Some words on visual poetry
So what am I doing here? Let’s start this thing off right and ask the straight questions. Hah. I guess all I can answer to that question is that I am here in this little, empty blog spot just to write a bit, and just to share a bit. I don’t know what that means—to write—or exactly why I am so interested, but apparently I am doing it.
I had to ask myself what kind of writer I’d like to be here, what sort of stuff I want to lay out there. I’ve been checking out what other people are doing. A lot of crazy stuff, that’s what. I feel like my writing is just starting to grow and I’m just finding new avenues and sparks. A friend told me to check more into visual poetry a few days ago, get some weird inspiration, and I came across David-Baptiste Chirot’s blog. Check it out at http://www.davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com/. Interesting. I’ll admit here that, while I want to be hip and literary, I don’t know how much of this I really can consider poetry.
So then, the classic question. What do I think makes poetry poetry? Well for one, words. I am a firm believer that a written work has to have words. Not everything is poetry. No. It isn’t. Chirot’s blog contains photographs, drawings, and collages, but very few sentences or words. Perhaps he doesn’t intend some of these pieces to be poems? I’m unsure about that. And some pieces I would agree can be called poems, such as this one:
The defining elements here are that there are words, and some sense that it can be read in a uniform way--meaning that two people could read it similarly. Is that what I think is important in defining something as a poem? That people can read it in the same way? That wouldn’t make much sense either, though, because people don’t have to read anything the same anyways, do they? I suppose I still think there should be some clear logic as to how to read a poem. There should be a defined system of how it is to be done, as opposed to the modern method of everyone deciding it for themselves, as if there were no rules and no objective truths about it.
So, where does it cross the line? While Chirot has pieces like above, he also has others that seem to cross a line and enter into what I would call strictly visual art. For example, this is not a poem:
There are words, even sentence structure, but I still don’t think this is a poem. I realize that my definitions are shaky here. I don’t know how to put it simply!
Chirot’s work does move something in me—some sense of the brutality and inhumane treatment of people in
Anyways, I didn’t mean to have my first blog go in a negative direction. Or to be cliché and obvious. Kudos to David-Baptiste on his visual art. I’d like to get experimental with my own writing here, but I have to draw some lines somewhere. I will write with words. Mostly. I suppose.
I think I know that much.
3 comments:
Julia,
Your belief that written work has to have words really got me thinking. On one hand I agree with you; the very idea of written work just seems to imply writing. But on the other hand, I can’t help but argue that the words in visual images could possibly be considered poetry. Some of the images on David-Baptiste Chirot’s page don’t have words—I was even looking closely at the clothing of some of the people in them to find words or phrases; but some, like the Israeli Occupation flyer do combine words and visual images. Further, many are accompanied by a written explanation. Would you consider these poetry? (To play devil’s advocate here, they do use words.)
I am in the same position of just breaking into literary communities that you are, and I agree that poetry literally seems to have no boundaries. It seems to me that the words in these images could stand as poems on their own or be combined into one poem, especially because a “standard” for poetry does not seem to exist, as you mentioned. I’m not sure one should exist though. Rules seem to set up a situation that stifles creativity; why not let poets define poetry for themselves in their writing and accept the wide range of work that is created, dealing with how different pieces of work should be read or interpreted individually?
Maybe, the issue here is that poetry is a form of art; just like visual images are a form of art. Would you suggest that the two be kept separate or can their boundaries be blurred effectively? For me, what it comes down to is the fact that a photograph, a drawing, and a poem can all touch me emotionally to the same degree. To me, the overall definition of art is something that moves me, or in a broader sense, its audience. Can we—or should we for that matter—distinguish differences in art or qualify it into different genres by written or visual characteristics? These are big questions, I know, and I’m not certain as to how eloquently I presented them. I’m still struggling with the task of getting my thoughts out of my head without losing their clarity. But I think it is something worth considering.
Hey Julia-
I'm a college student/ writer and I've recently been dealing with the same question: how do we define poetry? In one of my poetry classes the professor spent most of the course dealing with what I guess you could call "non-traditional" poetry, including visual poetry and image reading. Some people in the class were really into it; we brought in photos/snapshots and other images to "read." A few people, myself included, were a little more skeptical when it came to reading these images. One student challenged the professor and asked exactly how we should read these images, saying that a piece of music and a written poem or story can be read in the same way/reproduced by different people, but that there is no standard for "reading" images, as we were doing. I took the easy way out and wrote a poem that more or less described the images, although others were adventerous enough to read the sounds that the lines of an image made, or read the minute colors of the pixles in a digital photo. I guess what I'm saying is that I too struggle to undertand some forms of what people deem "poetry." For my taste, I'd rather have words and the more familiar poetry that I myself prefer to write. At the same time though, it is really interesting to see the way some people can combine language and images to create really great pieces of art. Is is poetry? Is it preformance art? Is is something else? I guess I can't really help answer your question, but I can say you are not alone in asking it!
