Higgins Pattern Poetry

Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
Pattern Poetry as Paradigm

Author(s): Dick Higgins
Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 10, No. 2, Art and Literature II (Summer, 1989), pp. 401-428
Published by: Duke University Press
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Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
Dick
Higgins
Fine
Arts,
Williams
The State of
Knowledge
of Pattern
Poetry
From
roughly
the
eighteenth century
until the
1970s,
pattern poetry,
that
is,
poetry
in which a visual
image
is formed
by
the
placement
of words or
letters,
when it received
any
attention at
all,
was
strongly
under attack
by
almost all critics and observers. This was not because
of its
mimesis,
since until the
early
twentieth
century
most visual art
was itself mimetic.
Rather,
the
feeling
was that the
pattern poem
was
intermedial,
that it
lay conceptually
between the
literary
and visual art
media,
and that it was therefore unable to stand on its own and was
thus
inherently
mediocre. In recent
years,
however,
many
of our own
artists,
literary
as well as
visual,
have
explored
the
potentials
of the
intermedia-sound
poetry,
the
happening,
concrete and
postconcrete
poetry,
and so
on-and,
in due
course,
attention has been
given
to
earlier intermedial
works,
suggesting
a
fairly widespread
taste for such
forms at
present.
Emblem
poetry, previously ignored
or
denigrated by
most observers
up
to the
1950s,
was reevaluated
by
Mario Praz
(1964)
and others in the 1960s and since
(see,
e.g., Hatherly
1983 and Pozzi
1981).
The same
appears
to be
happening
with
pattern poetry.
Just
to describe the situation in the United
States,
when I wrote a
little
monograph
on
George
Herbert's
pattern poems (Higgins
1977),
I could find almost
nothing
on
pattern poetry
as such in
English-
a
chapter
here or there
(Hollander 1975),
but
nothing
substantial. A
little book
by
Kenneth Newell
(1976)
had been
published,
but
by
an
extremely
obscure
press;
it was unlisted in the usual
sources,
and I
knew of it
only
later when I found a
copy
of it in the New York Pub-
Poetics
Today
10:2
(Summer 1989).
Copyright
? 1989 The Porter Institute for
Poetics and Semiotics. ccc
0333-5372/89/$2.50.
402 Poetics
Today
10:2
lic
Library.
But since the late 1970s there have
appeared
no fewer
than seven books
internationally, including my
own
attempt
to docu-
ment as
many pattern poems
and their
analogues
(and works
dealing
with
these)
as
possible
in both
European
and
non-European languages
(Higgins
1987).
There have been at least three small exhibitions of
pat-
tern
poetry;
I know of five
major
ones that have been
planned
(most
including
modern visual
poetry
as well as
pattern poems);
Wolfen-
buttel's celebrated
Herzog-August-Bibliothek
hosted a conference in
September
1987;
Visible
Language
has done a
special
issue on
pattern
poetry (Higgins
1986);
and the
bibliography
of
Higgins
1987
lists,
among
its over two thousand
items,
perhaps sixty publications
since
1982 which deal with
pattern poetry.
What can
justify
all this atten-
tion to an area in which the actual
masterpieces
are rather
few,
and in
which most
pieces
are obscure ones
by
minor
artists,
hardly
intended
to last until the next
year,
let alone until
eternity?
The answer
lies,
I
feel,
in four factors:
(1)
There are more master-
pieces
in
pattern poetry
than has
generally
been
realized,
but there
is,
as
yet,
no consensus on what constitutes
appropriate
evaluative cri-
teria.
(2)
The cultural dimension of
pattern poetry
is
incredibly
rich.
Perhaps
as a result of the
obscurity
of the
medium,
the
poet
has
gen-
erally
known some but not
very
much of the work of his
predecessors;
detecting
these
patternings
of information and tradition is a reflexive
process
that
says
much about the nature of such
patternings
which
could not be so
easily
revealed
by
other formal
studies,
such as an in-
vestigation
of the various varieties of the sonnet. Taken
synchronically,
the
pieces suggest
cultural contacts
among contemporaries.
Viewed
diachronically, they
are indicators of the
knowledge
of earlier
forms,
building up
historical models of
reception
and alteration which have
an intrinsic interest.
(3)
To the extent that
pattern poetry
is occasional
verse,
the
study
of its
genres, language,
and visual forms reveals much
about the
people
associated with
it,
poets
as well as dedicatees and
poetic
communities. Most
pattern poems
are
popular
literature,
and
to
study
those that are tells us much not
only
about
literary history
and taste but also about the social
history
of their times. Pieces which
are not
particularly
intended as occasional
verse,
especially
those from
the Renaissance and the
baroque period
(when
the taste for
pattern
poetry
was at its
peak),
are often
by
learned
poets
and thus offer in-
sight
into the intellectual
history
of their times.
(4)
The
pattern poem,
because it is not a
pure
form but an intermedial
one,
offers a sort of
multiple
access to those who wish to work with historical or aesthetic
paradigms.
A
pattern poem
can be
approached
as visual
art,
as ver-
bal
text,
or as a whole. Later we shall see an
example
of this
multiple
access in the
mystery surrounding
the
authorship
of an arma Christi
poem
that
appears
in a work
by
Edward Benlowes
(1603?-76)
but
ap-
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
403
pears
to be
by
Samuel Pomarius
(sixteenth
century?).
The
question
of
originality
or
nonoriginality
in which the
piece
is embedded
seems,
somehow,
to sum
up many aspects
of the four areas.
To obtain a consensus
among recipients
of the
pieces-critics,
schol-
ars,
lay
readers-we would need not
just
a common
vocabulary
and
evaluative
criteria,
together
with a number of
pieces
which we
agreed
were
superb (though perhaps
for different
reasons).
