Topic
Shape Poetry
Primary text
Chen Li’s Shape Poems
Secondary text
l(a
Genres
□ fiction
■ song
■ movie
■ poetry
□ drama
□ news
■ art
■ on-line information
■ prose
■ speech
□ others
Learning focus
□ listening
■ speaking
■ writing
Handouts by
Joan Chang
Updated on
Feb. 29, 2016
■ reading
Chen Li & Shape Poetry
陳黎
1954-
http://alturl.com/cba6h
retrieved from http://www.hgjh.hlc.edu.tw/~chenli/poetrymp3i.htm on 2013/1/3
〈長日將盡〉 “Long Day Ends” Chen Li, 2008
〈101 大樓上的千(里)目〉 “Thousand Eyes on Taipei 101” Chen Li, 2008
“Shape Poetry” 1
〈戰爭交響曲〉 “A War Symphony” 1995
Listen to/watch the poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZjj5y-7e9Q
Translator’s note: The Chinese character ‘兵’ (pronounced as ‘bing’) means ’soldier’. ‘乒’ and ‘乓’
(pronounced as ‘ping’ and ‘pong’), which look like one-l egged soldiers, are two onomatopoeic words
imitating sounds of collision or gunshots. The character ‘丘’ (pronounced as ‘chiou’) means ‘hill.”
“Shape Poetry” 2
Footprints in the Snow (1995)
“A Vending Machine for Nostalgic Nihilists” (1993)
〈懷舊的虛無主義者而設的販賣機〉
Please choose the button
Mother's milk
● cold ● hot
Drifting cloud
● large packet ● medium packet ● small packet
Cotton candy
Daydream
Charcoal-burned coffee
● instant
● enduring ● tangled
● canned ● bottled
● aluminum foiled
● with nostalgia ● with passion ● with death
Star perfume
● with chirping of insects
Sleeping pill
● for vegetarians ● for non-vegetarians
Misty poetry
● two pieces in one ● three pieces in one
Marijuana
Condom
Shadow facial tissue
Moonlight ball pen
● with twittering of birds
● of Freedom brand ● of Peace brand
● pure
● aerosol
● of Opium War brand
● for commercial use ● for noncommercial use
● extra-thin ● transparent
● gray ● black
● water-proof
● white
Chen Li (陳黎 1954-)
Source: < http://dcc.ndhu.edu.tw/chenli/selectedpoems.htm> on 2013/01/09
Chen Li (1954- ) is one of the best representatives of contemporary Chinese poetry in Taiwan. A winner of
many important prizes of poetry in his country, he has written more than ten books of poetry, and has
translated, with his wife Chang Fen-ling, works of many prominent poets—such as Plath, Larkin, Heaney,
Neruda, Paz, Szymborska—into Chinese. He subtly combines in his poetry the elements of Western
“Shape Poetry” 3
modernism and postmodernism with the merits of Oriental poetics and the Chinese language. He is a poet
who humbly and incessantly seeks to find balance between art and life, suffering and joy, dream and reality.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry on 2013/01/10
Concrete poetry. From Wikipedia
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important
in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words,
rhythm, rhyme and so on.
It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has evolved to have distinct meaning of its own,
but which shares the distinction of being poetry in which the visual elements are as important as the text.
The term was coined in the 1950s. In 1956 an international exhibition of concrete poetry was shown
in São Paulo,Brazil, by the group Noigandres (Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari and
Ronaldo Azeredo) with the poets Ferreira Gullar and Wlademir Dias Pino. Two years later, a Brazilian
concrete poetry manifesto was published. One of the earliest Brazilian pioneers, Augusto de Campos, has
assembled a Web site of old and new work (see external links below), including the manifesto. Its
principal tenet is that using words as part of a specifically visual work allows for the words themselves to
become part of the poetry, rather than just unseen vehicles for ideas. The original manifesto says:
Concrete poetry begins by assuming a total responsibility before language: accepting the premise of the
historical idiom as the indispensable nucleus of communication, it refuses to absorb words as mere
indifferent vehicles, without life, without personality without history — taboo-tombs in which convention
insists on burying the idea.:
Although the term is modern, the idea of using letter arrangements to enhance the meaning of a poem is
an old one. This style of poetry originated in Greek Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
Some were designed as decoration for religious art-works, including wing-, axe- and altar-shaped poems.
Only a handful of examples survive, which are collected together in the Greek Anthology. They include
poems by Simias and Theocritus. Early examples of typographically based concrete poetry include the
following poem by George Herbert (1593–1633) (here in a scan of the 1633 edition of Herbert'sThe
Temple), in which the poem is merely a comment on the title, which presents the poem's principal
meaning typographically.
* Picasso, “It is the look of the thing that counts.”
Some Examples of Visual poetry
By e. e. cumings
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“Shape Poetry” 4
1.
What are the major characters in “A War Symphony”? What are the images of these characters?
2.
What is the theme of “A War Symphony”?
3.
What is the picture created by “Footprints in the Snow”? What is the tone, i.e., feelings, sentiments or
atmosphere, in this poem?
4.
What are the ideas that the poet tries to deliver in “A Vending Machine for Nostalgic Nihilists”? What
is he nostalgic about?
5.
Create a shape poem yourself.

Share a shape poem and explain its meaning.

Write a review of a shape poem.

Create a shape poem by yourself.
“Shape Poetry” 5