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Ulises Carrión
THE NEW ART
OF MAKING BOOKS
page 3
THE
SPACE
For years, many years,
poets have intensively and efficiently exploited the spatial possibilities
of poetry.
But only the so-called concrete or, later, visual poetry, has openly declared
this.
Verses ending halfway
on the page, verses having a wider or a narrower margin, verses being separated
from the following one by a bigger or smaller space - all this is exploitation
of space.
This is not to say that
a text is poetry because it uses space in this or that way, but that using
space is a characteristic of written poetry.
The space is the music
of the unsung poetry
The introduction of
space into poetry (or rather of poetry into space) is an enormous event
of literally incalculable consequences.
One of these consequences is concrete and/or visual poetry. Its birth is
not an extravagant event in the history of literature, but the natural,
unavoidable development of the spatial reality gained by language since
the moment writing was invented.
The poetry of the old
art does use space, albeit bashfully.
This poetry establishes an inter-subjective communication.
Inter-subjective
communication occurs in an abstract, ideal, impalpable space.
In the new art (of which
concrete poetry is only an example) communication is still inter-subjective,
but it occurs in a concrete, real, physical space - the page.
A book is a volume in
the space.
It is the true ground of the communication that takes place through words
- its here and now.
Concrete poetry represents
an alternative to poetry.
Books, regarded as autonomous space-time sequences offer an alternative
to all existent literary genres.
Space exists outside
subjectivity.
If two subjects communicate in the space, then space is an element of this
communication. Space modifies this communication. Space imposes its own
laws on this communication.
Printed words
are imprisoned in the matter of the book.
What is more meaningful:
the book or the text it contains?
What was first: the chicken or the egg?
The old art assumes
that printed words are printed on an ideal space.
The new art knows that books exist as objects in an exterior reality, subject
to concrete conditions of perception, existence, exchange, consumption,
use, etc.
The objective manifestation
of language can be experienced in an isolated moment and space - the page;
or in a sequence of spaces and moments - the book.
There is not and will
not be new literature any more.
There will be, perhaps, new ways to communicate that will include language
or will use language as a basis.
As a medium of
communication, literature will always be old literature.
 
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