Illustrated Poetry

[twelveoone]

Fair enough then, let's label creative text depending on why it was created. "Pictory" will du just fine.

But you know, the word "blue" has a limiting context even if it doesn't have a blue background attached to it. It is called "the other words that are placed around it". If we talk about a regular non-visual poem, every line is defined and intepreted in contect and relation to the other lines. A visual element, say a background color, is just another line, if you know what I mean. I can write a poem... sorry... a pictory with a blue background, where the text makes it obvious that the image was for instance an ironic counterpoint to the text. Or maybe the sum of the two balances out, so that you are more open for your own intepretations than you would had been without the illustrative element. But yeah, most of the time it's a guide to a certain intepretation of the text. Not sure that that is such an automatically bad thing though.

Oh, and your stuff is among those that I deliberately seek out, simply because it is good stuff. But it do have me a little confued as to your stand here. Because you work as much with visual presentation guiding the intepretation in some of your poems as I do. Only you use plain text, and I use Photoshop.

#L

This is an interesting concept you have, an ironic counterpoint to the text, you may change (pardon the pun) my view.
In some of what I regard as my better stuff( I do write a lot of jokes) the visual presentation is to create an more aptly a feeling, relying on the reader to fill in an interpretation, and I bury a lot of crap (excuse me, treasure) in some of them, I am always surprised what readers unearth.
I miss my main-man L&F, he would catch everything.

 

[twelveoone]

Yes, it's a good thing to say--you responded as a reader in a way that worked for you, apparently very well because I wrote that poem months ago and it made an impression on you. As the creator of Dear Ghosts, I succeeded in communicating to you.

I would never argue that every poem could potentially be illustrated successfully--and I agree that many poems would be diminished by the limitation an image would impose. I'd no more try to illustrate The Wasteland than I'd try to write a sonnet that defines Picasso's Guernica. But why generalize? Some illustrated poems are good. Why dismiss any genre of an artform as having the potential to effectively communicate, to be a good experience for a reader (or viewer).

And I never discount fun.

Fair enough, but I did remember it because of the illustration. Now if anyone can write a sonnet about Picasso's Guernica, my guess it would be you. Despite it being a sonnet, I would probably read it to.
But I have yet to have seen an illustrated poem (outside of that one) that did not vaguely annoy me.
I remember lines from:
Pat Carirington
annaswirls
oh and OMG WickedEve, some of her's stuck in my head for weeks, despite my trying to get them out, and laughing in inappropiate place, thinking about NeoPetal and pine trees.
I remember the general story of alot of poetry I have read here, I do not remember the words or story of any Illustrated Poem, except with the possibility of Eve's Red Shoes

 

[Angeline]

Fair enough, but I did remember it because of the illustration. Now if anyone can write a sonnet about Picasso's Guernica, my guess it would be you. Despite it being a sonnet, I would probably read it to.
But I have yet to have seen an illustrated poem (outside of that one) that did not vaguely annoy me.
I remember lines from:
Pat Carirington
annaswirls
oh and OMG WickedEve, some of her's stuck in my head for weeks, despite my trying to get them out, and laughing in inappropiate place, thinking about NeoPetal and pine trees.
I remember the general story of alot of poetry I have read here, I do not remember the words or story of any Illustrated Poem, except with the possibility of Eve's Red Shoes

And yet your favorite poem of mine--or it was at one time I think--is The Nightingale, which I originally wrote as an illustrated poem. It has been here--at Lauren's site--for about two years. Would you have liked it less if you first saw it in its illustrated form?

 

[wildsweetone]

From my limited and very new experience with illustrated poetry I find the mere mechanics of getting the words and the picture connected in the same place at the same time, very difficult.

Then, there is the specific font used - I often feel that I'd do better by painting my own words in the kind of style I would expect to see them in with the picture. I find it frustrating to have to spend hours hunting down font or changing colours to make the two entities mesh.

But... I have a need to convey 'feelings'. Pictures and the visual world invokes strong feelings within me and what I hope to eventually be able to do is to imprint those exact feelings into such a form that others can share the feeling.

