Genesis, analysis and developments of CIDADE CITY CITÉ

a poem by Augusto de Campos

Abstract

The starting point lies in this phonetic poem from 1963 published for the first time in Italy, and performed in its original length in 1968 at the University of Indiana. I was able to view his declamation at Brunnenburg Castle on 25th March 1991 when Augusto with his brother Haroldo was invited by Francesco Conz for a creative intervention inspired by the figure of Ezra Pound who had lived in that castle for years together with his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. From the exegesis of the poem itself, still original and fresh to the point of still inspiring plastic or musical artists, I move on to develop the function of the voice in concrete poetry and in that kind of poetry properly called sound, investigated in its expansion towards the moving image (videopoetry) and towards performance, to relate, finally, to those experiences that arose in the second half of the twentieth century known as intermedia and polypoetry.