On Representation in Concrete and Semiotic Poetry

Claus Cluver's essay talks about the relationship between "depiction and description" and discusses the boundary between image and text. Cluver introduces the concept of ekphrasis which he defines as "the verbal representation of a real or fictitious text composed in a non-verbal sign system" and provides several pieces for inspection. The first set of pieces are shaped poems that contain the artist's name repeated continuously in an imitated shape of that artist's painting or sculpture. This combination of image and text, referred to by Cluver as verbivisual text, shows how viewers perceive works of art by associating a name with a specific form. Cluver continues with the discussion of poems in which the imagistic quality has been layered over the figurative relationship between the verbal text and what it represents. Next, Cluver explores whether ekphrasis in fact aptly conveys the idea of imagery due to the fact that the nature of text and its significance is arbitrary to begin with. However, he does emphasize the potential of such image-text poems to convey a specific image or idea despite being veiled in abstraction. The text conveys many ideas and thoughts without the use of excessive words and descriptions and instead communicates these ideas through simple visual signs. These poetic verbivisual texts, according to Cluver, "appeal to our visual imagination and to non-verbal thinking."

Cluver suggests that in our culture, we associate an artist with their "classic" works to the point that the name and piece dissolve into "a text that is simultaneously image and poem." However, does this substitution of name into image detract from the meaning of the artwork?