It's not easy getting a reasonable end result on a program I knew nothing about two weeks ago, and it's extremely time consuming. I'm going to stick with playing about with illustrated poetry for a little longer, give myself time to learn and settle with the medium and see if anything improves. If not, no sweat, I'll still keep writing.

There have been many times that I've realised there is no way I can achieve what nature herself gives to me. No way I can put adequate words 'against' something created so perfectly. Nor do I want to sully perfection with my inept scrawl. It's a scary thing to attempt to convey that thousand words a picture says, and to do it in a mere handful seems like an impossible task. All the same, it's a challenge and it takes an incredible amount of skill.

If we don't try lots of different skills, how will we ever learn where our own best achievements will lie?

 

[twelveoone]

And yet your favorite poem of mine--or it was at one time I think--is The Nightingale, which I originally wrote as an illustrated poem. It has been here--at Lauren's site--for about two years. Would you have liked it less if you first saw it in its illustrated form?

I believe, if you write, you should look at poetry at three levels.
As a consumer, does it amuse me, does it catch my eye.
As a critic, what techniques are being used, the interplay of words, how effective does it convey a "message"- "I am watching the snow fall, I am feeling this" is a message, also.
As an analyst, what references are put in here, why? What is the background of this? What have they read to get this style?
I did "The Nightingale" for Interact, it was recommmended by Tara Blackwood.
I also have a consistent set of symbols I use, my birds don't sing i.e. "a desideratum of circling birds"; as a consumer, I cannot identify with being a bird.
I looked a Nighingale as a critic, it was quite a masterful display of one technique- repitition. Almost mathematical. And with that said, there is an ironic undertone in it. It is a poem meant to be read.
As an analyst, I did not pursue it.
Correction, it was not my favourite, Chichen Itza (title?) was.

Looking at it at level two, the illustration, hinders.
At level one, I would assume it would enance, it is not overpowering, the little set apart at the end draws attention to "the night sky" and changes the shading of the meaning.

 

[Angeline]

I believe, if you write, you should look at poetry at three levels.
As a consumer, does it amuse me, does it catch my eye.
As a critic, what techniques are being used, the interplay of words, how effective does it convey a "message"- "I am watching the snow fall, I am feeling this" is a message, also.
As an analyst, what references are put in here, why? What is the background of this? What have they read to get this style?
I did "The Nightingale" for Interact, it was recommmended by Tara Blackwood.
I also have a consistent set of symbols I use, my birds don't sing i.e. "a desideratum of circling birds"; as a consumer, I cannot identify with being a bird.
I looked a Nighingale as a critic, it was quite a masterful display of one technique- repitition. Almost mathematical. And with that said, there is an ironic undertone in it. It is a poem meant to be read.
As an analyst, I did not pursue it.
Correction, it was not my favourite, Chichen Itza (title?) was.

Looking at it at level two, the illustration, hinders.
At level one, I would assume it would enance, it is not overpowering, the little set apart at the end draws attention to "the night sky" and changes the shading of the meaning.

To quote Freud (something I almost never do, lol), sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Nightingale was a poetic retelling of a fairy tale that thematically for me (as a writer) was a poem about regaining freedom. I was able to illustrate that literally on the graphic with the ending I used by emphasizing singing to the sky as opposed to in a cage for a captor, however benevolent. And the repetition, when I wrote it, was pretty much unconscious--what I was most aware of when writing was the story by Anderson and references to Yeats I put into it. So it's all perception--it worked differently for me as a writer (and illustrator) than you as a reader (and viewer). For me, if anything, having it both ways (illustrated and not) sllowed different emphases. And that's my point about being open to different modes of expression--I guess it doesn't work that way for you, but I'm interested in whether it does for others.

And I'm glad you liked Chichen Itza.

 

[twelveoone]

To quote Freud (something I almost never do, lol), sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Nightingale was a poetic retelling of a fairy tale that thematically for me (as a writer) was a poem about regaining freedom. I was able to illustrate that literally on the graphic with the ending I used by emphasizing singing to the sky as opposed to in a cage for a captor, however benevolent. And the repetition, when I wrote it, was pretty much unconscious--what I was most aware of when writing was the story by Anderson and references to Yeats I put into it. So it's all perception--it worked differently for me as a writer (and illustrator) than you as a reader (and viewer). For me, if anything, having it both ways (illustrated and not) sllowed different emphases. And that's my point about being open to different modes of expression--I guess it doesn't work that way for you, but I'm interested in whether it does for others.

