Reading Visual Poetry - Bohn, Willard

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Résumé :
1 List of Illustrations 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 1. The Word Made Flesh Chapter 4 2. Spanish Ultraist Poetry Chapter 5 3. Hispano-American Poetry Chapter 6 4. French Poetry after Apollinaire Chapter 7 5. Italian Futurist Aeropoetry Chapter 8 6. Brazilian Concrete Poetry Chapter 9 7. Digital Poetry Chapter 10 8. Eyesight and Hindsight 11 Notes 12 Bibliography 13 Index...

Biographie:
Willard Bohn is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at Illinois State University, USA. He is the author or editor of sixteen books, including The Avant-Garde Imperative (2013)...

Sommaire:
By Willard Bohn...

The title here is literal. Bohn provides readings of notable 'concrete' poems-poems formatted into a picture or visual design (kinetic digital as well as static print) rather than standard lineated text-from a range of modern literary moments and orbits (Spanish, French, Italian, and Brazilian). The author traces neither the history nor principles of the literary movement as such, nor the development of the genre itself. He follows a straightforward, three-part procedure for engaging the poems: first, perceiving the visual design as a gestalt; second, deciphering the text in its unorthodox and often multiple physical orientations; third, synthesizing the visual and literary import. Interested primarily in the dynamics of reading visual poetry as a process, he works inductively, translating and negotiating his way through each poem largely through trial and error, considering and discarding one interpretative possibility after another and bringing the reader along as an eavesdropper on his reflective critical deliberations. The effect is delightful: the readings are as much performance as analysis. And the analysis is particularly illuminating in revealing the semiotic and ontological intricacies of a poetry that many still consider, even after more than a generation of serious scholarly attention, little more than gimmickry. Summing Up: Recommended. CHOICE 20110901 Bohn offers in-depth analysis of individual poems, showing how visual semantics operate to complement and complicate linguistic meaning... As a whole, the book provides an excellent introduction to visual poetry and a succession of illuminating readings, but its particular value lies in the breadth of poets and poems considered. It is a welcome addition to the critical literature and will be an invaluable resource for those approaching the genre for the first time. Forum For Modern Language Studies