Postcard poem for G

Poetry and Comics: The Necessity of Variety in Medium

There are many ways of dealing with unique human experiences of reality, and naturally it is the subject of many arguments in the modern art world. Romantic poets write about the beauty of their surroundings and the difficulties of expressing the intensity of human emotion. Alfred Lord Tennyson writes, “So runs my dream: but what am I? / An infant crying in the night: / An infant crying for the light: / And with no language but a cry.”(1) in clear recognition and angst about the inability to express his innermost feelings.

Conversely, Walt Whitman writes, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”(2) The Transcendentalist poets rejoice in the fact that humans can share their experiences. However, if all humans have similar experiences, it is interesting that Transcendentalists still see the need to point out the human ability to communicate.

The Transcendentalists also emphasized the infinite beauty of simple things. They demonstrate that humans can indeed focus attention upon different details, and yet they still assert that we all are parts of the same unified reality. Is it redundant to recount something that everyone experiences?

---

1. Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam. London: E. Moxon, 1850, ll. 17-20.

2. Walt Whitman. “Song of Myself.”

dinosaurs had hollow bones

Poetry and Comics: the Necessity of Variety in Medium (Part 2)

I have written that it is important to know how art functions in order to use it as an effective means of communication.Does this mean that someone must have an innate ability for technique? Not necessarily—although technique is important, there is far more to art than technique. “In comics, the realism or flashiness of a drawing is nowhere near as important as its ability to convey information." (1)


In fact, drawing less polished or realistic illustrations may even allow the words to carry a greater weight. Mary Ruefle does this in Go Home and Go to Bed! She primarily uses the medium of poetry, but the comics medium allows her to take her work even further. The amateur drawings have a charm about them, almost as if she’s drawing colloquially. Her work presents itself humbly and ordinarily, it becomes a celebration of the mundane. It shows a subjective point of view on life—that it is depressing; yet it is light-hearted due to Ruefle’s informally-drawn colloquial comic style.

This holds some similarities to the attitude of haiku. The “comic” aspect of haiku lies in its ordinary colloquial diction as well as its focus on mundane natural events. Basho writes “The profit of haikai lies in making common speech right.” (2) Of course, Ruefle’s events aren’t of nature, but they still hold some Haiku spirit. Haiku presents ordinary events as far from mundane by demonstrating the human mind’s ability to selectively perceive reality.

And every mind does perceive it differently. Picture two people sitting in a park. One of them is looking at some rhododendrons. She looks closer at the specks on the petals and thinks that they make it look like a spotted fish. Her friend, however, is listening to some finches flit around, rustle branches and chirp frantically at each other. “Did you hear that?” he might say, but she has been focusing on a drop of dew rolling down the stamen of the rhododendron. Meanwhile, a woman walks by with her dog and notices neither flower nor bird, but instead she is thinking about a conversation she had with her boss.

All of these people have valid unique experiences. The first person will never hear exactly the same birds as the second, the second person has no idea what the third is thinking about, and the third person was entirely oblivious to the rhododendron.
And even if they do focus their attentions on the same thing, they each have different feelings and reactions to the thing itself. The girl who is looking at the flower remembers a fish, if her friend saw it he might think of a rhododendron bush at his home, and the third woman might think about the weather that caused the dew.

1. Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. New York: Roaring Book Press 2008, 9.

2.Basho. “Advice on Haiku.” The Essential Haiku. Ecco Press, 1995, 234.

Image from Mary Ruefle. Go Home and Go To Bed! Pilot Poetry, 2007.

Rethought thought bubbles

Thought bubbles look like brains.

Poetry and Comics: the Necessity of Variety in Medium (Part 1)

Every person in the world lives in his or her own private theater. Although I would assert that we all may perceive the same noumenalogical reality (that is to say, reality is precisely what it is regardless of varied experiences), we are each aware of different parts of that reality, and we each have unique experiences.

Although it is beautiful that people can have so many different strengths, the inability to fully understand each other’s experiences firsthand causes a great deal of problems for humanity. People can easily drift toward selfishness and misunderstanding, because we cannot truly and completely see the world from another person’s point of view.

What are we to do? We as humans have crafted a societal lifestyle in which our success and happiness in life is largely contingent upon our abilities to relate to other people. Our minds can process the world around us and we can think and feel and react to our experiences--but this leaves each and every person with a unique subjective perspective of reality.

Scott McCloud describes this dilemma as the wall of ignorance. He asserts that art acts as a medium of communication. The word medium quite literally means “middle.” A unique thought may travel as a message from one mind through a medium (such as poetry or comics) to another mind. Of course, the medium and the minds involved do change the message, so it is very important to pay attention to the form that we use to communicate ideas. The more we know about how a medium functions, the better we can use it to communicate with each other.

(Both images are from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art from Harper Paperbacks, 2004. I highly recommend this book--you should also check out his website in the links section of this blog.)

Dada chance & modern arrangement of reality

Winding down...

I like how you're tying the surrealist possibilities of poetry and comix together--I do think that's one of the things that make them a natural (if untapped) match for one another.

So we're closing in on the end here. I'd love to hear more as you start to work on your final project. What are you thinking about prioritizing? What have you gleaned from all our reading about what would be most exciting/new/effective to try yourself? What still seem to be obstacles toward making poetry-comics?

Simic on Surrealism

A relevant quote from Charles Simic's essay, "Negative Capability and its Children."

"Surrealism suspects language and its representational powers. In its view, there’s no intimacy between language and the world; the old equation, word equals object, is simply a function of habit. In addition, there’s the problem of simultaneity of experience versus the linear requirements of grammar. Grammar moves in time. Only figurative language can hope to grasp the simultaneity of experience. Therefore, it’s the connotative and not the denotative aspect of language that is of interest, the spark that sets off the figurative chain reaction and transcends the tyranny of the particular."