We would also
need a double semiotic of the
pieces:
a semiotic about what the
pieces
and their
images,
whether visual or
verbal,
for
instance,
meant to the
times from which the
pieces emerge,
and some common semiotic
by
which we could discuss what the
pieces
are to
us,
as indicators of all
aspects
of their
meaning.
So
far,
this is
lacking.
Thus,
anything
we
say
now has to be
regarded
as
tentative;
the material is
known,'
but
it will take more than
just
us,
the first
generation
of scholars who
have worked in this
area,
to
say
what it is or what it means. Further-
more,
pattern poetry
cannot
yet convincingly
be related to the recent
visual
poetries,
from
Mallarm6,
the
futurists,
or the dadaists
up
to Ian
Hamilton
Finlay,
Timm
Ulrichs, Jean-Frangois
Bory,
or Franz
Mon,
since most of these
poems
are nonmimetic
(or
represent processes
rather than
things),
so that their visual
aspect generally
seems of a
different order than is usual with
pattern poetry.2
So much for an overview of the current
knowledge
of
pattern poetry.
Now let us turn to the four areas mentioned above.
What Constitutes a Good Pattern Poem?
If we
try
to claim excellence for a
pattern poem
because of its lan-
guage,
we
get
into trouble
immediately. Angot's
(1581-?)
lute-shaped
piece (Angot
1977
[1872])
is
doggerel, yet visually
it is
exciting
and
satisfying (Figure
1).
My
taste tells me it is a
good piece, although
its
language
is rather weak.
Why?
Because,
though
the words are weak
and the visual form
strong, beyond
that there is some determinant of
quality
which is neither: a sort of historical sense that it was
(and
is)
unusual for a
poem
to resemble a
lute,
physically,
and that it
required
1.
Higgins
1987 documents about two thousand
pattern poems
from
European
literatures
plus cognate pieces
from Asiatic
ones,
as well as such related forms as
proteus poems, shaped prose,
and
graphic
musical notations. It also contains 170
illustrations.
2. For
example, virtually
all
labyrinth poems
are nonmimetic.
Again,
the small
festschrift Petersen 1679 includes a
poem
with five
particles,
one in the center and
the others centered on the lines of a
square,
each of which modifies the word in
the center
differently.
Such a
piece
resembles the work of the
Noigandres group
of concrete
poets
in Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. The
piece appears
in
Higgins
1987. On the other
hand,
most of the
"calligrammes"
of
Apollinaire
are
mimetic,
unlike most of the visual
poems
of the
futurists, dadaists, constructivists,
and more
recent
groups.
404 Poetics
Today
10:2
?
0
P\ 9I
cntury. Reprinted from Higgins
1977
by permission.
centQry 04p
O r
some
degree
of inventiveness on the
poet's part
to come
up
with the
concept
of a
lute-shaped
poem, especially
since
originality
as such was
not
prized
in
Angot's
time.
If we
try
to claim excellence because of the visual
quality
of a
piece,
we
get
into almost as much trouble.
George
Herbert's "Easter
Wings"
(Herbert
1977b
[1633])
is made of excellent lines of verse of
varying
length
(Figure 2),
the whole
comprising
two
pairs
of
wings
in the same
manner as the
single
pair
of
wings
authored
by
Simias of Rhodes
(fl.
300 B.C.E.; see
Figure 3).3
Yet Robert Massin
(1970: 184),
the emi-
3. Simias's
poem,
like most of the Greek
technopeignia,
is riddle verse and ex-
tremely allusive, and it is
correspondingly
difficult to build
up
a consensus on its
meaning;
in addition, the
technopeignia
were transmitted in
very corrupt
texts.
Currently,
the most
accepted
reading
is that in Gow 1958, and the best versions
known
today
are those in the Loeb Classics series, which are
slightly
different. But
obviously
these
readings
were unknown to Herbert, who
may
well have known
06)
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
405
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Figure
2.
George
Herbert,
"Easter
Wings,"
1633.
Reprinted
from
Higgins
1977
by permission.
nent French
graphic designer,
when
comparing
Herbert's
poem
to
the works of Benlowes
(1652)
as described
by
Butler
(1908),
dismissed
this "verse exercise" as
"pretty
feeble" because it is
visually
naive,
per-
haps
not
knowing
that the
piece
has
proved
one of the most loved of
Herbert's
poems.
In other
words,
shape
alone does not determine the
excellence of a
piece.
Finally,
it is not an absolute
requirement
that
shape
and text inter-
relate in a visual
poem;
Herbert's
poem
contains such a relation but
Simias's does not. The "most thinne" line of Herbert is one of the
two
shortest,
while Simias's center lines are
just part
of the flow. Yet
such a version as that in
Crespin
1569 or such
popular
earlier versions as that in
the untitled edition of Theocritus
1516,
at which time the
technopeignias
were all
ascribed to Theocritus. The first to work
seriously
on
cleaning up
the mess with the
technopeignias
was Fortunio Liceti
(1577-1654),
whose over
forty published
works
include one on each of the
technopeignias
(the
one on Simias's
egg
is
lost).
The
work on the
wings
is Liceti
1640,
whose date
precludes
Herbert's
having
known it
but which
surely
covers whatever versions he did know. More work should be done
on these
early corrupt
texts,
full of
interpolations though they
are,
to document
their influence.
406 Poetics
Today
10:2
01oax440U
PtfEJ'trovi
-
a 0 ' , :
Figure 3. Simias of Rhodes, "Wings," c-
of Chapin Library, Williams College.
|
B,
i ;7
R_
P,, Ft
1 t
R''
e
Fu ^ . X R W
Figure
3. Simias of
Rhodes,
"Wings,"
c;
of
Chapin Library,
Williams
College.
c
_:
O' r
al
.,
q q
<^
-c,5
cr , cc
.
