"Concrete poetry communicates its own structure: is an object in & by itself. Its material: word (sound, visual shape, semantical charge); its problem: the function & relation of this material; factors: nearness & similarity — gestalt psychology; rhythm: relational force. Like cybernetics; the poem as self-regulating machine. Concrete poems can be dull amusing grand satirical playful sad — anything except epic ...
The constructed poem attracts: it is human, friendly, makes words move on the page — they move as quick as the eye the poem attracts. Eyeverse is not 'read' — it creates an impression through the gestalt shape of the whole toy-tool, architected, poem — through each word as the eye wanders over them in any order."
—Dom Sylvester Houédard, Concrete Poetry & Ian Hamilton Finlay, TYPOGRAPHICA 8, 1963