Vanguards and revolution: the concrete poetry

Abstract

With no regards to the provincialism ant the resentment present in its attitude, the Brazilian Concrete Poetry movement had the intention, in the mid 50s, to haven taken a major qualitative-revolutionary step towards the evolution of the west world poetry forms, surpassing insofar, at least in technical terms, the great cultural and economic power centers of Europe and North America. Harshe/l8d by the leftist cultural movements of the sixties, the concrete poetry saw its form as the only efficient way to render social revolution through the arts. But in the eighties, it has integrated itself in the post-modem atmosphere of disenchantment in relation to the esthetic and social revolutions, that is to say, it recognized the feebleness of its formal innovations and lack of sincerity of its social-criticism. The good of what is left has undoubtedly a progressive intent and deserves now a place along with the generous utopist dream und8rlying the seemingly anti-artistic vanguards like the Centro Popular de Cultura (CPC).