3
s.z
. 300 . R ed by permission
F .t
i.
300 B.C.E.
Reprinted by permission
Simias's
poem
is also considered excellent
by
most readers
(cf.
"Wings
of love worn
by
virtuous
women,"
by
Jean
Grisel
[sixteenth
century],
reproduced
in Massin 1970:
184),
and its
popularity
over more than
two thousand
years
bears this out.
Might
it not be true of visual
poetry,
as of other
poetic
forms and
other artistic forms in
general,
that there is no
single
determinant,
or even
pair
of
determinants,
of excellence? There must be a whole
list of
determinants,
no one of which need
predominate,
some more
applicable
to visual
aspects
of the
piece,
some more to social or
purely
literary aspects,
and
perhaps
even some to areas
peculiar
to the inter-
medium as such. For
instance,
when one reads a visual
poem,
one
tends to be more conscious of the
physical
act of
reading
than when
one reads normative verse or looks at
pictures
of visual artworks.
Thus,
Herbert's
poem
is to some extent a notation for an act of
reading,
much as a musical score is a notation for a musical
performance.
In-
deed,
the
quality
of notation
may
be one determinant of excellence
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
407
in some
pieces, though obviously
not in all.
Surely
there are other
possibilities.
How One Wave of Pattern
Poetry
Influences Another
Sometime around 845
C.E.,
Hrabanus Maurus
(784-856),
one of the
main
poets
of the
Carolingian
court and also the abbot of
Fulda,
wrote his De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis,4 a work which contains
thirty
"carmina cancellata"
(canceled
poems),
a kind of mesostic
pattern
poem (Figure
4)
based on a
rectangle
within which visual
images
at
least
partly
cancel out letters from their
backgrounds
to form "in-
texts"
(from
the Latin
intextus, "woven").
The work includes no
shaped
poems,
as
such,
but it is close to the carmen cancellatum of St. Boniface
(680-755),
those of Venantius Fortunatus
(ca. 530-600),
and those of
Optatian
(fl.
ca. 325
C.E.),
court
poet
of Constantine the
Great,
with
whom the form
begins, though Optatian's pieces
are far
simpler
and
sometimes described as "carmina
quadrata" (square poems).
From the
text alone we could not see a train of
awareness,
but from the visual
structure we can trace a chain of influence from
Optatian through
Hrabanus. Hrabanus must have
consciously
modeled his
poems
on
these
poets,
all of whom were
clearly
Christian. Were no other models
available?
Well,
a number of Hrabanus's
pieces
use Greek letters-
alpha, omega,
and lambda. It
may
be that he
spoke
Greek,
a rare
skill at the time.
Optatian
himself made a
poem
in the tradition of
the Greek
altar-shaped pattern poems,
and also a
regal-a primitive
organ-which
resembles the Greek
syrinx-shaped poems. Very likely
Hrabanus was aware of these
poems,
but he chose not to base his
poems
on
anything
even
remotely resembling pagan
models. Given
the
general
wave of
bigotry
and fanaticism which
swept
over the
Holy
Roman
Empire
under Louis the Pious when Hrabanus was
working,
and
given
that,
for
example,
Louis ordered
destroyed
the
massive,
largely pre-Christian
collection of Frankish
epic poems, songs,
and
music which
Charlemagne
had
lovingly
collected in a more tolerant
day,
is it not
plausible
to relate Hrabanus's use of
only
Christian models
to the mood of his
time,
even to see this choice as an
expression
of it?
Hrabanus's work exists in three
complete manuscripts
and some
fragmentary
ones;
evidently
it was
highly regarded throughout
the
Middle
Ages.
It was first
published
at Pforzheim in 1503
by
Thomas
Anselm,
one of the famous
printers
there who were the first to
print
whole books in roman
typefaces
rather than in blackletter. As
such,
this book was
sought
after and admired
(and
is
again today among
bibliophiles;
the illustrations are
reproduced
in Massin 1970:
184).
4. For a
fairly
full account of the
bibliography
of De Laudibus Sanctae
Crucis,
manu-
scripts,
and so
on,
see the Medieval Latin section of
Higgins
1987. The Vienna
version,
"Codex Vinobadensis
652,"
is available in a facsimile as Maurus 1970.
408 Poetics
Today
10:2
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l-U T U
S
A P
1 f-C A tA C A.I C T U s
T
1 Co MAf
lab yrinths u bsc u
e. B Is A T a
- q v
EI-e t D C
O
Figure
4. Hrabanus
Maurus,
crucifixion from De Laudibus Sanctae
Crucis,
ca.
845 C.E.
Though
its
reputation
waned
somewhat,
in the seventeenth
century
it was still
being
read.
However,
in the
baroque period
there was a
great
wave of
popularity
for another kind of
rectangular poem,
the
labyrinth,
in which there is a
multiplicity
of
ways
either to read the
poem
or to
present
its texts.
The
origin
of
labyrinths
is obscure .5
They appealed
to the more
5. The traditional view is that
they
come from
eitherJewish
or Christian
cabalism,
both of which were
popular
at the time.
They may
also come from the Tabulae
Iliacae, carved at Rome around the t Cr time f
Christ, on the backs of which near
laby-
rinths
appear.