Adrian Tomine's 32 Stories

There is something very disarming about Tomine's works. He focuses on the internal monologue, imperfect yet lovable characters, and the disfunct in everyday relationships. One interesting thing about his work is his varied use of voice. It can be narrative boxes, self-conscious thought bubbles, or various styles of speech bubbles. In the case of the following comic, there are more thoughts written out than dialogue. He focuses on the internal, the confessional, the anxiety of the protagonist. Even within the comic, Tomine’s character questions the taboo of communicating with strangers. It is a criticism of a social wall that is all too similar to McCloud’s “wall of ignorance.”(mentioned on pg. 198 of Understanding Comics).

Tomine uses the thought bubble to show his characters’ reactions to the realities within the comics. One thought spirals into another, and the reflection that goes on between each uttered speech is overwhelming!

Tomine sometimes emphasizes the personal by pushing the illustrations and text toward the picture plane. It borders on the surreal at times (Tomine also illustrates some of his own dreams as comics), and this parallels the methods of the surrealist poets--to make something strange and new in order to understand or describe it better. The figurative nature of these illustrations is well-demonstrated in the "Back Break" comics and other [semi-]autobiographical comics, such as the ones involving peanut allergies. It is interesting that Tomine seems to reserve much of this figurative vocabulary for the depiction of himself. This makes perfect sense, as the semi-surreal images act to breach the wall of ignorance, showing Tomine's internal workings to the reader.

In some of the later comics from "Optic Nerve," Tomine tends more toward the realist poetics, where the idea is to portray reality as real as possible, and let the subjectivity exist both in poet and reader. This seems to be less of a breaking through of the wall of ignorance, and more of an acceptance of the wall, and perhaps a suggestion that the wall is merely a mirror--that both sides will reflect the same reaction to reality.

Tomine does just this on the last page of "Anniversary," where he omits the internal monologue entirely. One might assume the implication of a monologue, but this deliberate omission seems to recognize that humans do not always think in words. The silence of it says so much.

The same silence exists in "Smoke," but Tomine distinguishes between the two works. "Anniversary" is neatly and meticulously, but Tomine specifies that "Smoke" came out automatically. He prefers the spontanaety of "Smoke." This reminds me both of automatic writing and of spontaneous prose--the goals and methods of both processes being strikingly similar: to take the energy of the poet and transport it in its purest form to the reader through the page. The poet must avoid self-censorship (something Tomine admits that he struggles against) and place the thoughts immediately onto the page, without stopping.

It is almost as if Tomine's style travels through modern poetic movements--I am thrilled to be able to observe these movements on a smaller level within this selection of Tomine's works.

turn it down

Final projects

These are a bit broad: can you refine as soon as you've given them some more thought? I'd love a working plan for both: methods, texts, ideas for both. You could even storyboard them!

In the meantime, shall we talk about some other books we've got on hand, too? You've got Adrian Tomine and I don't, but that's ok, since I know his work well--you could post about him soon, and then we could move on to talk about the little Mary Ruefle chapbook, which should be fun, since that's MORE poem than comic (as opposed to more comic than poem, which is the majority of what we've been looking at, yes?).

Proposal of Final Project and Paper

Final Project:

I'd like to make a chapbook that studies the interaction and integration of poetic text and image as hybrid. Since I'm by no means an expert on the subject, I plan to do this by creating a series of text+visual experiments in the form of poems that are also comics. The chapbook will be a compilation of those experiments accompanied by abstracts of them. Ten of these sounds like a good number.

Final Paper:

This critical analysis will explore some of the same concepts I am taking on with the chapbook, only it will explore a specific text (or texts--TBD) in-depth. My focus will be on the interaction of text and visual and, more specifically, the poetics of the work as a whole.

Moving forward

Thanks, Abi.

I am especially interested in how to use text in a poem in a way which feels somehow other than dialogue, intertitles (as in the text that was used in silent movies in between shots) or "voiceover narration" (which I tend to really abhor in movies, and often consider the sign of a lazy filmmaker, although there are exceptions: have you seen Godard's Alphaville? That's inventive and poetic narration!) What else can be done with text in a poem-comic? How can it feel integral, as considered as the images?

I think of the ongoing problem in musicals: most musicals have songs (and dance numbers) that are superfluous and incongruous in some ways to the main "text" (plot/action) of the movie or play. The best musicals are often the ones that find a way to make the songs and dances truly move the whole of the thing forward, having these (admittedly odd) bursts of lyrics and music and movement feel crucial to the movie or play's ideas and characters, but also to the overall feel, aesthetic, tone of the piece.

I wonder how poem-comics can deal with the text-image conundrum in an equally productive/exciting way.

And speaking of which, and of moving forward: can your next post be your final project and paper proposal? Bonus points if you can bring in ideas and examples from the books we've looked at thus far--including, perhaps, exercises and assignments and techniques from Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, from which I'm not going to assign you anything specific, because it's such a technical book and I want you to just take what you need from it, and I'm not totally sure of which skills you feel you most want to or need to work on.

(A last, side note about Drawing Words and the image-text question: I like how Drawing Words talks about the importance of lettering style. While a pretty technical discussion, it might help with thinking about how to integrate text?)

