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Poésie concrète

French
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A 20th-century poetic movement treating the poem as a visual and material object, where the arrangement of words and letters on the page creates aesthetic meaning.

Detailed Definition
Poésie concrète is an experimental movement born in the 1950s, simultaneously developed in Brazil, Switzerland, and Germany, that treats the poem as a spatial, visual, and sonic object. Words, letters, and typographic elements are arranged on the page to create visual forms that carry meaning independently of linear reading. Eugen Gomringer and the Noigandres group were its pioneers. In France, it connects with the Lettrism of Isidore Isou. Concrete poetry challenges the conventional distinction between poetry and visual art, pushing to its extreme the notion that form is inseparable from poetic content.
Example
Example in poetry:
Apollinaire's calligrammes are the direct predecessors of poésie concrète, establishing the principle that the visual arrangement of words on the page creates meaning independently of and in addition to the verbal content of the text; Eugen Gomringer's "Silencio," a concrete poem arranging the single word "silencio" in a rectangle with a blank space at the center, demonstrates how the spatial absence within the text can be as meaningful as the words surrounding it; The Brazilian Noigandres group's 1958 "Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry" articulated the movement's theoretical basis: the poem as a self-referential verbal-visual-sonic object whose formal properties are inseparable from its semantic content; A student creating a poésie concrète work might take a single word, "chute" (fall), and arrange it on the page so that the letters actually fall down the page, or gradually decrease in size, making the visual form perform the word's meaning; Ian Hamilton Finlay, working in English but deeply influenced by French concrete poetry, created poems-as-objects, poems-as-gardens, and poems-as-sculptures, extending concrete poetry's interrogation of the boundary between language and the visual arts into three dimensions; Poésie concrète challenges students to question assumptions about reading: is reading always linear and temporal, or can a poem be apprehended spatially, all at once, like a visual image? The concrete poem forces this question by making the answer to both readings simultaneously "yes."
Additional Notes
Poésie concrète treats language as visual material as much as semantic content, making the arrangement of words integral to meaning. Students should compare it with calligramme, though concrete poetry often reflects more systematic twentieth-century experimentation. Reading requires attention to typography, spacing, visual rhythm, and material textual presence. This form is especially valuable for questioning assumptions that poetry is primarily linear verbal communication. It belongs naturally in discussions of experimental and multimodal literary practice.
Also Known As
Concrete poetry Shape poetry
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