This study examines a series of visual poems that Guillaume Apollinaire composed in 1917 for an exhibition of paintings by Leopold Survage and Irene Lagut. By this date Apollinaire had become an accomplished practitioner of visual poetry and was thoroughly at ease with the genre. Depicting horses, flowers, landscapes, clocks, the Survage/Lagut series represents the culmination of his visual experiments and contains some of his most pleasing forms. Conceived as examples of poesie critique ("critical poetry"), the poems in the series comment in diverse ways on the paintings and combine critical perspectives with techniques associated with the prose poem.
Utilizing insights developed in The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928, the author seeks to shed new light on Apollinaire's visual poetry through an in-depth analysis of this compact group of works. The analysis itself concentrates on three distinct areas: the poem as poem, the poem as visual poem, and the poem as criticism. The first focuses on the verbal elements of the poetry, the second on the relationship between these and the visual elements, and the third on the relationship of the total poem to paintings by Lagut and Survage.
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As one would expect, part of the book is directed toward readers who are familiar with Apollinaire or who would like to know more about him. Since Apollinaire is a major poet, any project connected with his work will also interest readers who are concerned with modern French poetry in general. While at first glance the texts themselves may appear to be peripheral, the principles they embody are central not only to Apollinaire's poetry but to modern aesthetics as well. The more we learn about the calligrams, the better equipped we will be to appreciate his efforts and the closer we will come to understanding his concept of visual poetry. Similar remarks apply to Apollinaire's experiments with cubist poetry and with the poem in prose - both examined in the present volume.
More than anything, perhaps, this volume strives to elucidate the concept of poesie critique, which has received very little attention. This omission is surprising since the genre influenced the Surrealist invention of poesie synthetique as well as many writers who followed Apollinaire, trying to reconcile poetry and criticism.
. In addition to clarifying issues related to the poems themselves, the study attempts to accomplish two objectives that are more ambitious. First, it seeks to increase our theoretical knowledge regarding visual poetry in general. Since this genre has enjoyed widespread popularity in the twentieth century, it is closely linked to modern existence itself. Second, the study seeks to expand our knowledge of the relations between poetry and painting. Since there has been extensive cross-fertilization between them for the better part of a century, this subject provides an additional link to the modern experience.
