Publisher's Synopsis
Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Poetics. TOWARD TOTAL POETRY is an extensive primer to modern poetics, focusing especially on the Concrete poets. The problem is not only to transform poetry into something new compared to poetic tradition, but above all that through this transformation poetry becomes a total art. New experimental poetry is no longer exclusively interpretable as a force modifying the usual instruments of poetic creation, or as the necessity of overcoming national linguistic barriers to an explicitly international poetry. Today it seeks to become a total medium, to escape all limitations to include theater, photography, music, painting, typography, cinematographic techniques, and every other aspect of culture, in a utopian ambition to return to origins.
