  Poetry
This week: Creating Depth: Visual or Spatial Verse Edited by: Red Writing Hood <3  
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"What makes a good poem? Brevity, terseness, spareness, viewing something new for the very first time, creating an image like no one has ever been blown away by before in their entire life."
Lee Bennett Hopkins
"Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes..."
C. S. Lewis
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Visual or Spatial Verse: Formatting Poetry to Create Added Depth, Part One
No matter how you format your poetry it creates a visual:
Is each line the same length?
Do the line lengths vary?
Have you utilized underlining, bold, italics, color or a particular font?
Have you ignored proper syntax and punctuation?
Is it a short poem or a long poem with many stanzas.
Is it a long poem with no stanza breaks?
All these things and more create a visual; however what I will explore this year is the genre of shaped verse that creates a particular visual for the reader—meshing art and the written word. Today I’ll share the different types of shaped verse—many that are confused with or sometimes used interchangeably with each other, most often because many can be classified as more than one of the types I’ll list today—and how they are different from each other, and there are differences, albeit sometimes only slight differences. Then, for the next few months I’ll share some specific shape forms. I’ll also discuss some things to keep in mind as you create this type of formatting.
One of the biggest pitfalls I see with this type of formatting is a great urge to create a visual that somehow this becomes the driving force and the poem suffers for it. Either the careful word choice is scrapped to make sure the specific shape is adhered to, or the use of metaphor and simile and other tools to create a depth of meaning are lacking because the focus was all about the shape. As in anything in life, the key is balance. Remember, you are creating a poem. Don’t let the formatting take over. Instead let it enhance and entrance the reader.
Calligram/Calligramme
Named after the first collection of this type of experimental mashing of verbal and visual: Guilaume Apollinaire, who called his collection Calligrammes. This book was published around one hundred years ago. Most calligrams use the words to "draw" your picture.
MUST HAVES
--Must use words to create a shape: Most calligrams connect the words with the shape in some way. Some of the shapes that Apollinaire used were a cigarette with smoke trailing into the air, a lady in a hat, streams of rain, and a mandolin. Here are some examples: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/apollinaires-calligrammes-1918/
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Topic/theme.
--Line count.
--Meter.
--Number of stanzas: any, although stanzas can be a tricky thing as you create your word picture.
--Rhyme or not, it’s up to you.
Concrete aka Picture Poetry
So, remember all that stuff I said at the beginning about the biggest pitfall and a balance? Well, concrete poetry turns all that on its head. It’s not that it’s all about the picture, but unlike the other visual-type verses, when you read this poem often it can’t stand on its own without the formatting. Now that being said, this type of visual poetry gives a wonderful opportunity to incorporate a great deal of depth, if done with care.
This version of visual poetry has been around for about 60 years.
MUST HAVES
--Shape/picture in words: The shape tends to match the words used. Here are a couple of examples: http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/concrete-poetry.html
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Topic.
--Line count.
--Meter.
--Number of stanzas.
--Rhyme or not, it’s up to you.
Pattern Poetry aka Shaped poem
This visual type has been around for thousands of years. What distinguishes it from the calligram is that these often take on less detailed shapes. While the calligram is using the words like an artist would use a charcoal pencil, pattern poetry uses words formatted to fill in a space like a diamond, square, or circle.
MUST HAVES
--Create a shape with your words.
COULD HAVES or WHAT IS THE POET’S CHOICE IN ALL THIS?
--Topic/theme: shape will usually match this area.
--Line count.
--Meter.
--Number of stanzas.
--Rhyme or not, it’s up to you.
SOURCE NOTES:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/guillaume-apollinaire
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Ales Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan. 1993.
http://www.poetrybeyondtext.org/concrete-poetry.html
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/apollinaires-calligrammes-1918/
Turco, Lewis. The Book of Forms. 3rd. Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2000.
Williams, Miller (1986). Patterns of Poetry: An Encyclopedia of Forms. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
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Theme: Visual or Spatial Verse
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Comments on last month's newsletter:
From: Jayne 
Comment: This is really informative. I won't have time to really play it with this year before Christmas, but I'm going to file it to play around with next year. Thanks! |
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Poetry: January 17, 2018 Issue [#8708]
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