Scope and Contents Beaulieu comments: an afterword after words: notes towards a concrete poetic.Despite over a century of poetic innovation since Stephane Mallarme's "Un Coup de Des Jamais n'Abolira le Hasard" (1896) & almost 50 years since the publication of Eugen Gomringer's manifesto "Concrete Poetry" (1956), there is still no accepted critical vocabulary for concrete poetry. Concrete poetry is often contextualized historically & is categorized as a subgenre of radicalized praxis from its predominantly modernist period in the 1950s through to the present. By reiterating this historical precedent -- a stridently modernist activity -- criticism on concrete poetry more often than not reifies the idea that this form is still in its infancy, requiring a citation of poetic precedent in order to justify its existence. Brion Gysin remarked that "writing is fifty years behind painting," an assertionevident in the cultural & critical reception for concrete poetry. Readings based upon...

Scope and Contents

Cobbing discusses the early concrete poems of Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Furnival, Kenelm Cox, Dom Sylvester Houedard, and Tom Edmonds in depth. This essay is unbpubished. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.