Visual poetry is verse written with intentional shape to add meaning. It can take a recognizable shape or use free-form patterns to create new rhythms. The physical form reinforces the poem’s meanings and themes, and can include alliteration, rhyme, and new words. Concrete visual poetry allows for freer verse, including repeated words shaped to resemble recognizable objects.
Visual poetry is a literary verse written on the page with an intentional shape to add meaning to the poem. The form can take a recognizable shape or it can use a free-form pattern to create a new rhythm when reading the poem aloud. These shapes and rhythms are typically related to the central ideas and themes contained in the poems and often serve to reinforce those concepts.
The physical form of a poem can be used by the poet to reinforce its meanings and themes. This type of visual poetry can also be called altar poetry. The form or pattern of these types of poems is typically that of a common, easily recognizable object referenced in some way by the words of the poem. For example, George Herbert’s poem Easter Wings speaks of man’s sinful fall from God’s favor and asks that he be allowed to fly like a bird and sing of God’s victories. The first half of both stanzas of the poem narrows with each line and lengthens again in the second half so that the overall shape of the verses resembles a pair of wings.
Geometric and pattern poems are also forms of visual poetry. Unlike altar poems, however, these verses are not always intended to represent a recognizable form. Lines and stanzas may end, contain blank spaces on the page, or feature words that are unusually spaced to enhance the meaning of the poem and create a specific cadence when reading the poem aloud. For example, ee cummings in Just- features the words “far and wee” three times throughout the play to represent a song whistled by a “balloonman” who calls children to him. Each time the words are spelled differently, sometimes widely spaced, sometimes as a single word, forcing the reader to pronounce them differently and to recreate the musical variations of the whistle that can appeal to so many different children.
The poet may also employ alliteration, rhyme, and invent new words to add depth to his visual poetry. These literary devices can force the reader to speed up, slow down, or pause when he speaks the poem aloud. Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote Constantly Risking Absurdity to compare the act of a poet writing a poem to a circus trapeze artist performing high above an audience. Each line of the poem is spaced and indented in a way that mimics a performer tumbling through the air from one perch to another. A series of alliterated lines near the end causes the reader to slow down and pause momentarily just as the trapeze poet described in these words pauses and prepares to take one last leap through the air to grasp Beauty.
Concrete visual poetry allows for a freer form of verse than the altar or model. Poems in this category may consist of a repeated word or string of words shaped to resemble a recognizable shape. Alliteration is another popular practice in concrete poems where the first letter of each line spells out the title or a central idea of the poem.
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