And I'm glad you liked Chichen Itza.

There are always two people writing, the writer's conscious and unconscious. When it is done it becomes the poem attemping to write something to the reader.
I noticed a shift in irony from the pure words from the repitition of singing and the description of the mechnical bird, to the illustrated where it is a description of a cage to a box at the end.
You say "For me, if anything, having it both ways (illustrated and not) sllowed different emphases."
I say this does not negate the points I made.
1.) for most of us, sight overrides sound (alot of "poetics" is based on sound)
2.) an illustration is two dimensional, fixed in time and space, most writing should not be, hence the illustration overpowers the words.
The reason this blend of picture and writing works in Japan and China, is because they are character based languages. The picture plays against the words effectively. Here it does not, it is a superimposition, and too often degenerates into a vocabulary of codes, becoming in effect, cliches.
I am not saying this as a cry of a purist, but rather as a recognition of how the brain processes information.

Here is what I think of when I see "illustrated poety".

http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/art/bb-poster-preview.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/tlc0090.jpg

I would prefer to a little deeper thinking.

 

[Angeline]

There are always two people writing, the writer's conscious and unconscious. When it is done it becomes the poem attemping to write something to the reader.
I noticed a shift in irony from the pure words from the repitition of singing and the description of the mechnical bird, to the illustrated where it is a description of a cage to a box at the end.
You say "For me, if anything, having it both ways (illustrated and not) sllowed different emphases."
I say this does not negate the points I made.
1.) for most of us, sight overrides sound (alot of "poetics" is based on sound)
2.) an illustration is two dimensional, fixed in time and space, most writing should not be, hence the illustration overpowers the words.
The reason this blend of picture and writing works in Japan and China, is because they are character based languages. The picture plays against the words effectively. Here it does not, it is a superimposition, and too often degenerates into a vocabulary of codes, becoming in effect, cliches.
I am not saying this as a cry of a purist, but rather as a recognition of how the brain processes information.

Here is what I think of when I see "illustrated poety".

http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/art/bb-poster-preview.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/tlc0090.jpg

I would prefer to a little deeper thinking.

No, it doesn't negate your points--they are right for you. I think I respond differently to illustrated poems than I do to non-illustrated ones. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not, but I like to leave myself open to accepting any presentation as art--see what I can get from it.

I know a lot of people see it as you do, but I think illustrating poems is a shift in the monograph of what we accept as poetry. I think that's good in the sense that any experimentation has the potential to result in something new that's artistically meaningful. Anyway, some people are more open to auditory over visual, visual over kinesic (sp?), and so on. And words are two dimensional as are drawings, for example. The imagination has no limits in dimension though.

 

[Guest]

. . . The imagination has no limits in dimension though.

Ba-da-bing

 

[twelveoone]

Ba-da-bing

ah, the sound of irony...
The reference is a little hazy,
where does it come from, I wonder.

 

[Liar]

The reason this blend of picture and writing works in Japan and China, is because they are character based languages. The picture plays against the words effectively. Here it does not, it is a superimposition, and too often degenerates into a vocabulary of codes, becoming in effect, cliches.
I am not saying this as a cry of a purist, but rather as a recognition of how the brain processes information.

Interresting, but a bit out of my league. Could you elaborate and join soime dots for me? Like the mechanics that you say creates those clichés, what are they, because I can't for the life o me figger them out. Always willing to edjucate myself.

Here is what I think of when I see "illustrated poety".

(pix omitted)

I would prefer to a little deeper thinking.

Huh? Where's da poetry in dat? No wonder you cringe at the thought of illustrated anything if that's where your mind goes when you hear the word, bro.

#L

 

[Guest]

ah, the sound of irony...
The reference is a little hazy,
where does it come from, I wonder.

my 'ba-da-bing' was a wholehearted agreement with what Ange had said about imagination being limitless.

