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...)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
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Holy wow!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought clearly about using icons as metonyms, but that makes perfect sense. I think I do that unwittingly, but now I can actually pay attention.
In that way, one could definitely be very precise about the use of shorthand/icons/metonyms.
I only just made a connection to something I used to do when I was in second grade. In order to memorize a story, I used to draw a sequence of images on a roll of cash register paper (almost like it was an ancient scroll!) It worked very well; I have recently started taking image-heavy notes in my classes, and it seems that I retain information far more easily when I can put an image to it. I had never thought of metonym as a form of memory like that (or of image as metonym), but it makes perfect sense.
I can definitely agree that this is an important connection between poetry and comics.
Maybe I should try to make other visual poetic devices. This feels like a sort of visual literacy.