Words to Be Watched

Visual and concrete poetry reduced ad absurdum current communication conventions and refused to take for granted what is only seemingly obvious. Visual poetry “forces us to look at the text before we read it, that is, to acknowledge its physical authority.” [Willard Bohn, 1986] In the previous century, as well as in the present one, the visual, or if you will, the “scopic régime,” brought about a change of attitude to a written word. Poetry and visual arts accentuated the materiality of writing.