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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Valenstina

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:


Okay today is Valentine Day and I am authoring a website dedicated to original poetry. So I must by some unwritten law prepare and put a poem on my site in honor of Love on the feast of St. Valentine. My poem “Valenstina” is this poem. If there is one type of subject that is most noted with poetry it must be love. Some might say that this is because the emotion lends itself easily to the writing of poetry however they are not necessarily easy to write. I think it is because Love may be the strongest emotion that we experience and therefore it is very memorable and so provides inspiration. Certainly Hate can be an equally strong emotion but it is not one we like to experience. We do not dwell on hatred and for those that do the rest of us are usually either disinterested or, in the case of an obsessed individual, we are concerned with dissolving that state. Thus love wins out over hate in the circles of poetry.

This poem is a Sestina which is another French form that relies this time not on repeating lines but repeating words. It is an acrostic poetic form in which there are six stanzas of six lines and a usually a finishing tercet of three lines. Rarely the poem may end in a couplet or a haiku. This is a total of 39 or 38 lines. I have chosen to end ”Valenstina” in a haiku. The poem repeats the last word of each line in the first stanza in the remaining lines of the poem. The order of repetition follows a mathematical scheme based on the last stanza. The word in the last line is used in the end of the first line of the next stanza. Then the first line word is placed in the second line of the next stanza. The fifth line becomes the third and the second line becomes the fourth, the fourth line becomes the fifth and the third line becomes the last. Thus if we number the lines from one to six the first stanza will end (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and the next stanza will be (6,1,5,2,4,3). You will note that this means the last line word is used as the first line word of the next stanza and the six stanzas of the main poem begin and end on the same word. The six words are then repeated in the tercet in the middle and end of the lines. There are different methods in the placement of the order here. I chose a Haiku incorporating the word’s in the order of the first stanza. Here are links to websites that detail how to make a sestina:

Baymoon Press
Craft of Poetry

In honor of Valentine’s Day I chose to make every line 14 syllables long. I used a complex metrical structure in the poem. I alternate the line from eight iambic tetrameter followed by a Dactyl foot (Dum duh duh) and then an anapest foot (duh duh Dum) for a six syllable structure with stressed beats at the beginning and end. The anapest is the opposite form of the Dactyl with the stressed beats coming at the end. The poem “Twas the Night before Christmas” is a good example of this. To give the poem more variation I started with the eight iambic syllables and ended with the six bell tolling syllables in the first line and then alternated the next line with the bell tolling six syllables fist and ending with the drumbeat of the eight syllables of the iambic tetrameter. This gave a nice playful ring to the poem and allowed me to stress certain poetic connotations with the mood of the rhythm of the voice of the poem. In honor of the acrostic nature of the poem there is a hidden message.

With regard to the frames I chose to use a standardized form to the pictures to make them look somewhat like Hallmark cards with captions. To this end the picture is framed within the card and the picture itself is made to have fewer abstract elements. This seemed in line with the theme of the poem.


As with most love poems I write this one makes allusions to mythology. Here are some notes for those not familiar with the Roman mythology from which the poem references.

Bacchus (Greek Dionysus) is the God of wine and the inspirer of madness and ecstasy. To the Romans he was the patron god of agriculture, mystery cults and the theater and was responsible for freeing the mind from the normal self through madness and excess. Bacchus was also associated with the Roman god of freedom Liber. The aulos was the instrument associated with this madness and was used in these rights. The aulos was an ancient instrument like an oboe or clarinet (sometimes it was blown as a flute) and usually consisted of two pipes played at angles. The instrument was associated with madness.

Hera (Roman Juno) is the goddess of marriage and the Hearth. The apples of Hera are representations of marriage and fertility.

Faunus (Greek Pan) is the Roman god of the fields and plains and is associated with making cattle fertile. He is tied to the original god Di Indigetes who was said to be King of the Latins. He was also the god of prophecy through his shade Fatuus.

Note in the third stanza’s last line I meant to use the word widest and not wildest. Since even the word processing program tried to correct me I felt the need to point this out.

Enjoy and happy Valentine’s Day every one!


