HAMILTON FINLAY, Ian. Rapel. 10 Fauve and Suprematist Poems. Fettes Row, Edinburgh: Wild Hawthorn Press. 1963.
260 × 210 mm. Loose as issued in publisher’s yellow portfolio with titles printed in black. 11 sheets, (10 poem-cards plus title sheet).
Finlay’s seminal early portfolio of concrete poems. It was arguably this publication that made Finlay one of the leading representatives of concrete poetry in Europe. ‘Finlayʼs title, Rapel, is an invented word referencing the first words of an Irish song in the Glasgow vernacular: “The (ra) pale (pel) moon was shining”.’ (Nancy Perloff). ‘Rapel (1963), Finlayʼs first collection of concrete poetry, contained poems referring to cubism. The initial impact of this movement, in the years preceding World War I, had been violent. Nevertheless, one might fear that the transposition of its technique into the sphere of poetry half a century later would turn out to be a little more than a mannerist exercise. Not so in Finlayʼs case. In A Peach an Apple […] he gives the cubist idiom a semantic function, ceebrating the still life represented in the poem: “eatable table apple”. While the fragmentation of the words into sounds duplicates the voracious force innate in early cubism, the fragments themselves become simple structural units for the composition of the text.ʼ (Yves Abrioux)
Murray 3.5
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