Variations on 44: The Verbivocovisual Sophistication of Dieter Roth’s Non-Semantic Poetry

Swiss-Icelandic artist Dieter Roth is largely celebrated as a visual artist who redefined the book as an art-object. While many of his artist’s books present typographical experiments and collaged language material, investigations rarely include close readings. This chapter highlights his poem “Some Variations on 44”—both as a single unit and part of the larger work in which it exists—and argues that, despite its non-linguistic composition and graphic design appearance, the work visually articulates rhetorical elements central to lyrical poetry. Aesthetic response theory is useful for interpreting the visual iconicity of concrete poetry. Drawing on Iser’s concept of “gestalt” as an organized whole that emerges through the process of reading, Roth’s aesthetic object reveals both a conceptual whole and an unexpected readability. Although Roth has created a categorically concrete and therefore almost unutterable work of poetry, it is capable of engaging in a discourse on any aspect of the verbivocovisual.