Day Nine. Today we're 3/10 of the way through National Poetry Month. Don't need to crank up the calculator in my phone to tell you that's 30%. Still lots of poetry a-comin', folks Maureen Thorson's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I challenge you to write a visual poem. If that’s not specific enough, perhaps you can try your hand at a calligram? That’s a poem or other text in which the words are arranged into a specific shape or image. You might find inspiration in the famous calligrams written by Guillaume Apollinaire." Robert Lee Brewer's PAD suggestion: "For today’s prompt, write a work poem. For some folks, writing is work (great, huh?). For others, work is teaching, engineering, or delivering pizzas. Still others, dream of having work to help them pay the bills or go to all ages shows. Some don’t want work, don’t need work, and are glad to be free of the rat race. There are people who work out, work on problems, and well, I’ll let you work out how to handle your poem today." I'm going to start off showing Alan's poem today because he got his done before mine. Actually, he always gets his poem done first but today I'd like to give him pride of place in the blog. Alan gives us an intro: "Today, I have attempted to combine Maureen Thorson's prompt with Robert Lee Brewer's prompt. Today, Thorson has asked for a 'visual' poem, and Brewer has asked for a 'work' poem. Since my work involves so much writing, I wrote about my tool of choice and made a visual allusion to Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I'm just lucky that the first word has that shape." Mightier Bravo, Alan! What he has created today is a carmen figuratum, a specific type of visual poem in which the words and letters are not manipulated so their paths curve to draw an image, as in many of Appolinaire's calligrams. The characters are positioned and read straight across; it's their positions that draw the picture. Very smart to begin with the letter A in order to make the point of the sword. After Alan's example, I made one too. I'm also merging prompts: a carmen figuratum on the theme of work. Like Alan's poem above, it's a riddle poem of sorts. I'm pretty excited The Grass Is Greener I'm particularly proud that I figured out how to make the neck of the guitar. It required coming up with two-letter words that could be said in sequence semantically and syntactically. So fun. The unparallelled master of contemporary carmina figurata is Jan D. Hodge. It's an interesting coincidence that just yesterday I wrote a blurb for Jan's forthcoming book of carminata figurata, titled Taking Shape. His word-pictures are very complicated and intriguing: a harpsichord poised in front of a guillotine; a still life with a quill pen and ink bottle next to a T-square and drafting triangle; a leprechaun; a seahorse; the Chinese ideogram for spring with a morel mushroom embedded in it. Plus many of Jan's carmina figurata are written in meter; in fact, one of them employs medieval alliterative verse! Here are couple of sample carmina figurata by Hodge: Cupid and a flying witch, published in the online magazine Frostwriting.com. To read the poems, click on either image (or better yet, click on both). Remember to read straight across, jumping over any white spaces necessitated by the picture. I guarantee you'll be amazed, friends. Friends, won't you comment, please? Love to know what you're thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don't find the word "comments" in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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if you follow the path
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6 comments:
The Jan D. Hodge work just leaves my modest efforts in the dust. I hardly got past "Easter Wings" as far as my pursuit of concrete poems go, so it is fascinating to see more complex works. Also, I am chagrined that I have misread the title of the poem with the Cupid figure.
Carmen figurata: Playful, clever figure writing, Alan and Vince!
Alan's right about the impressiveness of Hodge's poems, but his pen, and your guitar, Vince, are really good. More than I could attempt today.
Vince, I thoroughly enjoyed all of these. Your guitar and the rest are not only visually appealing but excellent poems too. Makes me want to try something more ambitiously concrete.
This is so much fun, creating picture poetry! I remember doing it at school, and trying to construct a particularly awful poem about a dog.
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