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Revenant

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:


The poem is a Pantoum. This is another repeating poem made of quatrains rhyming in ABAB form. The second and fourth lines of a stanza are repeating in the next stanza as the first and third lines in a traditional Pantoum. I have modified the rule and changed the order so that the first line is the last line of the next stanza and the third line is the first line in the next stanza. The first line of the first stanza of the poem will be the fourth line of the last stanza and the third line will be the second. Thus each line in a Pantoum is repeated twice. The Pantoum was developed in France based on a form from Malaya. For this poem I have settled on twelve syllables per line but no standard meter. The following website explains Pantoums better than I can.

I came across an organization called the “Science Fiction Poetry Association” whose website is listed in the link.  According to the website science fiction poetry is poetry with “some element of speculation” usually based in science fiction fantasy or horror. This poem Revenant is based on elements of science fiction and horror put together in what I am going to term Gothic Futurism or “Dark” Futurism. Notably examples are showcased in the Novels 1984 by George Orwell and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and in television I think is best portrayed on “The Twilight Zone” episode “The Obsolete Man”. Futurism is defined by the dictionary as either an Italian art movement developed in the 1910’s which emphasized the painting of industrial machinery and technological innovations in their art. I have attempted to incorporate similar imagery in the visual elements of the poem. It is also defined below:

“A belief that the meaning of life and one's personal fulfillment lie in the future and not in the present or past.”

An individual who represents the best of modern day futurism is Michio Kaku who can be seen on the science channel. He is a theoretical physicist specializing in string theory who on his shows takes the current understanding of science and develops what the future may look like . His website is listed here: Michio Kaku.

Gothic Futurism then would seem to be a contradiction. For after all, the stories in the Novels and the TV show I have mentioned are a horror story. These tales appear at first glance to be an opposing view, one that perhaps would be held by luddites. They show the dangers of technology, focus on their misuse and seem to paint a dark portrait of the societies to come. Certainly they are in many respects counter to the optimism shown by Doctor Kaku.

For me there is one element, one yardstick that is missing from the analysis above, the plight of the individual in these societies. One of the things these three stories do very well is to illustrate the struggle between the society as an anthropomorphized entity and the individual controlled by the society.

The societies in the Gothic Futurism tales are ones that eventually restricts progress. In “1984” the Inner Party members had decided that no further research was needed because their system had reached an equilibrium which would not be upended. In “Brave New World” his Fordship noted that those curious and creative scientists and philosophers would have to be banished to an island since all new inventions and technology would have to be scrutinized to determine if it had any potential to override their society. In the “Obsolete Man” books were to be banned so that no knowledge outside the state could be obtained. Thus it is the society’s culture as a whole that embraces ludditism.

It is instead the individuals that are the free thinkers who embrace their curiosity and their creativity. Winston Smith seeks companionship and to find the lost knowledge of the past and in so doing seeks Truth. Henry Foster is looking for solitude and meaning to the shallowness of existence as a consumer for the state. The savage seeks a place in this world only to be repulsed by it seeking escape eventually through suicide. Wordsworth seeks poetic justice. In each case it is the individual that is seeking true progress.

In each story the state wins. In the end the only thing that is gained by the collective machine is the loss of all elements of humanity. The protagonists stand up for that which makes one truly human. The desire to embrace knowledge is how one finds one’s purpose in life. The struggle for this is an end in and of itself even if it is eventually doomed. These were the individuals brave enough to stand up and live and thus exceed the state if only for a brief time because they were more than a machine.

This then is why I maintain this genre is still Futurism even though the end is the opposite of the definition. It is the struggle against the machine. The positive element of these tales is the human spirit. These works show the “ghost in the machine” which is that same human spirit which the collective must stamp out since it cannot control it. (Note: this term was coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle as a critique of Descartes Mind Body dualism of which I must admit I have had little exposure. My use of this term is thus based on its connotation in the works of modern culture.)

This at any rate is my poor understanding of the works. My inspiration for this poem is an idea that came to me while recently rereading these works. I gave consideration to the technology in 1932 when Brave New World was written and 1949 when 1984 was written. This idea led me to reconsider how the future technologies to come could craft a new version of this dystopian nightmare. These technologies were not even yet able to be dreamed by the individuals of that time. It is this idea that has formed the inspiration for this poem. I am not sure that I can give either of these works an answer that does them justice with my meager talent but the idea is staying with me, rattling around in my head so it is helpful to me anyway to try to give it voice. These notes are more to help me than anyone else. The poem itself would probably be better served if this discussion were not included. However, this helps me to think about this “idea”. It also could give the reader some insight since I have read that it is difficult for the poet to communicate the ideas in science fiction effectively in the abbreviated language of poetry. Difficult but required nonetheless.