Besides
Higgins 1987,
sources of more detailed information are the
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
409
a
b
c
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p
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q
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p
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r f
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a b c d c
t g
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n k I nm 1 o
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u
r ft u s
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Figure
5. Daniel Klesel
(?),
blank
labyrinth,
seventeenth
century.
erudite
poets
of the
time,
among
them
August
II,
duke of
Liineburg-
Braunschweig
(1579-1666),
founder of the
Herzog-August-Biblio-
thek. Under the
pseudonym
Gustavus
Selenus,
he authored a
very
fa-
mous book on codes and
puzzles,
the
Cryptomenytices
et
Cryptographiae
... Libri 9
(1624),
which includes
labyrinths, poems by
Hrabanus and
Optatian, among
others
(August
1624:
140),
and some blank forms
for
labyrinths thought
to be
by
one Daniel Klesel
(Figure
5)
which were
rather
widely reprinted
in other works
throughout
the seventeenth
and
eighteenth
centuries
(see
Sutor 1740:
770)
and are
usually
as-
cribed
by
critics
today
to the authors of the work.
(The
resulting
biblio-
graphical
mess can be
straightened
out
only by sorting
out the works
in
question, comparing labyrinths
and dates of
publication,
so that the
massive Kern
1982,
only part
of which deals with
literary labyrinths; Rypson
1986;
and
Hatherly
1983,
which centers on
labyrinths
because,
for whatever
reason,
most
surviving Portuguese
visual
poems
of the
past
are
labyrinths.
I
k
I
I
-
RT"
410 Poetics
Today
10:2
like attracts
like
like attracts
like
like attracts
like
like attracts
like
like attracts like
like attracts
like
like attracts
like
likeattractslike
likaettractlike
!il aQtradcke
likhtratfe
literalie
lifteite
Figure
6. Emmett
Williams,
"like attracts
like,"
1958.
of
Something
Else Press.
correct
authorship
can be
identified.)
By checking through
works of
this sort from the
point
of view of
pattern poetry,
one can see that even
in the seventeenth
century
Hrabanus's work was available to those who
wished to look for it.6 As for
August's grid poems,
when
they
are not
known,
it seems to be
necessary
to reinvent them. For
example, they
are
very
similar to those of the Darmstadt school of concrete
poets-
whose
membership
included Claus
Bremer,
Daniel
Spoerri,
and most
6. Hrabanus was known and
being
cited or
anthologized
in Poland and the
Ukraine,
then under Polish
influence,
though already
under Russian
rule,
in the
eighteenth century.
Selenus
(August)
and Trithemius were also known.
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
41 1
notably
Emmett Williams
(1975: 52-81)-which
flourished in the late
1950s
(Figure
6).
But of
course,
just
how this model of awareness
works is
something
that the theoreticians will have to work
out;
all
we can do is to show that the echoes and
reprinting
are facts. When
this
process
is
completely
understood,
we will be able to
say,
"Once
there was
poem
A,
which was
subsequently
seen
by
another
poet
as
A',
who either
developed
it or cited it with a new function when he
made his
poem
B." Creative
misinterpretation
has
always
been a
part
of
poetic
influence,
and
pattern poetry provides good paradigms
for
comprehending
it.
Traditions of Pattern
Poetry
As for
pattern poetry
as occasional
verse,
such
poetry
in
general
has
a bad name. Most of us assume that the best
poetry
is intended to
last into
eternity,
whereas,
in
fact,
many pieces,
even some
by major
poets,
are intended
only
to
capture
the
spirit
of some moment or occa-
sion. Pattern
poetry,
with its
potential
for heraldic
imagery
and
such,
seems
particularly
well suited to do
so;7 in
fact,
modern
advertising
has
recognized
this and often uses
shaped prose
for
graphic impact
(see
Massin 1970 for French
examples).
Even in the nineteenth cen-
tury,
when the serious
pattern poem
was all but
forgotten
and most
reactions to it were
very
hostile
(Higgins
1987: ch.
1),
the medium
lived on in folk and
popular
literature,
which includes
advertising
lit-
erature. The
poem
"To
My
Honored
Friend,"
by
Matthew Stevenson
(1986 [1654]),
a
regret
that the
poet's
barber has moved
away,
must
surely
rank
among
the worst
poems
in the
English language;
its lan-
guage
is flat and its
shapes,
a set of three
lozenges,
are rather dull.
But that Stevenson wrote it at all
suggests
that there were other
poems
of its sort
around,
some of which have not
survived,
that were worth
imitating.
On the other
hand,
still in
popular
literature,
Prison Pietie
(1677),
by
Samuel
Speed (1631-82),
includes three
pattern poems,
"The Altar"
(Figure
7),
"The
Cross,"
and "The Bible."
Speed,
a sometime stationer
at St. Dunstan's and a bookseller at The Rainbow in Fleet
Street,
was
arrested and
imprisoned
in 1666 for
publishing
and
selling
seditious
books. Both his
surviving
works,
the
"Fragmenta
carceris" and the
book of
poetry,
reflect this
experience.
The
poems
have
inspired
im-
passioned
denunciation from academic critics for their imitativeness
in
comparison
with
George
Herbert,
who also wrote an altar
poem
(Figure
8;
Herbert 1977a
[1633]),
and Robert
Herrick,
who wrote
a cruciform one. What one can
reply
here is that
Speed
used
good
7. Heraldic
images
were
particularly popular
in Polish
pattern poetry
of the seven-
teenth and
eighteenth
centuries;
no such
images
are known in
English.
412 Poetics
Today
10:2
( The Altar.
A
broken
A
L
TA
R,
Lord, to thee I
raife,
Made of a
Heart,
toec?lcbrate
thy
praife:
Thou, tltat the
onely
Workman
art,
That
canft
cement a
brokeri
heart.
For fuch is mine,
0 make it thine
Take out the Sin
That's hid therein.
Though
it be
Stone,
Make it to
groan;
That fo the fame
May praife thy
Name.
Melt it , 0 Lord ,
I thee
defire ,
With Flames from
thy
Celcflial fire;
_
That it
may
ever
fpeak thy
Praife
alone,
Since thou haft
changed
into Flefh a Stone.
