Nick Dante "Black Rose, White Shadow"

Meagan "Me"

Adrianna Game "Pumps"

Adrianna Game

October 11, 2011

Senior Seminar

Graphic Poetry Project

“Pumps”

            In creating my poem, I drew upon concepts and ideas that were introduced in our assigned article, “Anthology of Concrete Poetry”. I was influenced by the Edward Lucie Smith’s quote, “Form determines meaning. Better still, form is meaning” (E.L.S. Notebooks). I focused on form in order to create life in my poem. I intentionally picked the form of something familiar and interesting to me, and relied on it to create the graphic aspect of my poem. The words that are presented in the graphic poem are identifiable to me, but the reader may only experience the poem’s effect when focusing on form. Focusing on the form of a poem was something somewhat challenging because generally speaking, we may be used to focusing on the textual aspect of a poem. The emphasis on form is what provokes creativity and the reader will be able to recognize how visual and text should compliment each other.

            If I was to eliminate the graphic aspect of poem and rely solely on the textual aspect, my poem might appear to be very dull and perhaps pointless. The visual aspect of my poem is what brings it to life. When R.P. Draper discusses how concrete poetry can be achieved, he advises, “Taking advantage of the extra impact which can be given to words by visual lay out” (Draper 329). This is essential to understanding the purpose of my poem. If the words were presented in a text format, they would appear to be only words. However, the adaptation to an image is what enhances the effect. When the reader sees the image of the high heel, they will understand why those specific words that create the image were chosen and the relationship they have with the visual layout. I chose to take advantage of the lay out and manipulate the words inside so that the graphic form would be achieved. The lay out is what helps transform the text and gives it its meaning.  Draper influenced my graphic poem with his concept of connecting “verbal artefacts” with space.

My favorite example of how I manipulated form and text in my poem can be found in the heel of the pump. The reader may notice that all the words associated in the poem are all pleasant descriptions; things that make the pump attractive. However, in the skinniest part of the image, the word “painful” is presented. Female readers may identify with this aspect of the poem because the heel or this part of the graphic poem is what sometimes causes pain to women when they are wearing them. This part of the form is the only part where there is a negative association. It was my intention to play with this space in the poem and make it somewhat different from the rest of the elements. Although it presents the idea that pumps are painful, the poem concludes, “Yet classy, dazzling, sophisticated, and absolutely beautiful”. These pleasant adjectives take up more space in my graphic poem and have a greater emphasis. I related this to my own experience; even though high heels are “painful” to wear, women will still sacrifice because of all of the other lovely aspects that are associated to their image.

Apollonia Galvan “By Any Means Necessary”

Apollonia Galvan

10/10/11

ENGL 410 – Graphic Novels Seminar

Prof. Barnstone

Graphic Poetry Project – Introduction

An Introduction to the graphic illustration of “By Any Means Necessary”

            To start off, in attempting this graphic poem project, I came to the decision to create an illustration of my own poem written nearly a year ago entitled “By Any Means Necessary.” I found this poem warranted an intriguing graphic visual and textual layout, despite my amateur and frankly, unskillful drawing style. Visually, I knew I wanted to capture the setting of the poem: an empty, isolated asphalt road that functions as the resting place of a dead dog. Hence, my goal was to place the reader at the scene without them really being there, initially allowing their mind to adjust to the poem’s environment. On this aspect of the work, I wanted to appeal to the reader’s optical faculty based on how McCloud defines how “all of us perceive the world as a whole through the experience of our senses” (McCloud, 62). The reader or witness is drawn into a work on the rudimentary level of sight, thus the reason for my formulation of this simple and direct graphic. With regards to the textual syntax of the poem, I had the desire to incorporate movement to the words. I felt that the physical motion and design of the words would make the viewers’ eyes dance and allow the sound of the words to manifest in the reader’s mind. For example, the visual look of the words, “hissing” and “whooshing” in the poem essentially mirror the vocal pronunciation of those terms, not to mention, adds to the poem’s eerie atmospheric quality. Furthermore, it allows the individual to have fun with the sounds of the poetic words as well makes them an active participant in the reading. Also, the layout of the text represents the literal action that is occurring at that point in the poem, case in point, the circular nature of the sentence; “Everyone hoarded around the scene like cattle.” The arrangement of some of the text fundamentally is there to draw a picture for the reader and additionally precipitates them to crank their neck sideways in order to read, keeping the participatory role alive. In collaboration with the piece’s textual positioning, the concept I wanted to include and play with was metaphorical and symbolic. The instance of this play with symbolism is found non-coincidentally in the middle of the illustration or the road. The text localized in the section consisting of the road is meant to be the dog. That is to say, nearly every reference to the dog, characterized by “it” or by the verbs describing the dog’s condition, are present in the road and are meant to represent not only its last resting place or grave, but the permanency of this memento mori for the characters in the poem as well as the reader. Not only is the dog imprinted in the first page of the illustration embodied by those words, but in the final page of the poem containing the last line: “It never left,” shows the lingering nature of the dog’s corpse represented by the orange tinged words. It leaves the reader with a sense of endurance and the infinite (the endless road and the duration of the spectators’ traumatizing experience) along with the finite (death/mortality). Therefore, the image and text placement is meant to evoke this concept of death and endlessness to the reader or at least allow them the ability to analyze and discern the image’s reason for being laid out this way. Once again, like McCloud asserts, my intention is to capture the individual’s “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole in the form of closure” (McCloud, 63). That is to say that my work is an effort to test the reader’s examination of the poem’s fragmentary arrangement and its visual aspect and ultimately reach some form of understanding or closure of the poem’s message and themes. Lastly, the process from text to image causes the poem to be read in a variety of ways, either vertically down a column, side by side of each column or straight down the middle of the road which holds the poem’s most powerful message of infinity and permanency. In other words, the poem can be read based on the reader’s mood or his or her desired directional preference creating a unique meaning each time.  

