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ALICIA OSTRIKER
correspond to the state of technology and the other arts. They failed
to embody modern principles of linguistics. Finally, they were in–
capable of communicating to masses of people.
Ripeness was all. In 1951, Gomringer began producing works
he called "constellations," influenced by symbolist poetry and con–
crete painting, for a projected magazine which was to be edited with
two graphic artist friends, and was to "embrace poetry, the plastic
arts, graphics, .architecture, and industrial design." Previous to this,
he had "reached the stage of the sonnet" and became blocked by a
sense of discordance between his work and the state of other arts,
unable to write. The new form he groped toward would unite lin–
guistic expression with physical reality, appeal through play-activity
to "modern man," and imprint its effects on ordinary language. In
1952, three poets of Sao Paulo, Brazil- Haroldo and Augusto de
Campos and Decio Pignatari - formed the "Noigandres group,"
name charmingly taken from Pound's Canto XX, where old Levy,
encountering the word in Arnaut Daniel, grumbles "Noigandres, eh,
noigandres/
Now what the DEFFIL can that mean!" Planting their
aesthetics on the collective shoulders of Mallarme, Apollinaire,
Pound's ideograms, Joyce, Cummings, concrete art, Mondrian's Boo–
gie-Woogie, Calder, Webern's "Klangfarbenmelodie," and Gestalt
psychology, they propounded the new "verbivocovisual" Word. They
rapidly gained prominence in Brazilian culture, had their work pub–
licly performed, and made contacts with other artists in South Ameri–
ca and Europe, while exploiting the new mode for politically and
socially satiric purposes. By 1956 Gomringer and the Noigandres
group had met and agreed to call their mutual endeavors "concrete
poetry." At the same time, and independently, Oylvind Fahlstrom
had published the first manifesto for concrete poetry in Stockholm
in 1953. Diter Rot, born in Germany and educated as an artist in
Switzerland, was publishing "ideograms" in Iceland. Carlfriedrich
Claus was making
Uklangbilden
H
and
uphasen
H
in East Germany.
And a circle of two poets, a composer, an architect, and a jazz mu–
sician were collaborating on concrete projects in Vienna. In 1957
Haroldo de Campos introduced concrete poetry to Kitasono Katue
of Japan, who has since become a major contributor; and Daniel
Spoerri, a Romanian-born artist
in
dance, mime, and experimental
theater, published in Darmstadt, Germany, the first international