Re: Response to Poetry Comics

Often in Morice's work, I find myself struggling to reconcile the visuals with the text. In the case of "Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare," (pp. 1-7) the visuals are almost entirely unrelated to the poem overall--though most of them contain some loose reference exclusively to the line within each respective frame. In this, it loses much resemblance to the original poem. The images are whimsical in a manner that is very different from the essence of the sonnet itself, and in this they distract from the text. I found that I had to ignore the images in order to gather a cohesive whole from the text.

In addition to this, the characters only show up in a single frame, leaving the setting (grass and flowers, like a summer's day) and the text to attempt to tie the images together in some way. Splitting the poem into dialogue like this often makes little sense, as it takes the text out-of-context. Dialogue feels unnatural and confusing, and the whole poem does not stick together. Rather, its lines become paratactical, and the lack of narrative contributes to this. It robs the sequence of purpose, and ultimately the visual works against the poem rather than with it.

Not to say that there isn't value in parataxis and non-narrative work. A comic might also use a poem as a starting point for a different sort of ekphrasis. My own work could contribute more of my artistic vision by intentionally re-interpreting a poem as Morice tends to do. I usually attempt to keep the integrity of the original poem in my comics, but I could potentially use the comic form to change the work into a new, different work. Usually I try to illustrate a poem as accurately as possible. The interesting thing about this is that I am illustrating my own interpretation of words, which are abstractions in and of themselves. Part of my artistic subjectivity comes out when I take vague ideas and illustrate them in a specific manner. Perhaps in the future I should take more liberties in my interpretations.

In the case of "Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare," the text plays such a small role in the comic that it could almost be replaced by any other text and still hold as much purpose. One of my current goals with comics is to consciously balance the text and visual in a way that is effective.

Morice often treats the text of a poem as dialogue. Since most poems only have one speaker, this can be very difficult to do. Most of the poems lose a great deal in the conversion to dialogue. Sometimes the purpose of the text is difficult to glean due to its placement as a reply to a previous line--or the line breaks between the text balloons are inconsistent with the line breaks in the poem, so syntactical units break down and fall apart. I have tried to approach ways of treating the text of a poem as dialogue, but often I cannot find a way that feels quite right; my failure at this point is that I give up.

In the case of "fox-fur," I interpreted most of the poem as visual, and worked four lines into dialogue and thought. This worked very well--but those particular lines did not assign themselves as dialogue. They did not have punctuation, so they were very open to intepretation. When I placed them in text bubbles, I statically allocated dynamic ideas. In a way, I cleared the text up, but I also pinned it down. Could I have done more with words though? It seems that this is something I truly need to approach. For although Morice's use of poem as dialogue can be disorienting, it articulates a different way of defining the purpose of text and dialogue. It is almost like an experiment. Sometimes these things are ineffective, but they are well worth doing for that very quality--they expose the subtle functions of the vocabulary of comics and poetry.


"Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll" is very simple, but aptly manages to balance text with visual. The formate is very simple, with alternating panels of text and silhouette illustration. This balances the comic visually, as the text and picture get equal space on the page. The image does not distract from the text, but adds to it.

The original "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll is filled with neologism (or, new words). Carroll combines words like "slithy" to mean both lithe and slimy at once (this is called "portmonteau"). However, many of Carroll's neologisms use context as a clue to their meanings. In this way, Carroll's neologisms are like silhouettes of words--they describe something specific in a somewhat non-specific manner. They leave an impression that they mean something very specific, though their details remain unclear. Morice's silhouettes do the same thing, and the creatures shown in the silhouettes are complex, but unspecified. The text and visual work together very well in this way.

Morice also does something interesting that may connect to Carroll's use of anastrophe (putting words in backwards order, like "All mimsy were the borogroves" rather than "The borogroves were all mimsy"). Between the checkerboard format and the nonsense of both poem and visual, it is difficult to tell if an image goes with the text panel that precedes or follows it. This feels like a flipping around, as some panels could go either way. The comic begins and ends with text boxes, so there is not an easy way to assign text to visual. This is like anastrophe, and it also seems to hold everything together rather than seperate the poem with gutters.

"fox-fur" in color

Now in color! I just bought myself some markers, so I have new toys to play with. Still learning how to use them properly.

Here's a little something that came out of an exercise from Chapter 2 of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. The original exercise is to make three copies of an image and think of three words to interact with it differently. I did a couple of these, but this one worked well when I put the images together to make a strip.

Response to Poetry Comics

"My book is based on the idea that the poem-cartoon combination is quite natural. It evolves from the close relationship that words and pictures have always had. Poetry and cartoonery are both art forms. Together, they can only enrich each other." (Dave Morice, "preface," Poetry Comics)

Poetry Comics is an interesting study on the combination of poetry and cartoonery. The poems are popular ones, but they vary greatly. The comics themselves vary greatly in character and also in the way that they relate or react to the original poems.

Some comics are close reflections of the poems. Morice's comic of "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll (pg. 86) reflects the whimsy and comic nature of the original poem. Others reframe the poem by juxtaposing the text against something unexpected, as in Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18," where unusual monsters utter the lines of the sonnet while somehow embodying them. (pg. 1)

Still others work poems into narrative, as in Ben Johnson's "Song: To Celia," (pg. 21) where the poem becomes dialogue and transforms a single speaker into a few speakers. This transforms the poem entirely. Morice goes further with Emily Dickinson's "Modern Poetry Romance." (pg. 82) by taking excerpts from various poems and using them to create a narrative.

Another example of this collage of ideas appears as T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in which portraits of Prufrock even make a tongue-in-cheek cameo, particularly when he peeks over the building and says "That is not what I meant at all." (pg. 99) This seems like a recognition of an intentional misinterpretation of the poem--and it works well.

In this way, the comics are treated as reactions to the poems, and thus stand alone as individual works of art that allude to the poems, but do not necessarily try to imitate or lean on the poems themselves.

