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.