Concrete Poetry in France after Apollinaire

A brief look into the evolution of concrete poetry following Apollinaire’s initial experimentation
with calligrams.

Pierre Albert-Birot

 Albert-Birot (1876-1967) was a friend of Apollinaire when Dadaism and Surrealism began to
gain traction in France. He was greatly influenced by the Calligrammes, and became the
foremost visual poet when Apollinaire died in 1918 editing the avant-garde magazine Sons
Idées Couleurs (SIC).
 This poem caught my eye because I can at least follow the line of text–something that cannot
be said of other poems–and the subject matter is humorous and slightly metaliterary. The poet
is the poem mill and the text is almost written as an advertisement for his product.
 Pierre Albert-Birot
Le jardin suspendu

Les amusements naturels – éditions Rougerie, 1985

 I found this poem pretty fun to decode. Exactly what the « ce » refers to, I’m not sure, but I
think the blossom from a buttonhole is a clear reference to a wedding. The image is that of
plants cascading from their suspended planters, but with the last line tilted that way, the whole
poem resembles a budding flower on top of a stem as well.
 One idea is that this new “suspended” garden of planted poets is the concrete poetry movement.
Poetry is now elevated to a level previously unseen and what blossoms is a new method of
expressing love and goodwill.
 Pierre Albert-Birot
Fleur de lys

 The symbols of French royalty apparently adorn the lover addressed in this calligram. There is
little difference in the development of concrete poetry from Apollinaire to Albert-Birot, but I
do sense a bit more humor in these poems. I enjoyed the incorporation of a few rhymes, and
the shape is fantastic considering the level of symmetry required to produce a fleur-de-lys.
Words must be the right length in order for the letters to not bunch up around the elegant
curves, and since this symbol is so highly recognized by the French, it was a bold choice of
subject matter.
 Pierre Albert-Birot
Rosace

 This calligram depicts a rose window in a cathedral and caught my eye as one of the prettiest
visual poems I’ve seen. The windows usually represent the shining radiance of Jesus Christ.
Here, « tout ce qui n’est pas encore » shines in the window: the bones holding thoughts and
organs alike and the transformation of nature into splendid works of art.
 Pierre Albert-Birot
Silex, poèmes des cavernes

Les amusements naturels – éditions Rougerie, 1983

 This calligram is fascinating for what it signifies. The hand is that of a prehistoric man leaving
his mark on the wall of a cave. One of France’s national treasures is the Lascaux complex of
caves with some of the oldest surviving manmade images. Some argue that creation of such
images were essentially the beginning of human communication and culture; thus, Albert-Birot
has merged poetry with these artifacts to generate a new kind of visual language. This idea is
what goes on to truly foster and change concrete poetry in France, and this new approach to
language is really an extension of the surrealist esthetic.
 Isidore Isou (1925-2007) was a Romanian-French poet that pushed concrete poetry
to its absolute limits with his new theory of letterisme. He viewed Dadaism and Surrealism as a
continuous progression in French poetry that began stripping words of their meanings. With the
initiation of concrete poetry, Isou began to see that calligrams were a further attempt to break the
formality of language in order to access new techniques of creation. He wanted to even further
open poetry to its most fundamental unit of expression by revolting against standard groupings of
letters into words. Language is really a mutually understood collection of shapes, so Isou sought
visual expression through created sets of glyphs and comingling of the written and graphical
elements of communication. He described his works as “hypergraphic”.
A Broad Overview of Isou’s Poetic Theory:

“Isou’s case study is modern French poetry. The last amplic phase, he argues, culminated with
Victor Hugo, with whom French Romantic poetry reached its limit. Baudelaire then performed the
destruction of what Isou calls the ‘anecdote’, to be replaced by ‘the form of the poem’: Baudelaire
shifted the emphasis of poetry from its narrative function to its formal qualities. Verlaine then
reduced poetic form to the more ahistorical ‘verse form’, which Rimbaud subsumed to the word
itself. Mallarmé then attempted to perfect the arrangement of words in order to make their sounds
primary, before Tzara divested whatever was left of poetry of whatever meaning it still claimed,
to leave only a void.”
Source:
situationistresearch.wordpress.com/2019/05/26/introduction-to-isidore-isou/
 Isidore Isou
Commentaire sur Van Gogh

