Concrete Poem: Yes Not Bad / Concrete Poetry confounds people

RTomens, 2020

Lying in bed the other night I thought about concrete poetry and how it confounds people. I don't know what inspired those thoughts. I don't even know what I concluded or if I concluded anything. I don't know why I started this post by recalling those thoughts...I mean, the fact that I had them. I don't even know who I'm talking to > (restart)

I've often chuckled to myself at the thought of people seeing concrete poetry and thinking 'Eh?' It's not Art; it's not writing. It's not even Poetry. It's a puzzle. If it's arranged in a certain way it can be pretty enough to please those who don't know what they're looking at. Ditto Abstract Art. 

Even I don't know what concrete poetry is supposed to do. Does any visual image have to 'do' something? Rhetorical question. My recent pieces are all constructed from statements or song titles. I can't claim originality in that idea. I got the idea from...wherever ideas come from when they're not provided by anyone else. We can 'get' the same ideas as others. 

Repetition of letters that make up the statement struck me as...precursors to the statement...not like stuttering...more like symbolising the thought before the actual words. Word repetition is interesting in that it soon negates inherent meaning, especially when allowing the constituent letters to run on until stopped by a designated line, therefore cutting them off from saying what they were supposed to say.

Perhaps a lot of my work is about incompletion and plain declaration simultaneously. A simple statement can be both definitive and vague...ambiguous and clear, although I often favour ambiguity.

One thing is for sure, I have to stop writing and eat my dinner.