具象诗

具象诗：乔治·赫伯特的诗作《复活节之翼》, 文字排版成张开的翅膀状

具象诗（Concrete poetry），又名图案有形诗，是将诗歌的文字排版作调整，令其具备图象化的呈现方式，以表达诗的意境。

具象诗特别指1950和1960年代的图案有形诗运动，自由地安排语言的元素，不一定是线性的句子结构，可由空间、图画和字形特征以及字间感受，解读作品意义。

和图象诗相较，具象诗仍遵守传统文字排版的字体及方向性，只是排列较不整齐而已；但图象诗就已经跳脱传统文字排版的字体及方向性，甚至使用艺术字体或手写文字以达成特殊效果。

二战前流变

虽然“具象诗”这个名称近代才出现，但利用排版安插字母位置来增强诗意的做法已有长远历史。追溯到西元前2-3世纪，古希腊帝国在埃及的亚历山卓(Alexandria)地区早已甚为流行，但只有少数记载于《希腊诗选 (Greek Anthology)》中的文本还流传下来。相关的范例如: 罗德斯的西米亚斯(Simias of Rhodes)的蛋、翅膀、帆船形诗，以及泰奥克里托斯(Theocritus)以乐器排箫为样板的作品。

具象诗的早期复兴起源于德国基德里希区，圣瓦伦丁朝圣教堂(St. Valentin, Kiedrich)中的浮雕，正义回旋(Gerechtigkeitsspiral)。1510年木匠埃尔哈特·福尔克纳(Erhart Falckener)于螺旋的形式将内文雕刻于其中一排教堂椅的椅背前方。

但图像诗真正的全盛时期是在巴洛克时代，引述英国诗人杰洛米·艾德勒(Jeremy Adler)的话:“(诗人们)摆脱了诗体过去差不多被制约的样式，将诗文书写从创作偶然性转变为构思的必须面向......进而产出诗以及视觉艺术的结合体。”在此之前也有希伯来诗人的显微书法作为先例，将圣经内文以小字排成其所描述对象的样貌。这让犹太人在为自然事物打造形象之馀，也避免直接触犯“打造神像”这条被视为偶像崇拜的戒律。显微书法现在仍为各艺术家所用，主题不再局限于宗教，伊斯兰图象诗中的阿拉伯诗文也是使用这项技艺。

早期英文宗教具象诗范例包含乔治·赫伯特(George Hubert)1633年在诗集《神庙 (The temple)》中的〈复活节之翼 (Easter Wings)〉、〈祭坛 (The Altar)〉两首，以及罗伯特·赫里克(Robert Herrick)1647年收录于《圣人们 (Noble Numbers)》中，十字形排列的〈这杆船桅 (This Crosstree Here)〉。世俗艺术的范例包含弗朗索瓦·拉伯雷(François Rabelais)与查尔斯-法兰西斯·潘纳德(Charles-François Panard)以红酒桶书写饮酒主题。1865年路易斯·卡洛尔(Lewis Carroll)在《爱丽丝梦游仙境》第三章中也以尾巴(tail)与故事(tale)双关为名创作具象诗〈老鼠的故事 (The Mouse's Tale)〉一首。

20世纪初，具象诗迎来了下一波复兴，法国诗人纪尧姆·阿波里奈尔(Guillaume Apollinaire)在1918年创作《图像诗 (Calligrammes)》时，以领带、喷泉、窗上滑落的雨滴为外型等……排版为诗文的外型。同个世代的前卫派，如未来主义、达达主义、超现实主义、也正进行著各式实验性排版，将其原本辅助抒发文意的功能摇身一变，成为作品艺术性的主要考量。在有声诗方面，未来主义领头羊，义大利作家菲利波·托马索·马里内蒂(Filippo Tommaso Marinetti)透过排版来将给予1912年的作品〈Zang Tumb Tumb〉图像式的意义，奥地利艺术家拉乌尔·豪斯曼(Raoul Hausmann)则提到排版能让读者辨识出掺入作品〈音素 (Phonemes)〉中的各类声音。在“具象诗 (Concrete Poem)”这个名称为现代大众所接受、使用之前，俄国未来主义诗人瓦西里·卡门斯基(Vasily Kamensky)将1914年出版的诗集《与母牛探戈 (Tango With Cows: Ferro-Concrete Poems)》(原文:Танго С Коровами: Железобетонные Поэмы)中的排版样式命名为“钢筋水泥体 (Ferro-Concrete Poem)”(原文: zhelezobetonnye poemy)。