Morice describes ways in which a comic might relate to a poem or poems on page117: "In moving from poem to cartoon, you take a given group of words and create a visual environment around them. This change automatically affects the tone of the poem. The results can be illustrational, satirical, critical, or surreal. Bringing the two art forms together can help you to understand how each one works, and how they can work together."

Re: Ellen Forney Exercise

So now I'm asking myself, how does this connect to what I like in poetry?

I like my poetry to be a bit on the weird side--but still beautiful in some sense. When poetry is strange, it makes things new and exciting. The bizarre and grotesque are compelling to me; they quench my curiosity. I think that one of my most dominant (and valuable) traits is curiosity. It also shows how something repulsive can be beautiful, and something beautiful can be repulsive.

How palatable do you like your comix art to be? What about the text?

I love beautifully-drawn comix--but I don't mind something quirky or stylized now and then (this sounds almost like an inverse to my answer about poetry). I must say that I am drawn to disarmingly beautiful illustrations. I used to be much less interested in poorly-drawn or messy or ugly comix, but I am now more intrigued in them. However, even amidst those I tend toward comix that look intentionally drawn, whether they are beautiful in the traditional sense or not.

The text, however, I prefer to be odder, uglier, or more uncomfortable. Perhaps something about that dissonance does the same thing as the poetry I like; it shows the connections between the beautiful and the repulsive.

So I suppose I might say that I like my poetry and comix to be either beautifully repulsive or repulsively beautiful.

Re: Ellen Forney Exercise

Above is a comic of Meg Reilly's poem,

"fox-fur"

the shipwreck washed me ashore
i was filled up with debris
the bank was red clay mixed with silt
i could not speak
there were minnows in my lungs
my hair was fiery, an orange hue
there were people gathering me
discussing whether they should carry me
away from the water, but the water seemed my home
finally the man in charge stepped forward
he was an auburn creature
he was a fox, with fox-fur
standing upright on his hind legs
what is your fantasy
to have sex with two men
what is your fantasy
to have you dress up like a fox
and come to bed
he needed no deliberation
but approached my body impish on the sand
he stroked my head

Ellen Forney exercise

I think what I love most about Ellen Forney is that her comix satisfy both my desire for beautiful art and "edgy"/confessional text. Her drawing style seems to me to be conventionally "good" or "pretty"--the people are good-looking in a standard illustrative way, the lines are very clean, the style is, well, stylish. While I love underground comics--this is, in fact, the only kind of comics I know deeply--I am often unable to get into work by artists who use a deliberately ugly or messy or disturbing illustration style, even though I'm very drawn to text that is deliberately subversive, disturbing, etc. (And here I'll say that I'm a little horrified to realize that I "assigned" you--or you chose, but from a list I provided--a book with as much salacious content as I Love Led Zeppelin. It's really dirty!)

I think part of what makes Forney so interesting is that thing we keep coming back to: juxtaposition. In her work, a very lovely drawing accompanies what might otherwise be considered text that is repulsive (in the sense that people could be repulsed by it). I think the palatable prettiness of the image sort of saves AND heightens the intensity of the word.

So now I'm asking myself, how does this connect to what I like in poetry? No answers from me on that front just yet, but what about you? How palatable do you like your comix art to be? What about the text?

And for an exercise, try doing a very "pretty" or "tidy" comic for an "ugly" or "messy" poem (yours or, perhaps more fun, someone else's). Or try a very messy or ugly style to accompany a poem that is traditional...and traditionally beautiful.

Response to I Love Led Zepplin: I love Ellen Forney.

Those comics were fun, I'm enjoying these comic etudes quite a bit. You may also have noticed that I discovered the "Live Paint" tool in illustrator. Wow, it's useful.

There is so much to take in and chew on in McCloud's work--but I think I'll have to move on at this point and revisit the concepts throughout the rest of these responses. (And I agree--the last page of Understanding Comics was so sweet!)

Ellen Forney picks up just the right things in her comics to make them spark. The first section of I Love Led Zepplin is a collection of "How to. . ." comics. These are no ordinary expository writings--Forney's comics show people anything from "How to Make a Nice Sciue-Sciue Dinner" to "How to Talk About Drugs with Your Kids" (for both parents who do or don't do drugs) to "How D'ya Survive the Coming Chaos?" The advice she gives is informed (often through collaboration), practical, and funny. She uses comics as a medium to answer the questions that everyone feels too embarrassed to ask (but really, we should know these things)!

Other "How to" comics offer advice that may not apply to everyone but still holds a good deal of social commentary. Her style and zings are perfect satire in that they are funny and true enough to make the reader think.

Forney captures a lower diction that feels so familiar and friendly. Her autobiographical, non-fiction, and collaborative comics do this especially well by capturing facial expressions and dialogue in a very sincere way. Many of her comics feel much like a form of Confessional Poetry. The theme of sexuality feels intimate and unashamed. It is uncensored and addictive. Through this candid demeanor, Forney's works do an excellent job at demonstrating the bridge-like capabilities of medium as McCloud defines it in Understanding Comics. She connects closely with the reader, and gets her points across effectively. She even does this without words in some instances; her Yoga comic (pp. 42-43) shows an apt use of icons to express sensations, emotions, and motion. "After Hours" (pp. 57-70) shows how the simplification of stories upon their retellings by simplifying the images--pushing them more toward the abstract corner of the pyramid. Finally, "Trapeze' (pp.71-75) manages to capture so much action and emotion merely through the use of a body, a trapeze, and some squiggly lines!

