“Concrete Cat” is an example
of a “concrete poem,” a poem made for the eye. The chief concern of such a poem
is with the physical appearance of poetry – not primarily with ideas or
emotions, not with language as we ordinarily use it, but with the “reduced
language” of the word itself as it appears on the page or elsewhere.
The pet may be telling us about a cat, but may be showing its “catness” in action – as far as this can be done by black and white letters on a page. We see that the cat’s tongue is a U, and so on. The pun in the cat’s middle stripe (tripes) is the only place where language aspires toward poetry and become figurative.
The pet may be telling us about a cat, but may be showing its “catness” in action – as far as this can be done by black and white letters on a page. We see that the cat’s tongue is a U, and so on. The pun in the cat’s middle stripe (tripes) is the only place where language aspires toward poetry and become figurative.
“Concrete Cat” is implied poem that
indicates the concrete ideas about something. This type of poem is meant to see
rather than to read. is a concrete poem by which we mean a poem for the eye not
for the ear. However, this type of poem reveals the clever remark through of
words and it is good fun to read and see the concrete poem. The poet here
experiences his sight of cat through the letters and he organizes the words in
a very skillful way that represent a shape of a cat and different organs of the
cat. The letter “A” indicates or creates the shape of pointed ears and U makes
the mouth. The white backdrop and black letters here show the real stripe of
the cat. This cat concentrates here in front of the readers after killing the
mouse. The upside down letter of mouse indicates that the mouse is killed by
the cat. The selections of words such as stripe, whisker, paw, tail etc
characterize the real cat like a picture but if the poet would use sentences
instead of words, his concrete poem would never come to a form of cat.
Some of the letters are capitalized
by the poet, such as A to show the pointed ends of the ear; U to show the
curved position of its tongue and mouth and Y to show the nose that separates
two eyes. The letters of the word “tail” is written by giving more space to
show the length of the tail, which is long and slightly bending.
The poet sets the letters of the
word “mouse” upside down to indicate that the mouse is dead and it is lying
behind the cat. In front of the cat, a mouse cannot stand upright. We can
assume that the cat is playing with the dead cat by turning it upside down.
The pun can be created by the middle
stripe of the cat. As the letters are repeated, each word can create different
meaning. It is the play of the words. When we separate the letters from
“stripe”, the two words are created, “tripe” and “stripe”. Tripe means the
belly of animal to carry the food stuffs and “stripes” means a relatively long
band of colour or texture. The cat as the poet describes here are consisted of
two basic words stripes and tripe and other letters and words as necessary.