有些人进一步将“诗”的定义简化为“字母表排列”。1926年，法国作家路易斯·阿拉贡(Louis Aragon)将字母由A排列至Z后将其命名为〈自尽 (Suicides)〉；德国艺术家柯特·施威特斯(Kurt Schwitters)的〈ZA(elementary)〉则是相反地从Z排列回A。更甚者如加泰隆尼亚作家约瑟·马力雅·优尼(Josep Maria Junoy)，将两个字母Z与A置于页首以及页尾，并引用古罗马诗人贺瑞斯(Horace)，将其命名为《诗艺 (Art of Peotry)》(原文: Ars Poetica)。

二战后

During the early 1950s two Brazilian artistic groups producing severely abstract and impersonal work were joined by poets linked to the São Paulo magazine Noigandres who began to treat language in an equally abstract way. Their work was termed "concrete poetry" after they exhibited along with the artists in the National Exhibition of Concrete Art (1956/57). The poets included Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari, who were joined in the exhibition by Ferreira Gullar, Ronaldo Azeredo and Wlademir Dias Pino from Rio de Janeiro. In 1958 a Brazilian concrete poetry manifesto was published and an anthology in 1962.

Dom Sylvester Houédard claimed that it was the 1962 publication in The Times Literary Supplement of a letter from the Portuguese E.M. de Melo e Castro that awakened British writers such as himself, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan to the possibilities of Concrete Poetry. However, there were by this time other European writers producing similar work. In 1954 the Swedish poet and visual artist Öyvind Fahlström had published the manifesto Hätila Ragulpr på Fåtskliaben. Similarly in Germany Eugen Gomringer published his manifesto vom vers zur konstellation (from line to constellation), in which he declared that a poem should be "a reality in itself" rather than a statement about reality, and "as easily understood as signs in airports and traffic signs". The difficulty in defining such a style is admitted by Houédard's statement that "a printed concrete poem is ambiguously both typographic-poetry and poetic-typography".

Another difficulty of definition is caused by the way such works cross artistic boundaries into the areas of music and sculpture, or can alternatively be defined as sound poetry, visual poetry, found poetry and typewriter art. Henri Chopin's work was related to his musical treatment of the word. Kenelm Cox (1927–68) was a kinetic artist "interested in the linear, serial aspects of visual experience but particularly in the process of change," whose revolving machines transcended the static page in being able to express this. Ian Hamilton Finlay's concrete poetry began on the page but then moved increasingly towards three dimensional figuration and afterwards to site-specific art in the creation of his sculpture garden at Little Sparta. The Italian Maurizio Nannucci's Dattilogrammmi experiments (1964/1965) were also transitional, preluding his move into light art.

Bob Cobbing, who was also a sound poet, had been experimenting with typewriter and duplicator since 1942. Of its possibilities in suggesting the physical dimension of the auditory process, he declared that "One can get the measure of a poem with the typewriter's accurate left/right & up & down movements; but superimposition by means of stencil and duplicator enable one to dance to this measure." Houédard's entirely different work was also produced principally on the typewriter but approximates more to painterly and sculptural procedures. So too does that of the American Minimalist artist Carl Andre, beginning from about 1958 and in parallel with his changing artistic procedures. And in Italy Adriano Spatola (1941–88) developed the artistic fragmentation of language using various visual techniques in his Zeroglifico (1965/6).

Edwin Morgan's experiments with concrete poetry covered several other aspects of it, including elements of found poetry 'discovered' by misreading and isolating elements from printed sources. "Most people have probably had the experience of scanning a newspaper page quickly and taking a message from it quite different from the intended one. I began looking deliberately for such hidden messages…preferably with the visual or typographical element part of the point." Another aspect of the search for unintended concordances of meaning emerges in A Humument, the lifework of the visual artist Tom Phillips, who uses painterly and decorative procedures to isolate them on the page.

Despite such blurring of artistic boundaries, concrete poetry can be viewed as taking its place in a predominantly visual tradition stretching over more than two millennia that seeks to draw attention to the word in the space of the page, and to the spaces between words, as an aid to emphasising their significance. In recent years, this approach has led Mario Petrucci to suggest that the "extreme example" of concrete poetry can be seen as nested within the larger concept of Spatial Form. Starting from the observation that poetry can usually be told from prose simply by looking at it, this reading of Spatial Form encompasses the many aspects of subtle visual significance that are held, for instance, by typeface or in the textures of repeated letters, as well as the more overt visual signals generated by the poem's layout.

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