Her collaborations are another great demonstration of medium--how much further art can go when there are two or more minds working toward a similar goal!

In a way, Forney's works are a blend of comics, confessional poetics, and creative non-fiction. They are functional, but the function is crafted in such a way that it does not interfere with the art--rather, it interacts with it.

Lovely!

I really enjoyed these comics. I'm sure they seem basic, but I hope they were fun for you to do and helped you in thinking about ways to connect these two mediums.

Ok, now on to Ellen Forney if you like!

Re: Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud's book was indeed brilliant! It was extremely clear and well done. I reveled in it and showed it off to quite a few people.

Comics are a sequential art, as he says on pg. 20. Is poetry a sequential art? Why or why not?

I think that poetry is potentially a form of sequential art. That is, it depends on the poem. Poets often juxtapose images or ideas, and they usually do so intentionally.
That said, poetry is traditionally a sequence of written text. In the case of vispo, it breaks some of these structures. I think that this adds to the potential of poetry. Surely the aid of pictorial imagery can compliment written poetry.

You picked up on McCloud's idea about symbol and icon in comics, and this gets back to our conversation about metonym. How does poetry use simplified (or complicated!) ideas to stand in for other things? Think about your pine tree analogy. Maybe make a comic about this. Then maybe make a poem in which something "simple" stands in for something complex.
I think that poetry does this all the time. A word itself is an icon, so as it is meant to represent something, it is prone to represent many things. Words are affected by context. Even the word context holds more than one implication. It means that a word is affected by the text that surrounds it (con meaning with,) but it is also affected by the memories of the reader--a context that is not actually -text, but something else entirely. In context, a word is taken with its surroundings.

From this, a reader will take that context into memory. It becomes a new association. If a word association is common enough, it becomes normative, and may eventually take on new meanings through association (or, they become metonyms).

Likewise, the signified thing may have associations that arise when the signifier is used. This association may not be recognized by a regular language pattern, but a reader may still take the association into account, and so something associated to a signified thing becomes indirectly associated to a signifier.

Context itself may also be a way of using simple things to stand in for complex things. The body surrounding a simple thing may impose greater meaning upon that thing.

In this way, simplified ideas can stand in for tremendously complex things. Even down to the use of synecdoche, where a part of something stands in for the whole of something. Branches may stand in for a tree. A synecdoche can work the other way too, where a tree stands in for its branches.

Simple or complex things may also become symbols for abstract things. A light bulb represents an idea by referring to a single, specific idea thought up by Thomas Edison and manifested eventually as a light bulb. The light bulb itself is not an idea. Oddly enough, a light bulb is not used to represent an idea in text, but rather in pictures. Why is this? The association behind the symbol still applies.

On pg. 47 he talks about the strategy of juxtaposing the words and images in a comic. Poems work with this kind of juxtaposition, too, of course. How do the two mediums differ in how they are able to be fueled by these disjunctions?

It seems that words are more prone to association due to their already abstract nature, so juxtaposition does quite a lot in written word.

In comics, juxtaposition tends toward more direct or narrative associations. This could definitely be played with, but I think it does this because of our accustomization to our visual surroundings. Images in a comic have physical locations in their settings. Poems may specify location, but the location of the word on the page does not necessarily have anything to do with the location of a signified thing.



Like you, I was taken with McCloud's notions of how time and transition can take place in the static world of a comic book. This, too, can be said to be true of the similarly static world of a poem. Find a poem or two that you love that make use of time--either that describe a short amount of time passing, or a long amount of time, or otherwise give a sense of time and transition. Analyze how the poet is doing this--with language, form, line break, etc.--and try to make a comic (without words?!) that replicates the movement of time in the poem.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182243

Understanding Comics

I think the Scott McCloud is a truly brilliant book. Did you like it, Abi? I find it amazing what he covers, theorizes about, speculates on...all while making what is a beautiful and functional work of comic-book art in its own right. I was knocked out by it.

I'm glad you've moved right into Ellen Forney and are enjoying her--I've long loved her work, and think she's an unsung heroine of comix--but let's stay with McCloud for a while longer, ok?

I'd love to hear and see you respond to the following ideas from McCloud:

1) Comics are a sequential art, as he says on pg. 20. Is poetry a sequential art? Why or why not?

2) You picked up on McCloud's idea about symbol and icon in comics, and this gets back to our conversation about metonym. How does poetry use simplified (or complicated!) ideas to stand in for other things? Think about your pine tree analogy. Maybe make a comic about this. Then maybe make a poem in which something "simple" stands in for something complex.

3) On pg. 47 he talks about the strategy of juxtaposing the words and images in a comic. Poems work with this kind of juxtaposition, too, of course. How do the two mediums differ in how they are able to be fueled by these disjunctions?

4) Like you, I was taken with McCloud's notions of how time and transition can take place in the static world of a comic book. This, too, can be said to be true of the similarly static world of a poem. Find a poem or two that you love that make use of time--either that describe a short amount of time passing, or a long amount of time, or otherwise give a sense of time and transition. Analyze how the poet is doing this--with language, form, line break, etc.--and try to make a comic (without words?!) that replicates the movement of time in the poem.

