TIME

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Notes:

This is a short little poem with alternating numbers of syllables in the iambic format. I really did not take any inspiration from a particular poetic form but instead jotted a verse and let the poem follow. I thought it might be fun to play with the juxtaposition of the current popular thought about the study of time (rigid, controlled, unchanging) with the poetic metaphor usually employed. I found it especially ironic that if one looks at the theory of special and general relativity it tends to agree more with the motif of the poet where time is fluid and changing than what one thinks of time in regards to traditional science.
Enjoy!


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Behind the Lines

Visual Poetry by Individualist

This type of poem is referred to as a Ballade, in particular this is a Ballade Supreme. The Ballade is a form of poetry first used in France in the 14th and 15th century. It was brought to the English language by poets in the 16th century. The most famous English language poems to be written as Ballades were the “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer. These poems are written in iambic form and I have switched lines from Iambic tetrameter to pentameter to suit the meter.


The standard Ballade is a group of three eight line stanzas where the last line is repeated. These have a rhyming scheme of ababbcbc. This is followed by a short four line stanza that also ends with the chosen tag line with a rhyme scheme of bcbc. My poem is a Ballade Supreme with ten line stanzas in the form of ababbccdcd followed by a five line closing stanza ccdcd. The themes of this poem evolved as I wrote it and it all tied nicely to suggest a story or at least the set up of a story.

The visual elements of the poem matched the timber of the lines by introducing more colorful realistic oil elements in the same watercolor drawing. It worked out nicely I thnk, Enjoy!

For references to Ballades please refer to the following articles.  Ballade


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Paved with Grime

Visual Poetry by Individualist

This poem is my experiment with an Ode, in particular this poem is a try at a Horatian Ode which is less formal and follows more contemplative themes. I set my own rules for these stanzas. The Ode was first written by the Greeks and was popular with the Romans. It was a very formal and theatrical meter that was written to be sung by the chorus in the traditional Greek Plays. The style has been translated to English literature and has been popular but has waned in modern times since it is so highly structured.


The traditional Classical Ode is the Pindaric Ode which is written in three 10 line stanzas following Iambic Pentameter. The poem is broken into the strophe, antistrophe and epode. The Strophe and Antistrophe follow a similar meter and rhyming scheme which can be set in the Horatian Ode. The Chorus would sing the strophe (which means “turn” in Greek) while walking from the western side of the stage to the east. The Antistrophe was sung returning back to the west from the eastern side of the stage. The epode would be sung from the center of the stage and followed a separate meter and rhyming scheme. The epode’s purpose was to resonate or bring together the two stanza’s of the strophe and antistrophe.

The Horation Ode is more contemplative and tranquil and alternative structures can be used. That is the method I used for this poem. In my poem the theme transfers from the perspective of the subjects (the children and the workers) and the pictures show opposite perspectives of the similar scenes.

I hope you enjoy this piece. For more explanation on Odes please reference these sites:

[Poets.Org]
 
[How to write an Ode]

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THE CONSTITUTION

Visual Poetry by Individualist

For the last two month I have been so busy with work and taking two classes in school that I have had little time to compose any new art pieces. Now that I am traveling again I cannot take classes and so I have time on the weekends for my Visual Poetry.


I’d thought I start back with a Patriotic poem for the fourth of July. I decided to use the US Constitution as my inspiration since in reality the ideals given to us in that document can be credited with driving our nation’s greatest successes. Hat Tip to the Tea Party movement for making it relevant and hip again. I read some of the article in the US Today paper last week and noted that the same barbed question was asked once more “What does the TEA Party stand for?” This is so tiresome but in thinking about the subject of my poem I have a simple answer for them.

“IT’S THE CONSTITUTION STUPID”

Anything you want to know about what the people in the TEA Party want can be found in that document, the Federalist Papers, the writings of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers who created this country.

Having gotten that off my chest I wish to explain that the pictures of the Liberty Bell come from a photo album commemorating the trip the Liberty Bell took in 1915 from Philadelphia to California. More of that trip can be found at the link below:

Liberty Bell Trip by Train in 1915

Happy Fourth of July Everyone!

