"The Mouse's Tale" is a shaped poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Though no formal title for the poem is given in the text, the chapter title refers to "A Long Tale" and the Mouse introduces it by saying, "Mine is a long and sad tale!" As well as the contribution of typography to illustrate the intended pun in this title, artists later made the intention clear as well. Translators of the story also encountered difficulty in conveying the meaning there, part of which was not recognised until well over a century later.

Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct meaning of its own. Concrete poetry relates more to the visual than to the verbal arts although there is a considerable overlap in the kind of product to which it refers. Historically, however, concrete poetry has developed from a long tradition of shaped or patterned poems in which the words are arranged in such a way as to depict their subject.