This is probably plenty for now, but here are some other thoughts from McCloud I'd like to you to continue to consider and pick up on in your responses to future comic books that we read together (and that you make):

• McCloud makes the point that Japanese comics, like much else in that culture, are often much less concerned with being goal-oriented than Western comics. How does this square with some of the comics we'll be reading? How does it square with what you are liking/writing in poetry these days?
• Comics can make use of pretty incredible things: "negative space," a sense of silence, a sense of fragmentation. McCloud also talks about what happens "between panels" in comics--what's unseen, unsaid, left out. How do poems employ parallel strategies? How could you use these strategies to make poem-comics, or comics-poems?
• I love where McCloud gives the example (on pg. 128) of how wavy lines can indicate stink, smoke, heat, etc. Are there ways in which words can also function this way in a poem? Can you try to write a poem in which the same "symbol" (signifier) is used to very different ends within the same poem-world?
• And I'll close with this great quote, from pg. 195: "Each [artistic/communication] medium (the term comes from the Latin word meaning middle) serves as a bridge between minds." Thoughts about how this relates to poetry and poetics?

Finally, can I just say that, as a mom and feminist who believes in the political importance of revealing the domestic reality of the artist's life, I adore how the very last panel of Understanding Comics shows, for the first time, and thus gives the last word to, McCloud's female partner and their baby?!

Response to Understanding Comics [and "Time, Space, Art, and the Cosmos!"]

Apologies for the wait, folks! Here's a big, long response (and two more responses soon to come) to make up for it. I have now nearly recovered from the AWP aftermath.

For the sake of organization and clarification, I am including a synopsis of each chapter in italics before my responses.

Chapter One: "Setting the Record Straight"
Scott McCloud defines comics as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer." He then gives a history of comics as he has defined them; he asserts that the art comics dates back to codices and cave paintings.

In picking apart McCloud's definition, one can recognize some important things. Begin even with the word juxtaposed. Placed next to. This has an implication of a relationship between the images that are juxtaposed. This is why juxtaposition is very important to the definition. This idea of a relationship between panels is further explored in chapter three. He specifies that the images may be "pictorial and other." This leaves the definition very broad (less defined, perhaps,) allowing for poetry to fit, even though it is not necessarily pictorial. Ellen Forney's "How to. . ." series is a good example. The comics are composed primarily of text--but are still considered to be comics rather than merely expository essays. However, would they still be considered comics without the pictorial elements? It seems arguable that there must at least be some deliberation about the text, even if that is simply to use a specific font or layout. McCloud's broad inclusion could still be argued by the points made in chapter two about the evolution of language from pictures to alphabets.

Chapter Two: "The Vocabulary of Comics"
McCloud introduces his theory of vocabulary. Images are obviously not what they represent. They may be something simple as ink on paper. However, these images represent persons, places, things, or ideas (where symbols represent more abstract things such as concepts, ideas, or philosophies). Further, images vary from the realistic (a photograph) to the iconic (a cartoon). The former is more specific and objective, the latter is more vague and subjective (and so, prone to interpretation and reflection). The ultimate subjective icon would in this case be words, as they look nothing like what they represent, but represent it nonetheless. He brings this theory even further by laying icons out on a diagram he calls the "pictorial vocabulary," as shown below (pp 51-57, some text omitted).

This is such a clear way of diagramming something that seems subtle when one is unfamiliar with comics. The points made in this chapter about images as icons are applicable to more than comics, art, and language, but and perception as a whole as well. The brain makes connections all the time, be they filling in spaces or silhouettes, or accepting a symbol as a stand-in for an actual thing. For example, anyone can picture a pine tree, but the tree that one pictures is compiled from memories, and thus does not actually exist as one remembers it to. Also, this tree is taken as an icon of any tree. In a forest, no two trees are exactly the same. I may know of a pine tree, but I do not know of a specific tree that I never actually perceived. There are plenty of trees that have passed into my vision, but I wouldn't necessarily say that I've actually seen them as they are, but rather filled in the blanks with my mind in accordance with trees I've seen in the past. Perhaps in this way, the mind uses metonymy toward intuition. I can guess at what a tree I've never seen might look like, and come at least to a similar image.

In this way, comics and poetry can act as icons toward things that may not actually exist, or they might exercise plasticity by being iconic enough to cater toward each reader's interpretation.

Chapter Three: "Blood in the Gutter"McCloud explains the function panels as story fragments of various sorts. He explains a phenomenon he dubs "closure" as something of a Gestalt effect in the "gutters" of comics (that the mind pieces the fragments/panels of the story together to form a cohesive whole).

pg 74

*At this point, the wysiwyg REFUSED to mess with italicized texts. Ah html, if only I understood you a little better.

More filling in blanks. One might say that the "gutters" are icons in this way, just as a ceasura in poetry or a rest in a musical phrase. The mind fills in seperation with time, space, or an idea. I think there may be more links though. One can use colors and shapes to connect two panels. Some forms, like the villanelle, cohere a poem through the repetition of words. It doesn't seem that McCloud covers the element of repetition much. In fact, the plasticity of an image or icon could be represented through its repetition in different contexts

Chapter Four: "Time Frames"
McCloud describes how time may weave through a comic by means of words, repeated panels, space/gutters, etc.

I had not considered how words translate into time in comics, but I think that McCloud is onto something with this. Often, when I see large text bubbles, I can picture the panel coming to life and the characters using expression and body language while they speak.

Chapter Five: "Living in Line"
McCloud explains the poetential of a line to portray emotion and sensual effects.

This chapter reminded me of past drawing and design classes. The question that comes to my mind is: why do we associate certain types lines with certain emotions?

Chapter Six: "Show and Tell"

McCloud shows different methods of balancing/blending word and graphic.

This is very interesting. I used to think about this when considering other interdisciplinary arts. Does the picture support the text? Does the text support the picture? Are they interdependent? Can each one stand alone--and when they do, how do they change? Comics become a more dialectical art when picture and text combine like this. They are two elements, but the whole produced by the relationship between these elements may be far greater (or variable) than the elements themselves.