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The World's Most Famous Beach

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:


The next poetic form that I wish to try is probably the most well known standard of poetry dating back to the beginning of English History. It is one that continues to this day in verse and is well known in song. This is the Ballad. The rules for a Ballad are simple enough. The form makes use of Iambic foots in alternating lines of eight syllables (four feet) and six syllables (three feet). The traditional form is broken into a quartet of four lines of verse with the second and last lines of the quartet rhyming. Alternatively there are poets who have authored ballads that make use of six lines as opposed to four. In an omage to the idea of the Ballad as a song I have chosen to have the poem’s verses be two traditional quartets followed by a six line chorus where the third and last lines rhyme. As I read the poem I can see why this form has been so successful over the ages. There seems to be something in repeating the verse that sounds right. For a much better discussion on ballads I will refer you to this link by Conrad Geller:

Poetic Forms

In this poem there was one structure that I wanted to play with that is prevalent in many poetry written today and that is the half meaning. This is where the sentence breaks across the lines of the poem and is called enjambment. However the break is in such a fashion that, the lines taken by themselves, have a different meaning than the sentence as a whole. This is supposed to enhance the questions that a good poem is supposed to bring to the reader. This comes from a very good book on poetry that I am beginning to read called “A Poet’s Guide to Poetry” by Mary Kinzie ISBN 0-226-43739-6. I tried to make use of enjambment in the chorus sections of the poem in order to further differentiate them.


Because the written word elements of the Ballad are themselves simple and straight forward I thought this would be a good piece to work with and discuss the visual elements of the poem. I thought that first I would discuss where I got the inspiration for the idea of visual poetry. It came from the book “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud ISBN 1-58389-759-8. In this book Mr. McCloud defines Comics as follows:

“Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”


His website is ScottMcCloud.com

Mr. McCloud argues that Comics as an art form should not be limited to super heroes and fuzzy animals and in fact can be an art form that expresses many styles and genres including high art and literature. He explains that the use of Sequential Art to tell a story provides the artist with not just the elements of words and pictures but combined form something completely knew. Thus he argues in this book why can’t art and literature be expressed using this form. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.


It was this concept that gave me the idea for Visual Poetry. For me it is not just a poem with pictures. What I am trying to do is to convey a meaning beyond the ability that the picture and the written word could do by themselves. Whether I am successful or not is a matter of subjective judgment but I feel that Visual Poetry is something related to but different from poetry by itself.


Mr. McCloud emphasizes that the use of frames in comics provide the space between them that allows the reader’s imagination to fill in the rest of the narrative of the story. Thus, in comics, space is used to represent time. It would seem then that this is a difference between Visual Poetry and Comics that would need to be resolved for in the poem the transition from line to line and stanza to stanza do not always reflect a traditional story developing as it does a progression of meaning. However in his book McCloud describes six types of transitions between panels from changes in action to scene and subject. He also explains the sixth as non-sequitur where the frames seem to have no relation to one another. However he suggests that even in pictures that display the most jarring differences there is a kind of alchemy where the mind will attempt to make relations from one to another, meaning that even if it still makes no sense it is somehow different combined than the original frames would be alone. It is in this context that poetry also resides as each line and stanza offer questions for the reader to spur the imagination so too does the gutter between the frames provide questions that spur the imagination. Thus the “time” in a Visual Poem is a progression of meaning. Non Sequitur is used extremely rarely in most comic genres as they are attempting to tell a story as in a movie. It is I find to some extent more prevalent in the visual poems I have written. The meaning of the poem providing the tie in that connects dissimilar pictures.

This poem “The World’s Most Famous Beach” is an omage to my home town. I call it my home town because while as an air force brat I was raised all over the states, it is where my family finally settled and I went to High School. If my parents had known that the high school was in walking distance of the spring break college expo they may have chosen where to settle from the service differently. Luckily for me by the time they figured it out it was too late to move. Here I have tried to set rules for the framing of the visual poem to match the rules for the words of poetry. The two stanzas that make each verse thus have two comic style blocks embedded on one frame. The pictures are dedicated to the individuals depicted in the story except for the last group of stanzas. The choruses are one picture and these are pictures of the city. The words in the verses are shown off the frame while the words of the chorus are embedded within the frame. There are similar colors and other unique elements to highlight the main characters of the poem especially as it relates to the level of detail.

I liked the concept of this poem and the pictures required a lot more work than usual. I hope you enjoy them.
Indi -


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