Nicole Beauchamp "notes"

Nicole Beauchamp

ENGL 400—Rehn

October 11, 2011

“notes”

Or, Graphic Poetry Project

Concrete poetry, according to R. P. Draper, “is the creation of verbal artifacts which exploit the possibilities, not only of sound, sense and rhythm—the traditional fields of poetry—but also of space, whether it be the flat, two-dimensional space of letters on the printed page, or the three-dimensional space of words in relief and sculpted ideograms” (329). The following poem, “notes,” is a product of that definition.

When the poem transitions from text to image, the meaning of particular lines as well as the poem on the whole is altered.  The physical placement of certain words highlights their meaning. For example, the word “sideways” forces the reader to tilt into a rather awkward position, much as the poem is trying to demonstrate that point. This transformation from text to graphic is shown in a variety of other ways, as discussed below.

Throughout the entirety of the poem, space is by far the most important feature. Space, both on the page and in our minds, often represents time. The more space is found between words, the more time passes between each word. And the converse is also true. The lack of space indicates a lack of time. In the poem, spaces often play the role of punctuation. Rather than using commas to indicate a mental and verbal pause, the blank space on the page denotes the passage of time.  The blank space also draws attention to what is not there, as in the third line (“The empty      bed”) and when the CDs are bumped to the next line after the word “blank.” Another role that blank space plays in the poem is to recall particular meanings. For example, the word “high” is above the rest of the line, indicating its definition through both the word and its placement, but also as a physical representation of the state of the desk. Also, “sideways” is actually sideways, recalling the definition, as well as a particular image that I had in mind. In short, “the spatial elements of the poem much do the work of traditional syntax and articulate the meaning that lies dormant in words” (Draper 334).

            The particular placement of the words on the page also denotes or recalls specific meanings. The best example of this is the last line of the first page of the poem. “There’s no turning back now,” it says. And since the line is at the end of the page, once you turn to the second page, there is no turning back in a more literal sense. At the end of the poem, the last two words (“the phone”) share the same alignment on the second page. This echoism forces a redefining of “There’s no turning back now” once the very last line is considered, but also forces a reconsideration of “the phone” in light of the line on the previous page. Additionally, the use of a period at the end of the first page denotes finality (as does its meaning); however, the same is not true of the end of the poem. It is left open-ended, or rather, open spaced. What comes next is blank, unknown, unwritten. Another example of word placement affecting meaning is the line “’I’m in love with you.’” It is centered on the page and in a large font. This brings to mind the image of the actual physical note.

Jeffrey Wilson "Boom"

Jeff Wilson

10/10/11

ENGL 410

            My visual poem is called “boom” because I wanted a title that communicated the idea as succinctly as possible.  The poem itself is pretty simple: I found a black-and-white picture of a mushroom cloud online, as well as an image of the Sanskrit text, which I pasted over the picture multiple times, and then, I trimmed it so that the text was framed on the cloud and wrote “boom” in big black letters at the bottom.  The Sanskrit quote is taken from the Bhagavad Gita and it is the same section that Oppenheimer quoted when he tested the first nuclear bomb:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

In any case, I decided to configure the poem this way because I thought it looked pretty cool and I wanted it to resonate with the world around me without being too pretentious about it.  I put the title at the bottom to sort of offset the reference to the godhood of Krishna and to bring the poem back down to its essential meaning.

            McCloud said in chapter two that “Words are totally abstract icons.  That is, they bear no resemblance at all to the real McCoy.”  Obviously, substituting words for images is an old trick in visual poetry, but I couldn’t resist doing it with “boom.”  With the Sanskrit, I added another level to the poem, in that, I can’t actually read Sanskrit, so it’s an abstract icon that doesn’t have any direct meaning because I can only understand it through translation.  The resulting ambiguity of meaning then corresponds with the idea of abstraction as “anti-narrative,” which “can ‘hide’ within the folds of narrative itself and suggest its own meanings that are intertwined with those promoted by acts of storytelling,” according to Baetens in her abstract comics article.  For me, the Sanskrit letters are meaningless without the translation.  However, the appearance of the letters on the image evoke in my mind both the grandeur of Hindu mythology and, because of the white outlines on a black background, the imprints of people and things annihilated by the nukes that were imprinted on walls and sidewalks. 

Here is my visual poem.  It is entitled "boom."  Also, I figured I'd mention that the Sanskrit letters spell out a verse from the Bhagavad Gita often translated as "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.