Figure
7. Samuel
Speed,
"The
Altar,"
1677.
models,
that his
work,
however
crude,
overflows with
sincerity,
and
that it is an excellent
example
of what we
today
call
prison
literature.
Somehow it enhances Herbert and Herrick that their forms could be
adapted by Speed
to an honest
expression
of
joy
at his salvation or
reform.
Finally,
the
shapes
of
pattern poetry
have their own traditions. For
example, pyramids
are
normally
used to celebrate someone or some-
thing.
When
they
are
inverted, however,
they express grief
or the
opposite
of what
they express right
side
up;
hence their use
by
the En-
glish
Roman Catholic Richard Willis
(ca. 1545-1600)
at a time when
his church was
repressed (Ernst
1982:
308).
The various uses of the
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
The Altar.
A broken
ALTAR, Lord, thy
fervant reares
Made of a
heart,
and cemented with teares
Whofe
parts
are as
thy
hand did
frame;
No workmans tool hath touch'd the fame.
A HEART alone
Is fuch a ftone
As
nothing
but
Thy pow'r
doth
cut,
Wherefore each
part
Of
my
hard heart
Meets in this
frame,
To
praife thy
name.
That if I chance to hold
my peace,
Thefe ftones to
praife
thee
may
not ceafe.
O let
thy
bleffed SACRIFICE be
mine,
And fanetifie this A L T AR to be thine.
Figure
8.
George
Herbert,
"The
Altar,"
1633.
Reprinted
from
Higgins
1977
by permission.
cross in
pattern poetry,
the
subject
of a recent
essay by
Ulrich Ernst
(1986),
are
similarly worthy
of social
analysis,
not
only
for what
they
reveal in devotional
poetry
and the
impact they occasionally
add to
it,
but also for
identifying
the faith of the
poet,
which
may help
to
explain
those of his
poems
that are not
pattern poetry (very
few
poets
are known
only
for their
pattern poetry).
Originality
One of the chief differences between recent visual
poetry
and
pattern
poetry
is in their attitudes towards
originality.
Most
twentieth-century
visual
poets
seem to have been attracted to visual
poetry,
dada,
con-
crete,
or some other
kind,
because
they
sensed that it had not been
done,
that it was
new,
that it was an innovative source of communica-
tion,
and that its
novelty
was
justified by
the new levels of verbal or
visual
impact
that
might
be achieved
through
it.8 On the one
hand,
most of these
poets
were not
very
well informed about
pattern poetry
8. In some less
cosmopolitan literatures,
pattern poetry
has continued into the
twentieth
century, especially
in cross
form,
in the sense that it not
only
is mimetic
but seems conscious of its
place
in a tradition somehow
opposed
to an
avant-garde
sensibility.
413
414 Poetics
Today
10:2
(Gerhard
Ruhm is a notable
exception);
on the
other,
the stress on in-
novation often led to an
unspoken assumption
that each work should
be made in a
visually unique
form.
Pattern
poetry,
on the other
hand,
usually
has
proceeded
from
another
assumption.
The
poet
has not made
originality
a
priority
but has worked within the traditions associated with the form he
has chosen for a
particular piece-cross, wing, syrinx, pyramid, egg,
wheel,
labyrinth,
or another
9-just
as,
when
writing
a
sonnet,
the same
poet
seldom tries to invent his own
type
of
sonnet,
patterning
his
prosody
instead on the Petrarchan or
Shakespearean
sonnet. Further-
more,
especially
in
Germany,
where "how to write a
poem"
works
were
very popular
(Schottel[er] 1656;
Harsdorffer
1644-57;
Kornfeld
1685;
and
perhaps
a dozen
more),
the
poet
who chose
pattern poetry
as his medium was
deliberately allying
himself with a
tradition,
albeit
a
living
one, and,
by
the
eighteenth century,
with one which the more
innovative
poets
of the time considered outmoded. It is thus a conser-
vative
tendency
on the
part
of those later
poets
to
compose pattern
poetry,
not an innovative or
experimental
one,
as it is with us
today.
And even the social functions of such
poems
were associated with
convention. For
example,
one of the
typical
forms of folkloric
pattern
poetry
in
English
(and
also in
Swedish)
is the
pretzel-like rhyme
for-
mation
(Figure
9;
Mennes and Smith 1658:
I,
304),
called
variously
the
lover's
knot,
true lover's
knot,
and the like
(see
Higgins
1986:
33-35,
46-47;
Staff 1970:
28-39).
Evidently
there was a tradition in Brit-
ain and the United States of
sending
these
pieces
on Valentine's
Day
morning.
Oliver Goldsmith
(1981: 33-34)
mentions this tradition at
the start of
chapter
4 of The Vicar
of Wakefield
in his
description
of the
idyllic
and old-fashioned
setting
of the vicar's new
parish.
The custom
was
already
associated
by
that time with
tradition,
not with innovation.
(Of course,
more work has
yet
to be done on folk traditions of
pattern
poetry.)
Besides lover's knots there are
others,
such as
shaped magical
charms.
However,
the value of
originality
to the
seventeenth-century
mind
is hard to estimate. On the one
hand,
as Elizabeth Cook
(1986)
points
out,
Hrabanus Maurus was esteemed
partly
for his
originality.'0
On
the other
hand,
as
Wayne
Shumaker
(1972: 19)
has also observed
(in
reference
specifically
to
Neoplatonism), originality
was
frequently
9. For
example,
in India the
analogue
of
pattern poetry
is the
citra-kavya,
which,
like the
pattern poem, usually
is written in
any
of about 120 traditional bandhas
or visual
shapes,
such as
lotuses, swords, flowers,
and butter churn handles
(which
resemble
crosses).
