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.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
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Let's keep thinking about this idea of how image and text interact in comics, and in poems. Of course, in poems, all the imagery comes in the FORM of text, but nonetheless, I think one could argue that poems also need a balance of language that functions as imagery and language which does other things.
ReplyDeleteHere's an assignment based on this idea: Try a short comic (maybe three panels) that has no text, only image. Then try to "translate" it into a comic that is all text, no image (you will have to be creative about how to make this feel like a comic!). Then try to translate the comic into a poem, twice--first one version that is as entirely image-driven as possible, and then a version which consciously tries to avoid the image.
I also love your idea for a comic that works with repetition. I have seen comics like this--I think especially of ones that use the cinematic techniques like a "zoom in" or "zoom out" so that the image gets repeated bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller.
Another thought: You say, "A poem can jump from one thing to another" and "A comic can leave out words in lieu of direct images." I wonder if there aren't experimental ways to try to make a comic jump from one thing to another (certainly this happens in some less mainstream comics--let's look out for examples of that) and to make a poem that leaves out words in lieu of direct images (poems that actually use images in them). I'd love to see us work toward poem-comics that seek to blur the edges of some of these genre-bound notions.