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Chapter Nine
-------------------------------------VISUAL (TYPOGRAPHIC) STRUCTURES
A natural interest by poets in the visual shape of the poem antedates the Gutenburg
Galaxy by over a millennium, judging from the extant examples in the Greek Anthology,
and we can safely assume I think that such an interest actually stretched much further back
into early written culture. But modern criticism has so tended to isolate and emphasize the
logical structure of the poem, as well as its "spatial form," that the exploration of the
expressive uses of typography by modern poets has seemed to critics almost a regression, an
extremity reducible to absurdity. The critical reception of visual devices in free verse-word-placement, configuration, functional use of white space--and of visual shaping of the
whole poem in "concrete poetry" has been less than enthusiastic, apparently on the grounds
that such effects are coarse, trivial, even puerile. But human awareness of the design
possibilities in the written component of the language is far more extensive (and far more
extensively legitimized) than is evident in poetry, and in view of the present absence of any
coherent account of the visual-aural processing of verbal information by humans or of the
dynamic-static, temporal-spatial, reader comprehension of a text, it seems very unwise to
denigrate any approach which gives us information about the nature of the Word, even if
the potential of that approach is clearly finite. Words in the shape of things, things in the
shape of words, poems in the shape of things, signs becoming symbols, linearity becoming
matrix, seriality becoming synchrony--all these phenomena are, as W. K. Wimsatt has
shown in a brilliant essay (B233), aspects of mimetic form, or, more appositely, interfaces of
the word.
H1
Babcock, Sister Mary D. "Cummings' Typography: An Ideogrammic Style."
Renascence 15 (1963): 115–23.
Draws an extended analogy to the Chinese written character as a profitable
approach to Cummings' poetic structure.
H2
Babula, William. "The Shaped Sound of Faith: George Herbert's 'Easter Wings.'"
Oral English 2 (1976): 13–14.
Six paragraphs explain how the (heard) metrical pattern and the "visual
emblem" of this poem interact thematically to "twice indicate fall and rise."
H3
Beloof, Robert L. "E. E. Cummings: The Prosodic Shape of His Poems." DA 14
(1954): 2342A (Northwestern).
With his customary cogency Beloof identifies seven prosodic modes in
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Cummings' work: stress verse, free verse, pictograms, syllabic verse, oral verse
in visual form, dramatic free verse, and foot verse. The typographical poetry is
found to be both oral and visual. Three periods in Cummings' prosodic
development are postulated. The useful Appendix III classifies the poetry by
prosodic type.
H4
Brown, C. C., and W. P. Ingoldsby. "George Herbert's 'Easter Wings.'" Huntington
Library Quarterly 35 (1972): 130–42.
Since "the general shape of his stanzas is Greek, the precise dimensions
Hebrew," Herbert set for himself in the construction of the poem the problem
of synthesizing his Hellenic and Hebraic sources and their traditions.
H5
Burton, D. "The Exploitation of the Word in Concrete Poetry." Thesis, University
of Birmingham, 1974.
H6
Butler, Michael. "Concrete Poetry and the Crisis of Language." New German Studies
1 (1973): 99–115.
H7
H8
Church, Margaret. "The First English Pattern Poems." PMLA 61 (1946): 636–50.
Based on her dissertation, "The Pattern Poem," at Radcliffe in 1945.
The rediscovery of the Greek Anthology at the end of the Middle Ages resulted
in, among other things, a considerable number of imitations of pattern poems-in England, in the sixteenth century, by Stephen Hawes, Richard Wills, and
Puttenham, and on the continent, by Scalinger, Jean Crispin, and Joannes
Pierius Valerianus. N.B.: Puttenham's mistaken attribution of the egg form to
Anacreon proves he had not seen an authentic text.
H9
Conrad, Philip. "Visual Poetry." Poetry 32 (1928): 112–14.
Lucid argumentation that the chief merit of poetry as seen lies in the nearinstantaneous impression we gain, as opposed to the strictly sequential ordering
of meaning in sounds. See H31.