Essentially, I intend to turn the concept of the” ghost in the machine” around. For me it is the “machine in the ghost”. What happens when they can literally enter the thought processing capability of the human mind? This is also the derivation of the poem’s name, Revenant. For me this is something that suggests the connotation of a dead soul in limbo.  I hope the poem was enjoyable.

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Jazz Man

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:


This poem ending up being the result of my exploring another Victorian era form of poem with repeating lines, the Triolet and my exploration with a new type of foot to use in a poem, the Dactyl foot .

A Triolet is a simple one stanza eight line poem which starts out with two base lines as does a Villanelle (see the poem Spirits for an example). The third line of the poem rhymes with the first base line. The fourth line of the poem is the first base line repeated. The fifth and sixth lines rhyme with the two base lines respectively. In my poems here I have reversed this order to get a mirror like symmetry because for this poem it appealed to me and it helped to illustrate the visual aesthetic of the my art form. (The other truth is also an initial error of mine in writing the first poem which I decided to keep.) The following article by Conrad Geller a teacher of poetry is found here (link to How to write a Triolet).

I wrote three triolets (stanzas of eight lines) and decided to rotate the base lines used in each poem. The second stanza starts its first base line with the second line of the first stanza. The third poem uses the two base lines of the first however it reverses the order. I have broken each stanza into two visual frames and each frame itself uses two comic box separations which represent two lines of the poem. This breaks the rule of a picture frame associated with each stanza however I feel just as a sentence in a poem is allowed to cross two lines that a stanza in a visual poem should be allowed to cross frames. The base lines of the poem then are repeated in the top of the first frame and the bottom of the second frame. For each of the three poems I used a similar picture with slight changes to match the slight change in the lines. I got Corel Draw for Christmas so I have a tool to really work with the pictures and clip art now. I used this to draw the frames for each stanza in a different artistic style. In this way the repetition of the poem can be enhanced by the visual framing of the pictures. To accentuate the actual eight lines of the stanza of the poem I put a sort half break frame between them.

The next experiment was with a new type of foot for the poem that provided a metaphor for a Jazz Beat (I know in Jazz it is a back beat but the musical tone sounded like a beatnik Jazz poem to me. I must confess all I know of that style is what I have seen in movies so I am ignorant here.) This is the Dactyl foot which in English is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (BOOM boom boom) like a Tom Tom drum beat. The example poem used to explain this was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. The following link describes this form (Link to Dactyl foot).

This poem however did not seem to follow a set meter so I decided on my own, four dactyl foots per line for a total of twelve syllables:

(BOOM boom boom BOOM boom boom BOOM boom boom BOOM boom boom)


I guess using the normal poetic parlance I should call the Dactyl tetrameter however that sounds line a strange type of flying dinosaur to me. In keeping with the musical theme of the poem I think I will refer to this a Poetry in three quarter time.

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Spirits

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:
I have done some research and learned about a form of poetry which while new to me has been around for some 300 years called the Villanelle. The following website does a far better job than I can of describing it so I will post a link here: Poetic Forms: The Villanelle by Conrad Geller .

Essentially the Villanelle works around two base lines of Poetry in six stanzas. The first five stanzas have three lines each and the last has four. The first stanza has the first baseline as the first line and the second base line as the third and last. In the next five stanzas the first lines always rhyme with the base line stanzas which also rhyme. The last line is a baseline stanza line each one repeated after the other. The last stanza of the poem is always the two baselines. The second line of each stanza always has the same rhyme.

For this poem I have chosen to follow the rules of iambic pentameter (see the author’s notes of the poem Freedom for a discussion of what this is). I have used a more complicated form by making the first line of my baseline the masculine form with 10 syllables. The second line is the 11 syllable feminine form. This is created by adding an unstressed syllable to the end of the 10 syllable masculine form
(da Dum da Dum da Dum da Dum da Dum da). In the remaining stanzas the first line will always be the opposite of the baseline used in the third line of the poem (alternating masculine feminine then feminine masculine as the base lines themselves alternate).