 

[wildsweetone]

...I wonder if the medium we present our illustrated poetry on, is partly at fault for how we see illustrated poetry here. When sitting at a computer screen for hours on end we have trained our eyes to look at the words, at the surface of each page. Rarely do we look to notice the background.

 

[Angeline]

my 'ba-da-bing' was a wholehearted agreement with what Ange had said about imagination being limitless.

Gee and here I was thinking it meant you were from Brooklyn.

 

[Guest]

Gee and here I was thinking it meant you were from Brooklyn.

right you are. I should've said 'hooya' instead—that's no where near New York

 

[Liar]

...I wonder if the medium we present our illustrated poetry on, is partly at fault for how we see illustrated poetry here. When sitting at a computer screen for hours on end we have trained our eyes to look at the words, at the surface of each page. Rarely do we look to notice the background.

Ya mean the way we filter out all the porno banners and pretend we're cultural and stuff?

 

[wildsweetone]

Yes in a way. When you've been coming to a certain page for long enough, your eyes skip the stuff your brain doesn't have the inclination or time to see. Each time we click open a webpage, we search for what we want to see, search for that which most interests us.

 

[twelveoone]

Interresting, but a bit out of my league. Could you elaborate and join soime dots for me? Like the mechanics that you say creates those clichés, what are they, because I can't for the life o me figger them out. Always willing to edjucate myself.


Huh? Where's da poetry in dat? No wonder you cringe at the thought of illustrated anything if that's where your mind goes when you hear the word, bro.

#L

No, what is on my mind is critical thinking. A suggestion, I'm an easy sell. I would like anyone to post the text of the poem here, with a sentence or two about what you think the illustration does for the poem, how does it enhance and why. And a verbal description of the picture. And then the link. Allow anyone to pick it apart.

 

[Angeline]

No, what is on my mind is critical thinking. A suggestion, I'm an easy sell. I would like anyone to post the text of the poem here, with a sentence or two about what you think the illustration does for the poem, how does it enhance and why. And a verbal description of the picture. And then the link. Allow anyone to pick it apart.

That is not unlike what happened in some of the interact threads. I suspect we'd find out--as we did there--that what someone experiences as "poetic" is very individual. Critical thinking and art can and should coexist, imo, but there is a point where perception and taste take over. Adrienne Rich, for example, may appeal or not to different readers for very different reasons and they may, to an extent, see very different things in the same poem. Every reader brings a unique set of expectations and experiences to what they read (or see in the case of visual art which, depending on one's opinion, may or may not include illustrated poems), but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing--in fact, I think it can be a very good thing.

 

[wildsweetone]

No, what is on my mind is critical thinking. A suggestion, I'm an easy sell. I would like anyone to post the text of the poem here, with a sentence or two about what you think the illustration does for the poem, how does it enhance and why. And a verbal description of the picture. And then the link. Allow anyone to pick it apart.

I am still new at this but feel free to pick this apart. The only way for me to learn is by listening to other's opinions and then write and feel what's right for me.

Still Pond.
Illustration by tolyk. He called his photo Still Pond and so I took my 'lead' from there.

The Photo:
The photo is of a mirror calm pond surrounded by green trees, some overhanging the edges of the pond.

The Mechanics:
The font type and colour were difficult to place (and the program very new to me). There are areas where a single line of dark font would not show, and a single line of light font would not show against the background (i.e. the photo), so the words and the colour of the font had to allow for those 'untouchable' spaces.

The Poem:
I took one long look at this photo and simply let the feelings it invoked to flow through my pen. For all that the connotation of 'Still Pond' makes in the mind, there is nothing still in all that surrounds such a pond. There are always noises of birds, insects, the wind rustling the leaves etc. Therefore 'silence is unheard'.

I feel that the photo gives the words 'scent'. The words bring the Still Pond to life and vice versa.

Feel free to pick it apart.