H10 Crowley, John W. "Visual-Aural Poetry: The Typography of E. E. Cummings."
Concerning Poetry 5, 2 (1972): 51–54.
Argues that even in Cummings' most heavily typographical poems the oralaural dimension is not dispensed with.
H11 Doyle, Mike. "Notes on Concrete Poetry." Canadian Literature, no. 46 (1970), pp.
91–95.
A freeform discussion of trends as an ostensible review of Oberon Press's
collection of concretism, The Cosmic Chef.
H12 Draper, R. P. "Concrete Poetry." New Literary History 2 (1971): 329–40.
Having its roots in Elizabethan rhetorical patterning and Herbert's "Easter
Wings," concrete poetry is still a young and playfully inventive art; it will have
to become "visual not merely graphic," absorbing the dimension of space into
a set of rational and functional principles of meaning, as traditional poetry has
done. Three such principles are vertical-horizontal, axial, and circular. Many
examples.
H13 Dust, Philip C. "George Herbert's Two Alter Poems." Humanistica Lovaniensia 24
(1975): 278–87.
H14 Finch, Peter. "Concrete Poetry: A Brief Outline." The Anglo-Welsh Review 43
(1970): 207–12.
Historical outline, that is, of the international movement in this century
(mainly Switzerland and Brazil), with examples.
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H15 Gray, Paul H. "American Concrete: New Poetics, New Performance." Studies in
Interpretation Vol. 2. Ed. Esther M. Doyle and V. H. Floyd. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1977. pp. 77–98.
History, trends, and possibilities for oral performance.
H16 Hastings, Robert. "'Easter Wings' as a Model of Herbert's Method." Thoth 4 (1963):
15–23.
H17 Hedges, James S. "Correlation of Line and Syntax in Shaped Poems." Papers from the
1977 Mid-America Linguistics Conference. Ed. Donald M. Lance et al. Columbia:
University of Missouri Linguistics Program, 1978. pp. 445–51.
Random sampling of such a correlation in a large number of poets produces an
average: 95% in non-shaped poetry vs. 68% in shaped poetry. Conclusion:
"when the poet becomes preoccupied with the visual image of the poem upon
the page, the correlation between line and syntax is substantially lower than
when the visual shape of the poem on the page is dictated by nonvisual
criteria, i.e. by the number of syllables in the line, by phrasal units, by notions
of rhythm analogous to "isochronous units," etc.
H18 Helms, Alan E. "I: Visual Prosody and the Sound of Punctuation." (Three-part
dissertation.) DAI 32 (1971): 3305A (Rutgers).
If prosody comprises the "total rhythmic form" of a poem then everything
which affects that form is by definition prosodic, including white space,
lineation, paragraphing, spatial deployment of lines, and--especially-punctuation, since the pointing controls both the temporal positioning and
pacing of elements and also the sense. "To alter the poem's punctuation is to
alter the poem's prosody, and, hence, its meaning," as can be shown by
constructing twin dummy models of poems which differ only in punctuation.
H19 Higgins, Dick. George Herbert's Pattern Poems: In Their Tradition. West Glover,
Vermont: Unpublished Editions, 1977. 79 pp.
A twenty-page introductory essay followed by examples of Greek, Latin, and
other pattern poems. Islamic deserved much more attention. Bibliography.
The traditions for visual poetry are much older and wider than we think they
are.
H20 Hollander, John. "The Poem in the Eye." Shenandoah 23 (1972): 3–32; rpt in
revised form as chapter 12 of his Vision and Resonance (A13), pp. 245–87.
There is melos, and then there is opsis. There is, as correlate to the reading of
poems, the "reading" of the shape of poems (in the sense in which art critics
talk about "reading" or "scanning" a painting) which is so crucial for our
determinations of meter and genre. There is the long tradition of poems
picturing things--the pattern poems of the Renaissance, the concrete poetry of
our own century--but then again there is the central visuality of syllabic verse
and free verse, the importance of which far surpasses mere picturing by form
in its deep access to the structure and nature--both quidditas and haecceitas--of
the poem. After all, "a poem's shape may be a frame for itself as it may be a
frame for its picture of the world."
