| PINEDA IS CONCERNED with
three related topics: the problems of defining concrete poetry as a genre
(because of its variety of intervening systems [381]); alternative methods
of production and transmission (385); and the role of the "receptor"óa
new way to define the reader/viewer (388). Pineda frames her discussion
of how critics, poets, and "metatexts" read or refuse to read concrete
poetry within the literary genre, within the context of Lessing's distinctions
between painting and poetry (382). These "receptors" of concrete
poetry take it "more or less . . . as poetry and nothing else" (385), despite
Pineda's claim that concrete poetry seeks to "free itself from all
subjectivity, shifting the 'lyrical' focus and placing it in the aesthetic
side of the process" (385, emphasis added).
This assumption (that concrete poetry is purely poetry) determines expectations regarding production, transmission, and reception. Crucially, Pineda argues that first, readers "must adapt their expectations until they find a 'new type of meaning," and, second, "expectations about the function of interpretation itself must also be modified" (387). Pineda acknowledges that the most widely accepted proposal on how to read concrete poetry is that interpretation must be exchanged for perception. As Pineda seeks to question a purely poetic or literary reading of concrete poetry, the proposition to simply perceive a poem that "communicates itself," that "is in the surface" (388), suggests that as "receptors," our understanding of the word "poem" needs to change, and that our move away from seeing concrete poetry within the literary genre necessitates a move toward a visual-aesthetic genre. (Julia Bleakney.) |
Michael Hancher Department of English, University of Minnesota URL: <http://umn.edu/home/mh/txtimjb6.html> Comments to: mh@umn.edu Created 24 December 1997