10. In Cook 1986: 23-26 also there is an account of
reprints
of Hrabanus's work
and its
reception,
who knew
it,
and so on.
Chapter
2 of Cook is devoted to
pattern
poetry.
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
415
Figure
9.
Anonymous,
true lover's
knot,
1658.
seen as a vice or flaw: "The
imperative
in the Renaissance to
deny
originality
was as
strong
as the desire now to be credited with it."
There are numerous
instances,
especially
in German
literature,
of a
poet including
works
by
another in his own without there
having
been
any question
of
plagiarism,
even
though
the borrowed works are not
properly
credited to their true author."
11. Enoch Hanmann
(seventeenth
century)
includes several
pattern poems
of his
own in his edition of the works of Martin
Opitz (1597-1639);
fifteen
pattern poems
by Johannes
Geuder
(1640-93)
are included in
Johannes
Praetorius's
Satyrus Ety-
416 Poetics
Today
10:2
An extreme
example
of casual
borrowing
is found in the work of
the "much
maligned"
(Cook
1986:
24)
Edward Benlowes
(1652).
His
Theophila,
or Love's
Sacrifice
includes,
along
with some fine
rhapsodic
verse and some sections that read like
filler,
a
superb pattern poem
on the motif of the arma
Christi,
entitled "Passio Christi"
(Figure
10).
Copies vary;
in
some,
a set of three crosses is bound in at the
very
end
(Cook
1986:
25).
But most
appear
to include the arma
Christi,
that
is,
a set of
poetic
texts
shaped
into the
objects
associated with the
Passion:
scourge,
dice, cross, rooster,
and so on. The texts are in fact
intexts in
Latin,
and the
piece
itself is a carmen cancellatum somewhat
in the manner of Hrabanus Maurus. The work was
very beautifully
engraved
in 1632
by
Thomas
Cecill,
who was admired
by many
of his
contemporaries,
such as
John Evelyn, according
to the
Dictionary
of
National
Biography.
Now,
even if one
accepts
the sarcastic attack of his near
contempo-
rary,
Samuel Butler
(1908: 47-57),12
there is no
gainsaying
that Ben-
lowes was devoted to his art. A friend of the scholar
Ralph
Winter-
ton
(ca. 1610-80),
an admirer of the
pastoral poet
William Browne
(1591-1643),
and the translator
Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618),
all of
whom have earned their own
place
as
pattern poets,
Benlowes for
about
twenty years actually employed
his own
printer, John
Schoren,
who
grossly betrayed
his trust and robbed him. Benlowes
supported
the
publication
of Francis
Quarles (1592-1644),
who wrote four
pat-
tern
poems
as well as his emblem
books,
and Phineas Fletcher
(1582-
1650),
among
other
poets, eventually dying
in
penury.13
Such a man
is not
likely
to have been
guilty
of such
grossly
unethical conduct as
deliberate
plagiarism.
A German
example
of
literary borrowing
from this time is a broad-
side that
appeared
in
Magdeburg
sometime between the end of Wal-
lenstein's
siege
in 1629 and the
burning
of the
city by Tilly
in 1631. It
mologicus
. . .
(1672),
a work on
witchcraft;
Rudolf Karl Geller
(seventeenth
cen-
tury)
is the author of a cross which
appears
in a
published
version of a drama
by
Johann Klaj(us) (1616-56),
Der leidende Christus ...
(1645);
and
many
members
of the Order of the Flower of the
Pegnitz Shepherds,
a
literary
and moral
society
founded in
seventeenth-century Nuremberg
which still exists
today, among
them
such
poets
as
Georg Philipp
Harsdorffer
(1607-58), Johann Helwig
(1609-74),
and
Klaj(us), printed
works
by
each other in their
books,
usually pseudonymously.
12. Butler's attack on Benlowes's
pattern poems suggests, by
its
centrality,
that
Benlowes
composed
more
pattern poems
than have survived. If he
did,
the
possi-
bility
is not discussed in
Jenkins 1952,
the
only full-length biography
of
Benlowes,
which
says
rather little about the
pattern poems
(but
which
does,
on
pages
112-15,
give
useful information on his admiration of Browne and
Sylvester). Only
Jenkins
says
that 1602 was Benlowes's birth
year;
this date is still controversial.
13. Benlowes's
sponsorship
of other
poets
was attacked
by
later writers who dis-
liked
pattern poetry,
for
example,
Alexander
Pope
in The Dunciad: "Benlowes,
propitious
still to
Blockheads,
bows"
(3.21). Today,
of
course,
the
question
of Ben-
lowes's taste has been
reopened.
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
417
Figure
10. Edward Benlowes
(?),
"Passio
Christi,"
1652.
Reprinted by permis-
sion of
Chapin Library,
Williams
College.
bears an arma Christi
poem, "Figurata
Meditatio Passionis Christi"
(Figure 11),
composed by
"Samuele Pomario"
(see
Ernst 1985:
77).
That the
poem
was
published by
Balthasar
Caymox
as some kind of
memorial does not seem
improbable.
But a woodcut version of the
very
same
poem
is included in a
manuscript
at the
Herzog-August-
Bibliothek in
Wolfenbiittel,
"Cod. Guelf.
Aug.
38.25,"
folio
84,'4
which
includes no
pieces
more recent than 1590. Thus the author of the
piece
14. For this information we are indebted to Professor Dr. Ulrich Ernst of the
Bergische
Universitat,
Wuppertal.
