Konkrete Poesie

Konkrete Poesie, a form of avant-garde writing in which words are used as objects without reference to grammatical position or function, and in some cases regardless of their meaning, associations, or allusiveness. For the poet experimenting with this form, words—or even detached letters—are raw material to be arranged in a pattern. Since these patterns are frequently visual, they can be appreciated at a glance without being read, and some are deliberately unreadable and represent an extreme form of ‘visuelle Poesie’. Concrete poetry at its best is a ‘three-dimensional—semantic, phonetic, visual—exploration’ (M. Butler, with special reference to E. Jandl). Initial capitals are not used. Readings of sound and speech poems (Sprechgedichte) are an aspect of this type of experimental poetry which is published in print as well as on records.

The immediate forerunners of German-speaking concrete poetry, which was founded by E. Gomringer, are considered to be H. Arp and K. Schwitters, who were both involved in Dada (see Dadaismus); both were painters and inclined to the visual, though Schwitters also promoted the ‘Lautgedicht’ which originated from the similarly committed Dadaist Raoul Hausmann (Vienna, 1886-1970, Limoges) and was revived by the major representatives of concrete poetry. The philosophy of visual poetry was to a considerable extent indebted to Max Bense (1910-90), the mentor of the Stuttgarter Gruppe with which Gomringer had close contacts. Other prominent Konkretisten include A. Achleitner, H. C. Artmann, H. Heißenbüttel, F. Mon, and G. Rühm. The avant-garde writer and member of the Wiener Gruppe Konrad Bayer (1932-64) styled Rühm and Achleitner ‘concrete poets’ in the context of the Group, which proved too restrictive, especially to Jandl. The anthology konkrete poesie. deutschsprachige autoren (1972), ed. E. Gomringer, contains work by all of these and by twelve other such poets. Much ingenuity has been devoted to concrete writing, especially in typography. One text by Rühm forms a square composed of the letter u (152 times) with a single d (=‘du’, the intimate German for ‘you’) at its centre. This imaginative form of literature gives ample scope for playfulness, some poets aiming at a purely aesthetic effect, though most are designed to convey social (and political) criticism. Affinities between concrete poetry and the language games of L. Wittgenstein point to the influence of his approach to reality.