Upon reading your post, I visited David-Baptiste Chirot’s blog, and he’s just posted some visual poems by Paul Célan—fascinating poet, reading Pierre Joris’s A Nomad Poetics right now, Joris is pretty much definitively translating Célan—and one of his pieces, a seemingly collaged, grainy black-and-white photograph montage includes the phrase “La poésie ne s’impose plus, elle s’expose,” and the translation, “Poetry no longer imposes itself, it exposes itself.” (So much more elegant in the French, thanks to its reflexive verbs.) However, I believe this speaks to the questions you’re raising: ultimately, what is poetry? I think poetry is straining at the leash, trying desperately to be relevant in a culture where washed-up pop stars are experts in the arts and the Internet, not the newspaper or radio, is the forum for airing opinions and being heard (I say this as I comment on your blog… I’m not saying these are bad things, necessarily—okay, Paul Abdul needs to lay off the sauce and retire—but the point is, if poetry doesn’t change/expand, it will be left behind.)
Everyone wants to define poetry, put it in a box, and feel good about their definition. No matter how relativistic our society becomes, we will always give into the compulsion to classify. It happens in science; it happens in closets. However, in the area of poetry, do we need a cut-and-dry, binary definition? Maybe the lines can blur between theater, visual art, music, dance, and poetry—and that’s okay! Perhaps poetry is, as Célan suggests, no longer imposing itself with its high language and inaccessible conceits, but is now exposing itself: its flaws, its gaps, its affairs with the other branches of the humanities. To simplify poetry to the written word is to rob poetry of its entire tradition—for at present, we are defining poetry from the stance of a literary culture. But we must remember that poetry was born out of an oral culture and has wavered back and forth, just as humanity has, ever since. If performance poetry isn’t poetry because “it has no text” then what do we make of the Iliad and the Odyssey? Did they only achieve poem status when they were written down?
I know that it tends to chafe the general public when it breaks free of its “traditional” pedestrian definition, but if poetry is generating conversation, playing with or performing violence on the language, then why can’t other media be included? Ian Hamilton Finlay comes to mind. [http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/card_link.html Ian Hamilton Finlay's website] I can’t quite find what I’m looking for online, as most of the stuff on his site right now is kind of tourist-shop cheesy (he even has an online store where you can buy Ian Hamilton Finlay hand towels) but what he’s done with the melding of visual art and poetry is phenomenal. Oh good, found a bit more of what I’m looking for. [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=4293&searchid=11772 Finlay's work at the Tate]
In his “Sea Poppy” series, he forms visual poems with the names or numbers of ships. These poems are very cool, with the names/numbers forming what looks like a sea poppy itself. Answers.com defines “sea poppy as “a yellow-flowered Eurasian glaucous herb naturalized in along sandy shores in eastern North America.” Knowing Finlay, who would sit on the shore of the harbor and watch the boats coming and going, noting their numbers and names (to be used in these poems) I’m sure he was inspired by the flowers themselves. However, these poems also begin to resemble a star map—what sailors use to navigate, or what Frost called “the glass dome of heaven.”
I must say that I agree with you that Chirot’s work, at least what was in the post that you’ve posted on, didn’t seem like poetry to me. It looked like photography, perhaps clever graphic design. One of the pieces that you posted seemed interesting-- the black and white one-- but the others on his blog definitely seemed like photography. They were making statements, but the effect felt piecemeal (though not intentionally so). Perhaps because it was excerpted by the blogger? Not sure. I’m all for saying the emperor has no clothes when, in fact, the emperor has no clothes, and I’d say Chirot’s running around stark naked right now. In my humble opinion.
I may be waxing rhapsodic, but indulge me: I believe that the job of the poet is very similar to the job of the translator. Both must have a comprehensive knowledge of what they are about to write, but must write it in a way that does not betray the thing itself. (Even as I write this, I’m contradicting myself, Wordsworth’s The Prelude first springing to mind.) Poets (artists in general) are like prophets, divining messages and interpreting them for the people. They are tapping into the collective consciousness and bringing their insight to the table. So when I say that a poet and a translator have similar jobs, I mean that both are charged with the task of examining the language from the outside and writing from that standpoint. Both must communicate without tipping their hand, not answering in what they write that jackhammer of a question, “What does it mean?” which destroys a poem’s very strength—its fragility. To paraphrase Joris, as I do not have the book with me right now, “At any rate, one always writes in a foreign language, be it mother tongue or otherwise—language is always second, foreign, other… and only there can one find a home therein. For all poetry rewrites language against itself.”
I think that's the most concise definition of poetry I've heard.
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