics. Mitchell suggests that visual images function either as idols, fetishes, or totems.8 Arnheim prefers to divide them into pictures, symbols, and signs.9 Visual poetry contains many images that can be analyzed according to these criteria and others that, since they are nonrepresentational, respond better to other approaches.
Once the viewer has contemplated the visual design, the next step is to decipher the text, which shares some of the characteristics Mitchell attributes to pictures. Like visual images, poetic texts are peculiar and paradoxical creatures. The individuals, objects, and actions they name inhabit the poem and yet lie outside it at the same time. They exist both as words and as imaginary creations. Despite our impression of reality, the scene evoked in the poem is situated elsewhere, in an imaginary space engendered by the written text. Like a reflection in the mirror, we can see it and even modify it to some degree, but we cannot actually touch it. In this respect, to be sure, the text of a visual poem is no different than any other poetic text. Where it differs is in its disposition on the page and in the amount of effort required to decipher it. Turning the page this way and that, readers must perform a series of gyrations in order to arrive at their destination. Even poems that have a linear structure are likely to change course at any moment. At the purely verbal level, the mind proceeds cumulatively, holding the words in suspension while ordering and reordering them in a continual search for meaning. Not until the conclusion do the various elements in the poem—visual as well as verbal—coalesce to provide a consistent interpretation.
Before the reader can begin to process the text, however, he or she needs to devise a consistent reading strategy. The text may proceed from left to right and from top to bottom, for example, or it may advance in some other direction. Since there is no hard and fast rule, the reader must necessarily resort to trial and error. Sometimes, when the text is divided into parallel columns, the normal reading model is reversed. One reads from top to bottom initially and only then from left to right. However, visual poetry is not always organized according to literary conventions. As we will discover, many poems follow an artistic model instead. The reader responds to a series of visual cues, which tell him or her how to proceed. The starting point may be marked by a letter that is larger than the others or printed in boldface type (or both). Circular forms typically require one to read in a clockwise direction. Explosive forms radiate out from the center toward the circumference. The list goes on and on. Although one path usually proves to be more rewarding than the others, there are numerous exceptions to this rule. Some Concrete poems, for example, may be approached from multiple angles. Readers can begin anywhere they want and proceed in any direction (see chapter 6). Sometimes a competition exists between literary and artistic strategies, which seem equally attractive. At other times there is a conflict between the two models, each of which violates principles that govern the other. In either case, one must carefully choose between them in order to proceed. More commonly, as we will discover, visual and verbal cues work together to guide the reader through the intersemiotic maze.
The third step requires readers to synthesize the information that has been acquired from the two previous operations. What makes visual poetry so unique, after all, is the way in which the text and the design interact with each other. Reevaluating each one in the light of the other frequently reveals new connections between them. At the very least, it allows the reader to formulate a comprehensive interpretation. However, new insights often occur at this point that have an important bearing on the poem. In many cases, they prompt readers to modify an earlier interpretation. That Vicente Huidobro’s “Paysage” evokes a painted canvas, for example, only emerges toward the end of the poem (see chapter 2). That the final section of “Espantapájaros” chronicles Oliverio Girondo’s search for certainty becomes clear only upon reflection (see chapter 3). From time to time, an insight is so powerful that it persuades the reader to completely change his or her mind. Someone who believes André Breton is attacking visual poetry in “Pièce fausse,” for instance, may suddenly realize (as I did) that he is aiming at another target entirely (see chapter 4).
Although the chapters are arranged chronologically, the following study is not meant to be a literary history. While I have tried to recreate the historical and cultural context surrounding each of the visual poems, the book was conceived primarily as a series of readings. Or more precisely, it was conceived as a series of readings about reading. On the one hand, it seeks to interpret the poems in question, which, despite their apparent simplicity, can be difficult to decipher. On the other hand, it examines the process of interpretation itself, which, like the compositions, can be surprisingly complex. In addition to explicating individual works, therefore, the volume investigates the dynamics involved in reading visual poetry. In the process, it discusses some of the approaches I have found to be the most fruitful over the years. The first chapter considers visual poetry in Spain following the First World War. Introduced by the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, who was familiar with the latest French experiments, it appealed to members of the Ultraist movement in particular. The second chapter follows visual poetry to Mexico, where it interested the Estridentistas and members of the Contemporáneos group, and to Argentina, where it attracted the attention of Alberto Hidalgo and Oliverio Girondo. The third chapter examines a number of experiments by Apollinaire’s literary heirs in France. Although Tristan Tzara makes a brief appearance, the chapter focuses primarily on André Breton and Pierre Albert-Birot. The next two chapters explore the Futurists’ experiments with aeropoetry, which preoccupied them during the 1930s and early 1940s, and retrace the evolution of Concrete poetry in Brazil. In contrast to the Italian poetry, which is virtually unknown, the Brazilian compositions have received worldwide recognition. The final chapter attempts to provide insights into contemporary experiments with digital poetry. Devoted to the Brazilian-American poet Eduardo Kac, it illustrates some of the fascinating options available to poets seeking to exploit recent technological developments.