Calligrammes

For the type of artwork, see Calligram.

Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War 1913–1916, is a collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire which was first published in 1918. Calligrammes is noted for how the typeface and spatial arrangement of the words on a page plays just as much of a role in the meaning of each poem as the words themselves – a form called a calligram. In this sense, the collection can be seen as either concrete poetry or visual poetry.

A calligram from Calligrammes

Apollinaire described his work as "an idealisation of free verse poetry and typographical precision in an era when typography is reaching a brilliant end to its career, at the dawn of the new means of reproduction that are the cinema and the phonograph".^[1]

Gallery

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  Cheval
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  La Colombe poignardée et le Jet d’eau
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  Cœur, couronne et miroir
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  L'oiseau et le bouquet
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  La Mandoline, l’œillet et le bambou
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  Voyage
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  Venu de Dieuze
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  Il pleut
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  A calligram from Calligrammes^[2]
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  A calligram from Calligrammes