Still Pond

 

[PatCarrington]

And yet your favorite poem of mine--or it was at one time I think--is The Nightingale, which I originally wrote as an illustrated poem. It has been here--at Lauren's site--for about two years. Would you have liked it less if you first saw it in its illustrated form?

i can't speak for 1201, ange, but i certainly like the illustrated version FAR less than the unillustrated one.

i find the illustrations incredibly restrictive, and think they totally strip the poem of its soul.

i remember being almost blinded the first time i read the unillustrated 'Nightingale.'

had i read the illustrated one first (which apparently is the original), i don't think i would have even blinked.

 

[twelveoone]

I am still new at this but feel free to pick this apart. The only way for me to learn is by listening to other's opinions and then write and feel what's right for me.

Still Pond.
Illustration by tolyk. He called his photo Still Pond and so I took my 'lead' from there.

The Photo:
The photo is of a mirror calm pond surrounded by green trees, some overhanging the edges of the pond.

The Mechanics:
The font type and colour were difficult to place (and the program very new to me). There are areas where a single line of dark font would not show, and a single line of light font would not show against the background (i.e. the photo), so the words and the colour of the font had to allow for those 'untouchable' spaces.

The Poem:
I took one long look at this photo and simply let the feelings it invoked to flow through my pen. For all that the connotation of 'Still Pond' makes in the mind, there is nothing still in all that surrounds such a pond. There are always noises of birds, insects, the wind rustling the leaves etc. Therefore 'silence is unheard'.

I feel that the photo gives the words 'scent'. The words bring the Still Pond to life and vice versa.

Feel free to pick it apart.

Still Pond

Please post the words apart from the picture. I wish to do an A - B comparision

 

[ishtat]

Perception ?

Please post the words apart from the picture. I wish to do an A - B comparision

1201, If I am right, neither you, Pat Carrington nor me could do such a comparason fairly. The reason I believe, is that the way our minds work we simply do not have the mental receptors (perception) necessary to appreciate words and pictures simultaneously. Angeline, Lauren, Neo, Liar & WSO clearly do . However, even the illustrating poets apreciate the problems with superimposed words and images and Lauren made the point that she sought a "comfort zone" where both image and words can be appreciated. What Lauren cannot know from her own experience is that this comfort zone doesn't exist for a significant minority.

Incidentally it was Laurens' Al Gharb series which inspired this thread. I was re reading the earlier poems and my wife spotted the fact that I looked at each of the images then scrolled them out of vision whilst I read the poems. Why? etc.

We all know that different readers appreciate the same poem in different ways but I think that illustrated poetry is uniquely problematic in that for some of us there is a perception problem which ensures that this kind of work tends to be rejected before any critical consideration of it can be made

 

[Sabina_Tolchovsky]

agreement

they (illustrated poems) are just another media for creative expressionism. We should look deeper than just the words or the pictures...try to see what the author or artist is trying to depict. That is what is trying to be achieved a cohesion of two media into another art form to be apperciated. Not everyone will like (or dislike for that matter) what your trying to produce but that is just the way of it.

 

[Sabina_Tolchovsky]

1201, If I am right, neither you, Pat Carrington nor me could do such a comparason fairly. The reason I believe, is that the way our minds work we simply do not have the mental receptors (perception) necessary to appreciate words and pictures simultaneously. Angeline, Lauren, Neo, Liar & WSO clearly do . However, even the illustrating poets apreciate the problems with superimposed words and images and Lauren made the point that she sought a "comfort zone" where both image and words can be appreciated. What Lauren cannot know from her own experience is that this comfort zone doesn't exist for a significant minority.

Incidentally it was Laurens' Al Gharb series which inspired this thread. I was re reading the earlier poems and my wife spotted the fact that I looked at each of the images then scrolled them out of vision whilst I read the poems. Why? etc.

We all know that different readers appreciate the same poem in different ways but I think that illustrated poetry is uniquely problematic in that for some of us there is a perception problem which ensures that this kind of work tends to be rejected before any critical consideration of it can be made

Incidentally...I had felt the same disconnection between image and poetry in the AlGharb series. I thought perhaps Laurens intention was a distinct displacement between image, feeling and metaphor.....perhaps conflicted cohesion is the best way to describe the way the series goes together. None the less, it makes you think and look deeper than you may have previously.