Poetry Form - The Concrete Poem

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Essays on how to write specific forms: Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka. Tanka surveys. Tan-renga. Concrete. Fib. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát. Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Las formas de la poesía en Español: El Poema Concreto.

J. Zimmerman (poems). J. Zimmerman (haiku).

The Concrete Poem Form
by Ariadne Unst

History. Form. Your Composition. Example. References.

History.

Introduced in the 1950's, the term "Concrete Poem" now often includes what was historically called the "Pattern Poem" or (in the terminology of Kenneth Koch) a "Shape Poem."

In a Pattern or Shape Poem, the shape of the poem on the page symbolizes the content of the poem.

How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch, reports that "pattern poems have been found in Greek, Latin ..., Hebrew, Chinese, Sanskrit, ancient Persian, and in most modern European languages." The Pattern Poem shows a visual relationship of the form and the meaning.

In the 1950's poets in Switzerland and Sweden and Brazil started, independently, to develop "Concrete Poetry" (partly as an adaptation of "concrete painting", a minor European school of the 1940's). In such poems, the arrangement of words and phrases on the page indicated the poem's meaning.

Poets who have made such mergers of appearance and content include George Herbert, Lewis Carrol (pen name of Charles L. Dodgson), Ezra Pound, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Stephane Mallarmé.

Form.

In a Concrete Poem, form follows function. The poem's visual form reveals its content and is integral to it.

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These are the features of such a poem:

• If you remove the form of the poem, you weaken the poem.
• In some (though not all) Concrete Poems, the form contains so much significant meaning of the poem that, if you remove the form of the poem, you destroy the poem.
• The arrangement of letters and words creates an image that offers the meaning visually.
• The white space of the page can be a significant part of the poem.
• Such poems can include a combination of lexical and pictorial elements.
• The physical arrangement in a Concrete Poem can provide a cohesion that the actual words lack. This allows a poem to ignore standard syntax, and logical sequencing.
• While such poetry is predominantly experienced as visual poetry, some concrete poetry is sound poetry. In general, concrete poetry attempts to give its audience the more immediate experience of art that is achieved by viewers of art or hearers of music.

The attractiveness and robustness of the term "Concrete" means that modern poems that would previously have been called "Pattern Poems" are now called "Concrete Poems."

Your Composition.

In Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? - Teaching Great Poetry to Children, Kenneth Koch suggests some ways to get started on writing a Concrete Poem, though he uses the friendlier title of Shape Poem.

His suggestions include:

• Think of some feeling (glad, sad, or mad is a good start), and begin to think of writing a poem about it.

• But imagine that your poem is to be printed as a picture and that you can decide on the ideal shape for the poem.

• The shape can be anything you want, as long as it has something to do with what your poem is about.

• It might be easiest to outline the shape first, and then erase it, leaving a faint hint of the shape to guide you.

• Popular examples are hearts and crosses and angel wings. Koch shows examples (by his students) of a cloud, waves, and the shape of the number 7.

Example of a Concrete (or Pattern) Poem.

The following Concrete (or Pattern) Poem was first published in 2002 in Runes Review of Poetry: Mystery, Editors CB Follett and Susan Terris.

The indentation reflects the steep, long flight of steps referenced in the poem.

The meaning of the poem would remain if the increasing indentation of successive lines were removed. But, by mirroring the content, the unusual layout reinforces the content of the poem.

THE LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT OF DREAMS: BRUSSELS J. Zimmerman For David. "we've been around, we fall, we fly we mostly fall" Song of Bernadette, Leonard Cohen I strode off the high cathedral top-most step like a miracle worker, or a Blessed passing the final exam for Saint. The city expanded at my feet. For one pico-second, I flew. I fell. I can't remember how (bruised but unbroken) I ended, though I remember the long fall, and (this was the first time you saved me) your cat-like twist as you threw yourself faster than the grab of gravity below me, so your chest protected my face, your arms wrapped around me, your body grated for mine against granite, while we tumbled like cast-out angels. Copyright © 2002-2016 by J. Zimmerman. (This e-publication @ Ariadne's Poetry Web, April 10, 2003.) (An earlier version first appeared in Runes 2002.) Haiku of J. Zimmerman. Other poems of J. Zimmerman.

Related Publications and Pages.

Runes Review of Poetry, Editors CB Follett and Susan Terris. Issues (on themes of Mystery, Gateway, etc.) include concrete poems.

Books of Poetry Form.

Books of Poetry Form. Alphabetic list of poetry forms and topics. How to Write Poetry. Environmental Ethics Blog.

Copyright © 2003-2016 by Ariadne Unst (except for poem as marked). This page displayed using your recycled bits.

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