-gr: PA S IO C H RI S T
I1His
Pasit
sH
D&NOXA
G?tAVIY CVVIT
HgARDa
IVA
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Figure
11. Samuel Pomarius, "Figurata
Meditatio Passionis Christi," ca. 1630.
of Vandenhoeck und
Ruprecht, Gottingen.
is not the celebrated
theologian
Samuel
Pomarius, who was in
any
case
a child in 1630, but it could be the Samuel Pomarius who is known to
have been the
parson
of St. Gertrauden's Church in
Magdeburg,
and
who
may
have been the brother of Johann Pomarius
(d. 1578),
with
whom a Samuel Pomarius wrote a verse chronicle of the
city. (A
set of
illustrated devotional verses
by
a Samuel
Pomarius,
dated
1581,
is also
extant, and,
though
we do not know for
sure,
this
may
have been the
same
poet.)
The facts are clear: The Pomarius version of the arma Christi is
known to have existed before 1590, while the version found in
many
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
419
copies
of Benlowes's work was not
engraved by
Cecill until 1632. We
also know that from the summer of 1627 until late 1630 Benlowes
traveled on the
continent,
attending
lectures at
universities,
and also
that he was born a Roman Catholic and remained one until his con-
version to
Anglicanism
in 1632. This accords with his use of an arma
Christi. Note also that the Benlowes version is not
specifically
credited
to Benlowes.
Might
it have been a
piece
which Benlowes received from
the continent? Since he was a connoisseur and the
piece
is a fine ex-
ample
of its
sort,15
might
he not have commissioned Cecill to
engrave
it in
England? Why
is the
piece
in some but not all
copies
of
Theophila?
Might
it not be the case that Benlowes never claimed the
piece
as his
own,
but that he wished to use it in his work and that the
question
of its
authorship
was
unimportant enough
to him that he
neglected
to
give
the author due credit?
Might
he not have left it out of some
copies
of
Theophila
because it was not his own
work,
and because of its
possible
associations with Roman Catholicism?
This
may
be
overly
charitable to
Benlowes,
but it also
may
be the
best
explanation.
Thus far we have
only
a
hypothesis,
an
unproven
theory.
What our evidence shows most
clearly
is that
originality
was
not considered of
primary importance
at the time. In
any
case,
this
instance of
plagiarism
or
unacknowledged borrowing
would
probably
not have been noticed if it had not been for the current international
interest in
pattern poetry,
which has resulted in the examination and
reevaluation of a
large
amount of material.
Recent Visual
Poetry
versus Pattern
Poetry
A few remarks seem called for with
regard
to
pattern poetry
and the
visual
poetries
of our own
century.
Is there
any great
difference
among
these? Not
really. Attempts
have been made to
distinguish
these
poet-
ries-which I will with
great
hesitance call "modern"-from
pattern
poetry
on the
grounds
that the
pattern poems
are more
typically
mi-
metic. But are
they?
It is true that our
examples
in this small selection
do not reflect
geometrical
forms or inventions or abstract
processes,
but if the reader will turn to
Higgins
1987,
which has about 170 illus-
trations,
we see that there is no
shortage
of abstract visual construc-
tions,
including
those
which,
like the Darmstadt school
example
of
Williams
(Figure
6),
derives the
logic
of its visual
shape purely
from the
meaning
of its words. Nikolaus Petersen's
seventeenth-century
Danish
piece
there is of this sort. There are also some similarities between
other Williams
pieces
and the one
by
Daniel Klesel
(Figure
5).
15. Cf. the set
by
Guido Casoni
(1975 [1626]),
the full version of which first
ap-
peared
in the twelfth edition of
Casoni;
its
language
is weak and its visual forms
crude,
though
Casoni was one of the most
popular poets
of his time.
420 Poetics
Today
10:2
However,
it was
strategically inopportune, particularly
for the earli-
est moderns such as Guillaume
Apollinaire
(1880-1918),
to claim
any
great affinity
with the earlier
pieces;
and in this
respect
the mod-
ern
pieces
are different from older
ones,
being consciously
dissociated
from their traditions
(see,
e.g.,
Ernst
1982, 1986).
The moderns had to
claim
greater originality
for themselves than was warranted in order
to allow their formal novelties to be
accepted
at all.16 The
pattern poets
wished to do
quite
the
opposite,
to
pretend
to less
originality
than
was,
in
fact,
the
case,
both to
strengthen
the evocativeness of their work
and to create a sense of auctoritas behind it. A
poem
takes
part
of its
strength
from the other
poems
one can feel behind
it,
from its
literary
evocativeness.
Only
at
great peril
does a
poet destroy
this allusiveness
in order to fill out the
image
of the
"totally
new"
poem.
After
all,
when a
totally
new
poem
is no
longer totally
new,
on what can it then
depend
to
replace
its
novelty?
Its
language?
The assumed historical
sense of the reader? This
question
would have been
apparent
to
many
of the
pattern poets
if not to our
contemporaries,
with their
eagerness
to
belong
to an
avant-garde
or their concern that what
they
do must
achieve some sort of formal
novelty.
Secondly, only
about two thousand
pattern poems
are
known;
the
catalog
of the Sackner Archive lists at least
twenty
thousand visual
poems
of one kind or another from this
century
alone
(see
Sackner
and Sackner
1986).
Where there are
perhaps
a dozen or so historical
groupings
in
pattern poetry apart
from
nationality,
or
perhaps
three
dozen
by genre
and
subgenre,
in the modern materials there are at
least eleven or twelve historical divisions
which,
if a
large
critical his-
torical work were ever done on
twentieth-century
visual
poetry,
would
each need
chapters:
futurism,
Apollinaire
and the Parisians
(such
as
Pierre
Albert-Birot, 1876-1967),
East
European
cubofuturism,
dada-
ism in its various
forms,17
De
Stijl
and Bauhaus
typographic experi-
16. The
only
comment of which we are aware on the
part
of an
early-modern
visual
poet
is
Apollinaire's,
documented in Bohn 1986:
46-48,
where one Felicien
Fagus,
referring
to Rabelais and Panard in the
pages
of Paris-Midi
(July
22, 1914),
wrote,
"I have indeed returned to basic
principles
since the
ideogram
is the fundamental
principle
of
writing.
