In ABSENCE we see…
space, formations, words, content, minimalism, FORM, structure, and we see Concrete Poetry.
Concrete poetry is a typographical arrangement of words in a structural formation. The arrangement of these words can often have greater relevance to the poem then the words themselves. For the words used can be that of only one word, which can be basic and simplistic, or more then one word which can create content to the arrangement. The basis of concrete poetry begins by the user being aware of graphic space as a structural agent, for it is that space that places things – words in space – time (Campos 1956). It is an assumption of total responsibility before language. Making this type of poetry ask to be “completed or activated by the reader, a poetry that is a direct presentation – the word, not words, words, words or expressionistic squiggles” (Williams 2013, p.vi)
“It is interesting to observe that as technical applications have increased in complexity with the passage of time, languages have increased in simplicity, until today we are considering the ultimate compression of information in the simplest possible form” Cherry (1951) as cited by Gomringer 1962). Meaning that languages have increased in simplicity, reaching the ultimate compression of information required and delivering it in the most simplistic form. Therefore a language that is as poetic as such can be minimalist, whilst contain vast content.
For there has been a translation of a select number of poems from the Anthology of Concrete Poetry into Braille for the blind and partially sighted. The translated are complex formations with extreme simplicity to form and structure, what you are presented with is translated words into raised dots of braille that are indicative to space and the absence of space.
Is it then comprehendible that “one can conceive of absence as omission or one can think of it as abstraction” as once said by (Treib 1987, p.3) in The Presence of Absence: Places by Extraction. For an abstraction that is indicative of form, is also a form that is conceived through omission. Therefore a form that requires function is a function that requires structure, a structure that mimics that of Concrete Poetry and in a similar instance that of Brutalism.
Concrete Poetry – Brutalism, are both one of the same in search of a concept made concrete.
