The spatialist poetry on the horizon line

Abstract

Conceived by the poet Pierre Garnier and his wife Ilse in the 1960s, Spatialisme is the French literary movement that corresponds to the Brazilian Concretism of the brothers Campos and Décio Pignatari. However, the visual poems created by the Garnier couple cannot be considered to obey the same artistic principles strongly established by Brazilian poets. Although they appropriate the innovative experiences with the format, these poems are distinguished from the beginning for revealing lyrical qualities common to most of the tradition’s poems in verse. Between verse and visual, between time and space, between linear and simultaneity, between song and inscription, between the avant-garde and tradition, Spatialisme occupies an intermediate place. The space that became the foundation of the spatialist theory is a space of conciliation, relation, and unity. It is the space of an old lyrical artifice: the analogy. And that explains why Pierre Garnier so often uses the horizon line in his poems.