However,
the difference between
my poems
and the
examples
he cites is like that between a
toy
automobile of the sixteenth
century, powered
by
clockwork
springs,
and a modern
racing
car. The
solitary shapes by
Rabelais
and Panard lack
expressiveness,
like the other
typographical drawings,
whereas
the relations between the
juxtaposed figures
in one of
my poems
are as
expressive
as the words that
compose
it. And this at
least,
I
think,
is a new invention."
17. The most convenient recent
publication
on
early-modern
visual literature is
that edited
by Dachy (1985). Dachy's
selection,
drawing
on
very
rare material,
is
both unusual and
pertinent;
the colored illustrations are in the form of 35 mm
slides. Another useful recent collection about the
early
moderns is Hulten 1986.
Higgins
?
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
421
._
rE: _. r
3
iS:
f-f ;
j : :;
.,, s - 'S i:
T:' . rE
.. Y F
'': .
::f t
::
:L:
:.
:: y
ldS :Z
.s s
Figure
12.
Vassily Kamensky (1884-1961), "ferro-concrete," 1912. Broadside
consisting
of six
pieces
dedicated to the
poet, painter,
and
organizer
David
Burliuk
(1882-1967). Reprinted by permission
of Marc
Dachy.
422 Poetics
Today 10:2
.u
ru
evasti He,- Pass*r*
r t w w E< .
:E : : _-
FW M.
7~ ~ ~~~NH le 270
* .S h : : 7 5t~~~~4
Figure 13.
Ilyazd (Ilya Zdanovich, 1894-1975), poster, 1921.
Reprinted
by
permission
of Marc
Dachy.
Higgins
?
Pattern
Poetry as Paradigm 423
w~oi
'-W
PStm4fn:
:~h
Figure
14. Wladistaw Strzeminski
(1893-1952), cover to book of
poems by
Julian Przybos. Reprinted by permission
of Marc
Dachy.
'r
424 Poetics
Today
10:2
Figure
15. Ernst Buchwalder
(1941- ),
"poetree,"
1971.
Reprinted by per-
mission of Art
contemporain.
Higgins
*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
425
ments,
post-World
War II lettrism,
18 concrete
poetry
(this
large
and
cumbersome classification should
perhaps
be broken
up),19
and
poesia
visiva or
postconcrete styles.20
Some of these materials are more famil-
iar than others. In recent
years
the dadaist
pieces
have been
reprinted
endlessly,
whereas others have received less than their due from liter-
ary
scholars. The cubofuturists have been
widely
written about
by
art
historians and
Slavicists,
but less so
by comparative
literature scholars.
Our
Figures
12-14
(see
Dachy
1984)
are chosen to show what a
variety
of materials is available here. We have also shown an
example
of a con-
crete
poem by
Emmett Williams
(Figure
6)
and now show one of
poesia
visiva
by
the Swiss artist Ernst Buchwalder
(Figure
15;
see
Kempton
and
Higgins
1984).
Thus there are statistical
problems
involved with
the modern
pieces; they
are common and
accessible,
but the historical
process
of
filtering
out the best and of
establishing
the
appropriate
criteria has not
yet proceeded very
far.
Nor,
one
might
add,
should
the
process
have
proceeded
too far
yet,
with
regard
to the most recent
materials,
since for it to have done so
might
have led to a
judgmental
and historicistic
atmosphere
in which
any
kind of artistic
innovation,
any
new
style
or
statement,
was stifled without
being given
the benefit
of the
doubt,
which such innovations need in order to be nurtured.
For this
reason,
it will take a
long
time to sort out the modern
materials,
to
classify
them without
putting
them
prescriptively
into the
straitjacket
of the "model" visual
poem.
Hence
my
reluctance to show
more than a few
examples
of what such
pieces
can be in
Figures
6 and
15. Dozens of others would serve as well. But in
dealing
with these
most recent
areas,
one invades the land of the artist and his observers.
As a
practicing
artist,
I
prefer
to leave this invasion to others and to
confine
my
own observations to areas
which,
though
unfamiliar,
are
older and not
likely
to conflict with
my
own work.
18. There is as
yet
no
large scholarly
work in
English
on the
lettrists,
though
there
is a fine small work edited
by Curtay (1985), published
also as a
special
issue of
Visible
Language.
The visual
poetry
from the 1930s and 1940s in the United States
by
Bern Porter and
others,
which
appeared
in Circle and other
magazines,
has no
particular
title and is
poorly
documented.
19. The literature of concrete
poetry
is vast in
published
work but
surprisingly
small,
on the
whole,
in criticism. In the United
States,
the two most
important
anthologies
are those
by
Williams
(1968)
and Solt
(1968).
There is a
great
deal of
criticism of concrete
poetry
in German
distinguishing
it from other visual
poetries,
for
example,
two issues of Text +
Kritik,
25
(1970)
and 40
(1975),
and
Hartung
1975,
to which there is
nothing comparable
in
English.
The best we have is Richard
Kostelanetz's
(1979)
far more miscellaneous "Visual Lit Crit."
20. Two
typical
recent
publications
of
poesia
visiva are Dencker 1984 and
Kemp-
ton and
Higgins
1984. Other
useful,
current
periodicals
which
publish many
works
of
poesia
visiva are
Doc(k)s (France),
Lotta
poetica (Italy),
and Kontexts
(Canada).
426 Poetics
Today
10:2
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*
Pattern
Poetry
as
Paradigm
427
Herbert,
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Higgins Pattern Poetry

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