H21 Horn, Peter. "Poetical Set Theory and the Technocratic Consciousness." Theoria 40
(1973): 19–32.
Concrete poetry betrays a surprising degree of mysticism and irrationality,
given its fundamental ordering principle, permutation, and in the end seems
more advertisement than poetry.
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H22 Kell, Richard. "A Note on Versification." British Journal of Aesthetics 3 (1963): 341–
45.
A short but exceptionally illuminating exposition of how the texture and
timing of the line
"Two stones dropping in a silent chasm"
A
B
C
D
vary when the line is broken, syntactically/typographically, into various
vertical linear arrangements, e.g.:
A
BCD
A
BC
D
AB
CD
A
B
CD
A
B
C
D
ABC
D
H23 Kiyokawa, Shoichi. "Concrete Poetry." New York Quarterly, no. 14 (1973), pp.
176–81.
H24 Korn, A. L. "Puttenham and the Oriental Pattern-Poem." Comparative Literature 6
(1954): 289–303.
Research into the history of shaped poems, especially Persian and Turkish,
shows that Puttenham's four pattern poems in the Arte, purported to be
translations, "owe nothing demonstrable to any direct contact with Eastern
patterns." Probably the form was known to him only by word of mouth (from
his trip to Italy?), and he seems to have relied mainly on the Occidental
geometrical tradition.
H25 Kostelanitz, Richard, ed. Imaged Words & Worded Images. New York: Outerbridge
and Dientsfrey, 1970.
H26 Lipski, John. "Connectedness in Poetry: Toward a Topological Analysis of E. E.
Cummings." Language and Style 9 (1976): 143–63.
Since the typography of a poem is a spatial structure, it has a geography, and a
topological analysis becomes possible: Lipski maps out rules for continuity in
such a text and then synthesizes them into a formal model.
H27 McHughes, Janet L. "The Poesis of Space: Prosodic Structures in Concrete Poetry."
Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 168–79.
Identifies three characteristics of concrete poetry: foregrounding of spatial
ordering, "reduction of language," and "functional repetition"; distinguishes
three varieties of concrete poetry: poems retaining elements of traditional
prosody, poems relying on sound for their "controlling structure," and poems
employing space exclusively. Concludes that concrete poetry is open to
analysis and interpretation. The examples are pleasing.
H28 Marcus, Aaron. "An Introduction to the Visual Syntax of Concrete Poetry." Visible
Language 8 (1974): 333–60.
An adequate understanding of the possibilities inherent in this verseform rests
on an adequate typology of the basic modes of visual organization, or a "visual
syntax." Marcus postulates four types of relationships as syntactic constituents:
figure-field, depth, structure, and movement; these four types are illustrated by fiftyseven subtypes with examples on pp. 356–60. This is the most valuable
treatment of the subject yet produced.
H29 Merritt, Francine. “Concrete Poetry--Verbivocovisual.” Speech Teacher 18 (1969):
109–14.
An apologia. Some representative types of this verse: code poem, picture
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poem, text poem, anagram, node, circle, constellation, emergent poem,
computer-generated lines, and the chance poem. Serious and judicious.
H30 Mooij, J. J. A. "On the 'Foregrounding' of Graphic Elements in Poetry."
Comparative Poetics. Ed. D. W. Fokkema et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1976. pp.
89–102.
The author's review of international works on Poetics reveals a surprising
reluctance to admit the graphic dimension of poetry as central to the theory.
His arguments for the primacy of the printed poem in the Western cultural
tradition include elements such as punctuation, lineation, and eye-rhyme, and
forms such as pattern poems and concrete poetry. Adapts Mukarovskij.
H31 North, J. N. "Visual Poetry." Poetry 31 (1928): 3.
