Concrete Poetry vs Ultraísmo
具体詩／コンクリート・ポエトリー / ウルトライスモ
Both sit in Experimental Typography, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as layout. 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.
Ultraísmo
A Spanish-language avant-garde that called for poetry compressed into metaphor and stripped of ornament. On the magazine page its type ran diagonally, woodcut abstractions were let in among the lines, and the poem was set as a plate in its own right. The earliest experimental typography to travel back and forth between Iberia and South America.
| Concrete Poetry | Ultraísmo | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1950s–1970s | 1918–1925 |
| Family | Experimental Typography | Experimental Typography |
| Kind | Layout | Layout |
| Cues | Repeated words / Shapes made of letters / Large blanks / Dismantled reading order | Diagonal type and open space / Woodcut abstractions as illustration / Short lines with the metaphor compressed / The magazine as the form of publication |
| 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 | Small-press literary and cultural magazines where setting the text as an image is the whole editorial position · Type-led posters and covers that need energy without recourse to illustration or photography |
| Type | One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only | Wood and metal display type mixed on one page, with lines set at competing angles. |
| Composition | Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction | The page composed as a plate: the poem's own lines form the structure, white space is an element, and no column grid survives. |
| Material | White paper and one black ink, quality carried by register and margin | Letterpress on cheap magazine stock, with a woodcut block dropped straight into the text area. |
| 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. | Angling type as a flourish over a conventional column: the angle came from setting language as an image, and without that reason it is styling only. |