Chapter Seven: "The Six Steps"
McCloud lays out the necessary steps of effective comics.

Although I usually prefer art that is thorough and conscious, I argue against the merits in filling up each step to the brim as one would a set of rubrics. Rather, some of these things may be emphasized over others, or some may be isolated and focused upon. A work of art may excel in one area, and it may still be "good." However, the artist would do best to experiment with different categories and aim to strengthen all of them. An artist becomes a manipulator of the art, but only after he/she learns technique fully.

Poets do this too, when they play with language. But--they must know language well in order to effectively manipulate it.

Chapter Eight: "A Word About Color"

McCloud describes the influences of printing cost on color, as well as other decisions about color. Technology has some effect on the way in which we make our art.

One might also note that words are technology in themselves.

Chapter Nine: "Putting it all together"

McCloud explains the importance of comics in the context of humanity.

"Yes, yes most definitely."

I agree with what McCloud is asserting about line and color (in the previous chapters). I also made some connections to physiology in what he writes about.
In memory the brain, as I understand it, pieces together many small things to form whole. A whole memory is not stored in one spot, but rather is composed (encoded, you might say) of many seperate processes. Like an impressionist painting, they combine to produce a whole picture that is greater than the sum of many daubs of paint. A smell or a shape may trigger memory. Have you ever left a thought in a room, only walk back into the room and remember it? Some sensation in that room was a little piece of that thought. Icons, shapes, words, and colors can do the same. The ability of the brain to compile things as such shows that we can break down barriers.

Art can manipulate those things, and in that way it can communicate ideas that are otherwise very difficult to share.

Re: Sweetn'o, an experiment with image

Apologies for doing this out of order, but since I have finished it, I might as well post it. In response to your comment about Sweetn'o, here's a comic made of text followed by a solitary image:

(This is also card for my dad's Birthday, which is today!)

Eureka!

I just realized I can post, too, not just leave comments. Ha ha, she laughed evilly, like a superhero villain, the power is mine!

Anyway, I wanted to say that your thoughts about memory and poems, image and memory, image and comics made me think of how both comics and poems rely on shorthand, on icons or metonyms, to say what they need to say, and in this way are like memories or dreams: you don't conjure up a whole, but the parts do the same work. Does that make sense?

This is one of the things poems and comics have in common, to my mind: their spare and precise use of shorthand--be it visual or language shorthand--toward the most evocative ends possible.

What do you think, Abi?

(And I did leave you a comment with an assingment in it under the "sweetn'o" post, before I realized I could post...)

Brain Damage: like waking up in the Twilight Zone.

Another sketch for my Self-Identity/Mind-Brain class. I'm reading about L. Zasetsky. He was drafted into the Russian army during WWII. He gained severe brain damage from a piece of shrapnel lodged into his head during combat. As a result, he had to re-learn many things, though some of his most human faculties (imagination, self-awareness, longing for meaning) were left entirely intact. I think this is what drove him to do everything he could to make himself meaningful.

The book is The Man with a Shattered World, put together by A.R. Luria.

sweetn'o: an experiment with image

image only comic:

text only comic:

image-driven poem:

Sugar hisses out of the rag-torn envelopes.
As I toss them toward the trash, two fall like whirligigs to the floor--
Or white leaves with red and blue text for veins: "sweetn-o".
My hand hesitates, for what if there are slugs underneath?


image-avoiding poem:

I like my tea like I like candy:
all bad-for-you and poisoned up.
Because coffee makes me jittery, I need something else to keep me awake.
I was a barista for five years.
I've long since sworn off that kind of labor and the tasks associated with it,
so when I miss the trash and drop the empty sugar packets on the floor,
Do I really have to pick the damned things up?

"I studied myths. I even made a motto for myself."

Jeannine Hall Gailey's interview of Matthea Harvey, "Post-apocalypse, Poetry, and Robots," brings up some interesting connections between poetry, anime/manga, and lore.

When asked about her interest in Japanese pop culture and anime, Harvey mentions Hayao Miyazaki, stating, "In the same way that a strong voice in a poem can transport you anywhere, that distinctive animation style lets you surrender to the story." I have found that statement to be true in Miyazaki's works, as well as in other anime.

In anime and comics, certain images resonate for me. By this, I mean that they stick in my mind, resounding as vivid memories of the work. Certain poems do this as well. I find that these images (in both cases) can be even more resonant when they include another sense. (Alice Notley writes that "The image exists / not in the eyes.") A tactile image, a smell, a sound, any image that discovers or creates a memory feels especially effective to me. This is not surprising, as poetry is so often a form of memory. In this way, poetry, graphic literature, and anime can all act as representations, descriptions, or conjurers of memory. Of course, they could also be new, independent things, but it is still very natural for the viewer/reader to relate an image to prior experience.

Harvey specifically mentions the idea of hybrids and post-apocalyptic landscapes. One hybrid may be a cyborg, a mix between human and robot. This hybid is very clear in the theme behind her "Robo-Boy" poems, where the boy mentioned "struggles to define himself in human terms while confronting a brutal and confusing world," almost like a futuristic Pinocchio.

It is very interesting that she mentions centaurs and mermaids, as one might not usually make the connection between a centaur and a cyborg, but the connection there is actually very strong. Cyborgs and robots are creatures of lore, just as centaurs and mermaids are. Robots were originally mechanical golems. The word robot comes from the Czech robota, which means forced labor. The connection between robots and apocalypse is clear throughout science fiction, but also makes its place in the mecha or gundam genre of anime, which often involves giant, often ancient robots as tools of post-apocalyptic defense against robotic fiends, as in the anime series Gurren Lagann. This again echos apocalyptic myths where hybrid creatures battle other mythical monsters, as in The Chronicles of Narnia or the mythical battle between sibling dragon gods Bahamut and Tiamat. There is a further hybrid when robots battle monsters, as in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind; in this case, the God-Soldier may be organic, but I still consider it a robot in the sense that the Frankenstein monster is a type of robot, only it is made of flesh rather than metal.

