the first personal publication wherein language reappears was produced in 1967, the last year of herman de vries' membership in the zero group. It appeared in number 23 of the poster-journal of concrete poetry futura, edited by hansjörg mayer and is called 'permutierbarer text' (permutable text). Permuting, that is transposing words or letters on the space of the page is one of the favourite games of concrete poetry, the experimental poetry that herman de vries practiced after 1965. As an extension of geometric abstraction in painting (in which the zero group is involved) into the domain of literature, concrete poetry demanded that poetry rid itself of description, narration and lyricism in favour of spatial poetry.

This consists of disassembling language into formal non-semantic units in order to break the constraints of syntax and the linear structure of reading and in doing so allowing other possibilities, notably the visual. In 'permutierbarer text', however, it is not a question of suggesting a new configuration of signs and even less of giving shape to a defined image.

source: Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, 'beyond language', in herman de vries. les livres & les publications (Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche 2005) 31.