Quaintly, North considers it a "quaint delusion" that a poem "may be taken in
with the eye." See response by Conrad, H9.
H32 Ostriker, Alicia. "Poem Objects." Partisan Review 40 (1973): 95–107.
A survey of concrete poetry.
H33 Potter, James L. "Sylvester's Shaped Sonnets." Notes & Queries 202 (1957): 405–6.
Notes eleven typographical poems that are also variant sonnets at the
beginning of Sylvester's Divine Weekes and Workes.
H34 Ranta, Jerrald. "Geometry, Vision, and Poetic Form." College English 39 (1978):
707–24.
Though George Puttenham (E614) apparently had the last word on strictly
geometrical form in poetry, Ranta identifies two forms in modern poetry--a
"rising" and a "diminishing" design--which may be combined into a third,
composite form, and which also operate both visually and aurally--spatially and
temporally. These designs are conventional strategies of structure, not
particularly connected to Concretism; they entail adding, repeating, or
deleting lines from stanzas. And naturally the structural principle is displaced
into imagery as well. The psychology of perception offers corroboration.
Turgid beyond endurance, this essay is too long by half.
H35 -----. "Palindromes, Poems, and Geometric Form." College English 36 (1974): 161–
72; also in Visible Language 10 (1976): 157–72.
Shows that three poems--by William Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, and
Marianne Moore--have a vertical, typographic, palindromic form, showing
axial symmetry of meter, sound, and syntax. None of them is as interesting as:
"Lewd did I live, and evil I did dwel" or "A man, a plan, a canal--Panama!"
H36 Robbins, R. H. "Punctuation Poems--A Further Note." Review of English Studies 15
(1939): 206–7.
Poems capable of double interpretation depending on ambiguity of
punctuation. See James R. Kreuzer's earlier examples in
H37
Review of English Studies 14 (1938): 321–23.
H38 Sousa, R. "Concrete Poetry: A Contrastive Approach." Kentucky Romance Quarterly
[formerly KFLQ] 23 (1976): 199–212.
Contrasts a Pignatari concrete poem to Yeats's "The Magi" in order to point
up what devices, functions, and effects are available in each mode. Traditional
poetry allows patterning of sound, sense, rhythm, image, and ambiguity,
whereas in concrete poetry the signs take on added substance beyond their
purely referential linguistic nature, detaching themselves from the usual code if
not establishing an entirely new code, and representing the simplest (most
fundamental) conceptual categories by the strategy of spatialization. The two
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poems exemplify two entirely different "modes of language use in poetry."
H39 Stanley, Julia P. "The Escape from Syntax: or the Aesthetics of Dissolution."
Bucknell Review 22 (1976): 152–63.
A fusillade against concrete poetry for its goal of "removing language from its
role in the creation of poetry" or "the abrogation of language." Concrete
poetry "might be another art, but it is not poetry. . . . it is the content, the
feeling, the emotion that distinguishes poetry as an art." Value judgments
masquerade as premises in this completely muddled polemic.
H40 Waldrop, Rosemarie. "A Basis of Concrete Poetry." Bucknell Review 22 (1976):
141–51.
Demonstration through numerous examples of the centrality of the principle
of reduction in concrete poetry; since a concrete poem is "a structure which
explores elements of language itself rather than one which uses language to
explore something else. . . . the real concrete text only represents itself and is
identical with what it shows." Jakobson's notion of equivalence and Levin's
notion of coupling are also turned to use.
H41 Weaver, Mike. "Concrete Poetry." The Lugano Review 1 (1966): 100–25; rpt in The
Journal of Typographic Research [later Visible Language] 1 (1967): 293–326.
Traces part of the early history of the Concretist movement then elaborates a
typology of concrete poems as (1) optic, (2) kinetic, or (3) phonetic. Many
examples.
See also: L7, L15, L26, L78, L114, L132, L134–36, L160, L364, L878, L950–51,
N15, N25.
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