 Isou pushed French concrete poetry far into the avant-garde. So much so that literary critics
have had mixed views about the validity of expression within such blending of visual and
linguistic elements ever since. Typography is one thing, but the works like the one above seem
disconnected from the poetic foundation of concrete poetry. I find it hard to see or discuss how
one gets from Baudelaire to something like Commentaire sur Van Gogh.
 Among my personal reservations about the letterisme offshoot of concrete poetry, I think most
would agree that it is just very hard to read. Without readability, there is no meaning, no sound,
and limited emotional impact beyond a first impression of the eye. This is what Isou sought
after, but this primitive pursuit to me seems bounded by its simplicity and lacking in substance.
 Maurice Lemaître
Poèmes et Musiques Lettristes et Hyperphonie

 Maurice Lemaître was Isou’s right-hand man throughout the letterist movement. This cover
for an album of “poems” and music is very characteristic of the drawbacks and rare moments
of brilliance from the letterisme movement.
 First, I reject the recordings on the album as poems, or even music for that matter. For example,
the first track dissolves into Lemaître making clicking sounds above a radio playing in the
background. This type of experimentation goes past conscious appreciation into a place that
no one, I would argue, can go.
 However, the image above is key to at least understanding the goal of the Letterists. With only
symbols and a few words Lemaître demonstrates the ability to express and communicate new
ideas hiding within the intersection of poetry and visual art. The gradual reduction in scope to
the eventual picture of Lemaître is interesting itself, but combined with a kind of concrete
poetry playfulness, the moon’s orbit around Earth forms an eye peeing/peering down into the
identity of the “poet”. The idea is not expressed in the typical fashion of the visual arts, and no
one immediately thinks of this is a poem; however, the accessibility of the work rides the wave
of experimental concrete poetry into unknown territory beyond both art forms.
 Henri Chopin
La Crevette Amoureuse

 Henri Chopin (1922-2008) was a French avant-garde concrete poet and musician that produced
works separate from the Letterists. He is famous for his typewriter poems like the one above
which, in my opinion, carried on with the spirit of the calligrams much better than the
Letterists. The shapes of the poems are more abstract than that of Apollinaire or Albert-Birot,
but they still have clear motivations and a comprehensible message that prevents the piece
from dissolving into experimentation that borders on meaninglessness.
 Henri Chopin
La Voie et la Trace – d’un Prisme

 I found this piece and many others by Henri Chopin particularly notable for the use of color.
The breakdown of any separation between poetry and graphic design and visual art and other
creative outlets interests me in that it takes away that aspect of the piece’s identity. By sitting
somewhere in the middle, the established methods of analysis and appreciation suddenly come
up short on every side.
 Henri Chopin
Le Poème Alphabétique

 The French concrete poets of the 20th century were not as prolific and certainly not as numerous
as the concrete poets in the English-speaking world. I think this fact may have influenced Henri
Chopin and the truly contemporary French concrete poets who may feel a bit of competitive
pressure as English becomes more of a lingua franca. In this work, there is a bilingual pun on
the fact that the poem’s alphabet is missing a “y”. Read in English, this poem, like most artistic
traditions stemming from the surrealists, has banished any sense of meaning. The “why” is
missing, the poet seems not to care, and the shape of a hidden, backwards y appears in the other
letters. This playfulness uses both languages, united by their use of the Latin alphabet.
 Julien Blaine (1942-present) is considered a contemporary, post-concrete poet. The concrete
poetry movement seems to have dissolved under the influence of the more avant-garde trends
in France, and what is left today bears some of the remnants of Apollinaire’s experimentation.
 A large focus is now set on the relationship of the French language to English and the role of
French in the world as globalization advances the reach of English popular culture. Blaine’s
untitled visual “poem” with the targets seems to highlight the disparity in influence and
attention between French and English. It is fascinating to see these new metalinguistic ideas
about expression of a visual language applied to the state of different written and spoken
languages as they change today.