Concrete Poetry, Metanarrative and why I love them both
Somewhat recently, I came across the works of Nicholas Davies, a mixed media artist that, amongst other things, does concrete poetry. I'm currently in love with the first issue of Blacking Out On Concrete, it gave me that really euphoric feeling of experiencing great art and reminded me how much I love concrete poetry, which I haven’t read any of in quite a while. And that got me thinking about my love for concrete poetry, despite actually engaging with very little of it, and why exactly do I love it so much.
My first contact with concrete poetry happened when I was in school. One of the chapters in the schoolbook talked about the works of Décio Pignatari, Haroldo and Augusto de Campos, creators of what would be know as Concretismo in Brazil. And I was absolutely amazed at what they did. The idea that you could play with space like that, break the limits and rules of the page, of words themselves, make images out of words, words into shapes, was just so cool.
For a class assignment, we had to make one. Content-wise, I don’t remember what it was about, but image-wise, I know it was a flower, the petals, the inner circle thing, the leaf and the stern, each a phrase. Likely wasn’t a good poem, I clearly was more focused on the shape than the meaning. I vaguely remember my mom worrying a little if I was doing my homework properly. Concrete poetry is rule breaking, it looks weird, is not your usual way of making poetry.
Despite my amazement, I never went after more of it myself, keeping only to reading the poems featured in the schoolbook every year.
Many years later, we cross paths again in college, through another class assignment, this time analyzing a poem, l(a by e. e. cummings, with a portuguese translation by Augusto de Campos (these Concretismo guys were translators, they cared about the form/structure of things). Unlike my previous experiences, this was an opportunity to get up close and personal with a concrete poem, to try to understand it and express it into writing, basically, to engage with it deeply. And I just love the challenge of being tasked to interpret and figure something out.
l(a is the powerful union of form with meaning, text and visual, creating motion from still words and letter, all to express something that couldn’t be done otherwise, or at least nowhere near as beautifully. Two simple phrases changed and spread out to express a very delicate feeling.
I don’t want to ruin the experience of the poem, so go read it and figure it out yourself what it means to you.
In another time, I had to make a mock-up class and of course I picked Concrete poetry/Concretismo as my teaching subject (this was before I got into contact with Fernando Pessoa and became so normal about it). The class was so-so, but in preparation to it I got to (re)learn about the historical context of how the movement came about and I got to read a little of a pretty interesting book written by some of its participants.
I have this quote from it saved on my phone:
“[...] converge to a new concept of composition, to a new theory of form — organisform — where traditional notions, like principle-middle-end, syllogism, verse, tend to disappear and be surpassed by a gestalt-poetic organization, poetic-musical, poetic-ideogram of structure: CONCRETE POETRY” (Teoria da Poesia Concreta, p.25, translation by me)
And that was basically the extent of it, until I found Davies’ work, which uses concrete poetry to tell really personal and raw stuff, as a form of amplifying the emotions, the feelings, and that’s just wonderful and beautiful. Concrete poetry as a tool for communicating complex emotions. And that takes me to why exactly I love concrete poetry so much.
I realized that concrete poetry is not too different from something that I also love very dearly, metanarrative. It was honestly a similar first experience, being amazed and fascinated at seeing something I never even thought was possible, the rule-breaking of it all, my mind blown at the narrative and emotional possibilities of it and then immediately falling in love with it. With the only difference being that – maybe because I got into it in a non-school environment – I do actually actively seek it out.
I won’t tell you how 9 persons, 9 doors, 9 hours uses meta-elements, because witnessing if for yourself is a much stronger experience, just know that it does, just know that Kotaro Uchikoshi has been playing with the form, with the comfort of what’s expected, with structures and limits you never even thought as structures and limits only to break it all up in all of his works. I don’t mess with his stuff as much nowadays, in fact I have a lot of grievances, but the mind-blowness of experiencing 999 is genuinely one of my favourite experiences, it’s also one of my favourite games of all time, tho the meta element is only one aspect of why.
[If you go check it out, go with the Nintendo DS version, either emulate or play on real hardware. All the later ports are awful and the rewrites painful.]
What follows after is me just chasing for more of that amazement from metamedia and I honestly don’t think I’d be able to retell it all, it’s a lot and it’s all jumbled up and I’m still at it, thinking about it, trying to categorizing its many types and variations in my head. For most of it, I focused mainly on video games which are a pretty rich realm for metanarrative, with hundreds of ways of doing it, specially when considering the interactivity element and the medium. But in recent years, I’m really into meta stuff in TV and film, specially of the reality blending variety, and specially specially the inherent metanarrative of a piece of media speaking about its own making.
The thing about any piece of meta media is that by its nature it’s breaking the rules, it’s recognizing that it’s a piece of media by talking about itself, addressing or considering the viewer and their experience with the work, and it often does that by playing with structures and expectations we didn’t even consider as rules. And that’s something that’s inherent as well with concrete poetry. When you consider the existence of the page, the word placement, the splinting or transforming of the words themselves, you’re acknowledging that that’s text on a piece of paper, the process involved in its creation and the experience of the reader and you’re breaking the expected rules that text should move a certain way, have lines, structure.
And I find that in breaking and playing with these limitations we didn’t even perceive as such, truly beautiful, powerful, creative, fun and moving things can be done.
I don't love all concrete poetry or meta-narrative, there's stuff that it's too gimmicky or too much focused on form, little on meaning to me, but when it's really well done, it's a wonderful experience like no other.
Thanks for reading! I love concrete poetry and I would love if you shared with me some of your favourite concrete poems!