Concrete Poetry vs Graphic Notation
具体詩／コンクリート・ポエトリー / 図形楽譜
Concrete Poetry comes from Experimental Typography and Graphic Notation from Notation Systems. One is layout and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Concrete Poetry
Treats the placement, repetition, blank space and sound of words as the poem itself, not only what they mean.
Graphic Notation
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The scores Cage and Cardew drew when they abandoned the staff: shapes, lines, map-like pages. Opening performance to interpretation rather than instruction, the score itself became visual art.
| Concrete Poetry | Graphic Notation | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1950s–1970s | 1950s– |
| Family | Experimental Typography | Notation Systems |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | Repeated words / Shapes made of letters / Large blanks / Dismantled reading order | The staff abandoned / Instruction by shape and line / Pages open to interpretation / The score as artwork |
| Best used for | Print pieces where a few words carry the reading speed and the pauses · Exhibitions and wall works that take language itself as the subject | Handing improvisers a map instead of a list of instructions · Making the page of a piece into a figure worth hanging on a wall |
| Type | One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only | Few kinds of sign, with the range where one shape holds one meaning |
| Composition | Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction | Show which direction on the page carries time before anyone plays |
| Material | White paper and one black ink, quality carried by register and margin | Line weight mapped to loudness, kept dark enough to print clean |
| Caution | When making a shape comes first, the meaning of the words stops answering their position, and the piece is only letters poured into a picture. | Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle. |