For the Visual piece of the poetry I have created a picture frame that is a horizontal line roughly one fourth of the vertical length of the picture. It includes a picture dedicated to that line of the base poem and is repeated in the order top or bottom as the line of the poem itself. I will call this the baseline frame. The remainder of the picture is the stanza frame which is dedicated to the remaining lines of the poem. Thus my Visual Villanelle will have six pictures one for each stanza. The fist and last stanzas will have three frames and the four middle ones will have two frames.

This was fun as it gave me an opportunity to play with the visual portion of the poetry and try and develop rules of structure to follow the way the lines of the poem itself follows structure.



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FREEDOM

Visual Poetry by Individualist

Author’s Notes:

I have taken my time to study Iambic Pentameter and this poem is my first attempt at using this medium. Iambic Pentameter is a type of poem that defines the meter in which it is written. The word iambic refers to the type of feet used in the poem. The foot refers to the meter used in the poem. In Latin or Greek the foot is measured by the length of the syllables. In an iambic foot this is a short syllable followed b y a long one. When using this form in English the length of the syllable is replaced by the stress one places on them when reciting the poem or in the case of an iambic foot “da DUM”, unstressed and stressed. The pentameter refers to the five feet that is used in the poem. Classical Greek poetry followed the rule of five, “da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum da-Dum“. This is the masculine format. I will not get into the feminine or more complicated methods of iambic pentameter most notably used by Shakespeare.

In researching the poetry I read several of the Shakespearian Sonnets and decided to mirror this one on the 14 lines of the Sonnet. Since the poems as written are not broken into Stanzas I broke the lines arbitrarily into the pictures as 4-3-3-4 and developed an alternating rhyming scheme where the 7th and 8th stanzas rhymed and then continued alternating. This was not the rule Shakespeare seemed to use in the Sonnets. Instead he alternated lines and the last two lines of the Sonnet (13 & 14) repeated.

I will note that I found this structure to be very difficult to write. The poems required the lines to meet a certain number of syllables and one had to try to write them in a way that repeating the meter was not awkward in addition to the normal difficulty of finding ways to make the statements rhyme and still have meaning. I have a greater respect for the poetic capabilities of Shakespeare as a result of this exercise. Actually I am misspeaking here. Of course one has to have respect for the talents of the Bardl, that cannot be in dispute. What I should say is I have a greater appreciation for the skills that were required for Shakespeare to write his poetry in this medium.

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Myrmidon

Visual Poetry by Individualist


























Authors Notes:

I was reading various blogs on the internet regarding the situation in Afghanistan regarding the election fraud and came across this article by Jeanette Pryor which got me thinking about what we ask of our soldiers. All the blood and turmoil in Afghanistan and our government is giving serious consideration to getting out.

Afghanistan War

I came across this mythological account from Bullfinch about the creation of the Myrmidons. It struck me that the most famous warriors of Achilles the Myrmidons, would be made from Ants. Generally we tend to think of our Soldiers and Lions, Wolves, Devil Dogs, Bears, Birds of Prey or other tough and athletic predators. But in consideration one has to admit that Ants make formidable armies. In Africa the Army Ants are a terror and all animals flee when they come through an area. Each individual Ant instinctively knows its place in the hive and follows it duties flawlessly without being told. These would certainly make great soldiers. The metaphor emphasizes not just the grace and strength of the individual soldier but the teamwork and training that these soldiers together apply to make the army as a whole.

Bullfinch

These were the inspiration for this poem along with these sites:

Long War

Todays Military

Many thanks to these sites for the great information placed there.

A Powrie is a mythological fey creature from Scottish folklore. It was also called a Red Cap due to the fact that their caps must be dipped in the blood of their victims in order to maintain its reddish hue. The Powrie or Dunner was required to kill in order to stay alive. It was said that it was not possible to outrun a Powrie that was chasing you.

AEacus was the Greek general who prayed to Zeus for protection after plague wiped out his city. It is said that the Myrmidons were brought into being in answer to his prayers by transforming the Ants.


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The Sword of Damocles

Visual Poetry by Individualist














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