Meagan Dominguez Senior Seminar October 11, 2011 Graphic Poem Project I decided to create a graphic poem that would speak to a general audience, but in a simple manner. My poem is structured within an outline of a person and inside the outline are terms that are frequently used to describe people. I used any random term that came to me at the moment. I used terms that were both positive and negative attributes to a person. I think that it is important that the words are cut-off by the frame of the human showing that the possibility of terms to describe an individual is endless. Throughout the poem I randomly highlighted the m’s and the e’s in order so that it is obviously saying “me,me,me” throughout the text. The reason that I did this was because I wanted the reader to relate each term to them and decide who they are in relation to the terms that are presented. The last line of the poem is the most crucial to me. The last line states “I’m just simply me” because no matter what terms are used to describe us, whether they be negative or positive, are just terms. The terms aren’t the essence of a person and the terms don’t define the terms. Instead, the person defines the terms to fit them as they wish. How a person views his or her self is how they are defined. What outside people decide to label us isn’t what defines a person. At the end of the day, the terms that describe each individual person isn’t what matters. What matters is the impact a person makes on others or on the world. The visual aspect of the poem highlights the many terms used to describe people. Pineda states that a poem’s “visual potential must be liberated rather than restricted” and I feel that my graphic poem liberates the reader to think of the endless possibilities that can apply to them and how the poem makes them feel rather than restricting them to my own personal intentions as the author. Yes, we are all aware of adjectives used to describe people, but we are never really aware how many terms we use to label people. And most of the time we don’t take the time to notice how those terms can hurt the people that are behind the praising or hurtful words. The terms we define people as shouldn’t define them as an individual, but sometimes people work to maintain the terms they are known by or work to defeat the terms they are referred to as. It is typically believed that graphic art, with its use of images, loses an emphasis on the importance of the text. William states that “analogies with the visual arts de-emphasize the poetic element in favor of the visual, which is but a single (though consequential) aspect of the new poetry” (v), but I believe that many graphic poems are enhanced by their visual aspect. For example, if you were to take my poem as just words on a page without the outline of a person, the poem would lose a lot of meaning.
Meagan Dominguez
ReplyDeleteSenior Seminar
October 11, 2011
Graphic Poem Project
I decided to create a graphic poem that would speak to a general audience, but in a simple manner. My poem is structured within an outline of a person and inside the outline are terms that are frequently used to describe people. I used any random term that came to me at the moment. I used terms that were both positive and negative attributes to a person. I think that it is important that the words are cut-off by the frame of the human showing that the possibility of terms to describe an individual is endless. Throughout the poem I randomly highlighted the m’s and the e’s in order so that it is obviously saying “me,me,me” throughout the text. The reason that I did this was because I wanted the reader to relate each term to them and decide who they are in relation to the terms that are presented.
The last line of the poem is the most crucial to me. The last line states “I’m just simply me” because no matter what terms are used to describe us, whether they be negative or positive, are just terms. The terms aren’t the essence of a person and the terms don’t define the terms. Instead, the person defines the terms to fit them as they wish. How a person views his or her self is how they are defined. What outside people decide to label us isn’t what defines a person. At the end of the day, the terms that describe each individual person isn’t what matters. What matters is the impact a person makes on others or on the world.
The visual aspect of the poem highlights the many terms used to describe people. Pineda states that a poem’s “visual potential must be liberated rather than restricted” and I feel that my graphic poem liberates the reader to think of the endless possibilities that can apply to them and how the poem makes them feel rather than restricting them to my own personal intentions as the author. Yes, we are all aware of adjectives used to describe people, but we are never really aware how many terms we use to label people. And most of the time we don’t take the time to notice how those terms can hurt the people that are behind the praising or hurtful words. The terms we define people as shouldn’t define them as an individual, but sometimes people work to maintain the terms they are known by or work to defeat the terms they are referred to as.
It is typically believed that graphic art, with its use of images, loses an emphasis on the importance of the text. William states that “analogies with the visual arts de-emphasize the poetic element in favor of the visual, which is but a single (though consequential) aspect of the new poetry” (v), but I believe that many graphic poems are enhanced by their visual aspect. For example, if you were to take my poem as just words on a page without the outline of a person, the poem would lose a lot of meaning.