Sanchez, Daisy

Eng 410

Prof. Barnstone

October 11, 2011

The Visual and The Written

Poetry always tries to give a visual image as the reader reads the poem but sometimes not even that can accomplish what the author wants. It is at this time in which graphic poems can do more than the average poem. With a graphic poem the author is able to not only play with diction but as well as how the poem should be formed.  It is here where the text and the visual come together to give more meaning to the poem, something like closure in comics, “… observing the parts but perceiving the whole…[is] closure,” (McCloud 63).

When writing my poem, I knew I wanted to write about losing someone and falling into this feeling of constant seeking but failing to never find what one searches. Textually, I feel like I have achieved this because at the end of each line, I purposely used a word that refers to some type of fall. Yet, the poem would not have the same meaning if I had not created an image, the actual form of the poem, to go along with it. The poem itself not only gets shorter as one reads but also gives off the feeling of falling down. The visual and what the poem says allows the reader to create the motion of falling, “…our mind fills in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion,” (McCloud 94). Without the visual, we simply have a sad poem and nothing more or less. Hence, when creating this poem I wanted the visual to help move the poem to have the feeling of sinking. I believe I did create that vibe by making the form of the poem a backwards staircase.

While reading the text, the reader feels as one reads each line they keep going down with no way of ever coming back. If this poem was written with a “normal” form, I do not think it would have the same effect as it does as a graphic poem. Not only is one seeing the poem falling but also we are able to hear its downfall. The image the text perceives ties well with the actual format of the poem, giving more meaning to the text.