Guillaume apollinaire biography cm 2005 video

Our new century and its surge in poetic activity resembles the turn of the 20th century, a time when the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire , influenced by cinema and telegraphic technologies, carefully sketched by hand, and then had typeset, poetry that used letters and words in a new way, one that suggested moving images. His courageous poetry formed pictures by means of the placement of letters and words on the page.

Those images, though immobile, brimmed with movement, action waiting to happen, and Apollinaire predicted it was only a matter of time before poets would incorporate genuine motion and sound in their poems. Apollinaire anticipated digital poetry, a current style of poetry that animates letters and words. He foresaw the role technology would play in poetry, anticipating a day when poets would have the ability to merge words with pictures and sound.

They will provide a completely new lyricism driven by the motion now taking place with the phonograph and cinema. This poetry is now in its infancy. But watch out, it will soon speak for itself, and a new spirit will fill the universe and manifest itself in the field of letters and art, and in everything that is known. Scattered words and seemingly unrelated conversations of persons visiting the Eiffel Tower spin out from the wheel in all directions.

There is no specific way in which this poem, meant to mimic a postcard, should be read. It is not interpreted in a linear way, not from top to bottom or left to right. It does not have a primary focal point.

Guillaume Apollinaire / by LeRoy C. Breunig.

The poem renders the impression of simultaneity. The first streak reads from top down. The streaks of words evoke rain, establishing an atmosphere of sorrow that complements the message.