Even Frankenstein shows the same struggle with his humanity as Robo-Boy does when Frankenstein admires the beauty of flowers, then throws a girl into a lake. Pinocchio struggles for humanity too. Mega Man struggles for humanity in the same way Astro Boy does, by being a force of good in the world. All these robots show distinctly human sentience: they can reflect upon themselves and their experiences, they make choices, and they search for meaning in life. It is interesting that robots devised by humans are so like their creators--that humans make something so like themselves.

Harvey is methodical in her description of Robo-Boy. She states, "I wanted his own struggle about identity to be mirrored in the reader’s perceptions, I was careful not to describe his physical characteristics too much—I wanted him to shimmer between people’s ideas of what a robot looks like and what a boy looks like." She accomplishes a vivid image that has many possibilities, depending on the reader. The "strong voice" she mentions earlier in her interview transports the reader by very carefully leaving bits of the poem open to interpretation, so that the poem may act as a mirror. It this way, it is almost like a more pop-friendly medium of philosophy.

Her final comment about photography as a way of approaching invention visually. I think that this is a very accurate way of describing it.

I went more from visual arts to poetry, and applied my visual way of thinking into my process. I suppose it should only be natural to study the poetics of graphics.

Check out "Terror of the Future / 4" by Matthea Harvey

Page 2 of Phineas Gage

Oh, Phineas, what has happened to you?

On a somewhat related matter

Just for fun, I'm posting this comic I did for my Self Identity and the Mind-Brain Question class. It is based on a true story. This is page 1. It was drawn improvisationally in about an hour, so it's not exactly demonstrative of my best illustration skills. But it's still informative and amusing.

Enjoy!

hello, world

The above image is from the project that first drew my interest into the connection between comics and poetry.

I was required to do a creative response to a Serbian poet of my choice. I chose Vasko Popa. I primarily write poetry, but it felt odd trying to write a poem in response to one of Popa's poems (which, if you are not familiar with Popa, they are rather meticulously composed). So instead I responded with something I have even less of a place to be doing: a graphic adaptation of Popa's central poem cycle, "The Blackbird's Field."

In short, I loved it. The poems translated effortlessly to the page. I wanted to do more, and I wanted to see what other poets/illustrators have done to connect poetry with illustration. So, after the necessary paperwork and coordination, I now have the privelege of doing this project with Arielle. I anticipate that I will learn quite a bit as we read and discuss a variety of comics and articles. Along the way, I will do some graphic poems of my own, as well as some critical/analytical responses.

If you're reading along, I hope that you enjoy the blog!

some questions

Here are my current takes on a few questions I will be considering over the course of this project.

What can poets learn from comic book structure?

There are many different structures of comics, just as there are of poems. A comic may separate illustration from text like a storybook. Sometimes the text acts as a caption for an image. Other times, a comic may have a series of panels all linked together in some way. It seems often cinematic. Sometimes the text links each panel, but sometimes there is no text at all.

Perhaps a poet can learn from the way text and image interact in comics. The balance between text and image varies, but they work toward some common goal.

Words often play the role of dialogue in a comic. Because of this, poets can learn ways of using voice in an effective way by examining comics.

A structure can also be created by a comic. If it is a caption, then it begs a concise perfection. If the comic has panels, the text becomes broken up by pauses, as lines or stanzas of a poem--or as phrases and breath marks in music. The text must still be concise enough not to overtake the panel, and sometimes it interacts with the aesthetic of the illustration as well. Either way, I think the key may be in that interaction between image and text.

What can comics artists learn from poets?

Words should do more than explain, they can at times embellish an image, or work on an equal level with the image. All the better if words can stand on their own. By looking at poetic elements, a comic artist can learn many ways of using poetic methods to convey things in a new and interesting manner. The artist can do this with words, but also by using images poetically. For example, a comic artist could use visual metaphors or associative images to convey meaning.

A comic artist might also use poetic forms. Although I have not seen this happen often, a comic artist can emulate the effect of a form by repeating images, shapes, words, or panels. This could result in a comic that has qualities of a pantoum or sestina, for example. This sounds like a fun experiment to me--and it definitely has the potential to hone one's storytelling skills.

What do the poems you love and comics you love have in common?

Beauty, quirks, connections and solid concepts. I love for a poem to look or sound pleasing, just as I love for an image to look pleasing. I love oddities because they are new and strange. I love relating the art to my own experiences (because I am a tad bit narcissistic, perhaps, but maybe because this shows that art can be truth for more than just the artist). I especially love it when a poem or comic takes me by surprise with its cleverness, its tricks, or its magnetic depth.

What can a poem do that a comic can't, and vice versa?

A poem can easily leave the visual aspect to the imagination of the reader. Poems have more variability in that sense. They are very open to connect to the reader. It also seems that it is more acceptable for poems to be paratactic. A poem can jump from one thing to another. It can seem at first to make no sense at all. A poem may also make use of language games by taking easily recognized phrases and altering them in order to make dissonance. An image may also rearrange a paradigm, but the effect feels less recognizable.

Also, words can be read aloud, and in many different ways.

A comic can leave out words in lieu of direct images. It can be very specific about the images, and it can do so without overexplaining them. Although words can be both specific and concise, they often must rely upon the previous experiences of the reader in order to do so.