Blanco
By Octavio Paz
1967
First Published
4.17
Average Rating
300
Number of Pages
“Blanco” is an intricately designed poem that embodies many postmodern traits, with its typography emphasizing the poem’s visual aspects. The poem begins with words spread out in three columns across the page. The text then forms a column that proceeds down the page, with the occasional staggering of lines. The single column then splits into a bold font on the left accompanied by an italicized font on the right. As the poem progresses, this pattern repeats four times, with the bold and italicized verses gradually drifting toward, and ultimately pressing against, one another. It was conceived as a continuum and was strip-printed in two colors with different fonts. It is bound like an accordion (with 30 leaves), which allows the reader to display the book in its entirety. The last leaf presents six possible ways to read the poem.
Avg Rating
4.17
Number of Ratings
70
5 STARS
51%
4 STARS
26%
3 STARS
14%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
3%
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Author
Octavio Paz
Author · 36 books
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature ("for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.")
