Connecting the Visual to the Verbal in the Classroom

Rationale

The Connection between Poetry and Comics is a means for obtaining a skill set in Words and Images. There is an inherent connection between comics and poetry: rhythm, division of lines, frames, the ability to summon the senses and combine text and image with equal weight stand out for me as devices that are employed in both media.

In these sister arts, the narrative is simplified to fit in a structure. The assonance of the text creates a beat and rhythm that helps the reader move through the art-form. Decisions have to be made by the artist-writer about the layout of the piece in the formatting of the comics design and the line breaks of the text, which must be considered for the flow or movement to work well. How the viewer reads the comic depends on the choices of the artist. The cartoon panel itself determines the experience of the reader, just as the poet is concerned with how many syllables, words, and breaks there are per unit of expression, whether line or stanza. The poet-artist can leave panels or spaces for lines void of words. Ultimately, the story is what all these devices both visually and textually amount to. This narrative is the core of what the reader will take with them and assimilate into their visual archive of images for future use.

Poetry as a convention juxtaposes images, just as comics juxtapose words. This is why they can be considered sister arts: they both move through a story with short breaks and fluid movement.

Cartooning employs a lot of graphic and design elements. Its position on the page, size, and flow of images are important to the overall read. It makes the reader consider time because of its sequences, and the comic artist also has to consider as she/he creates the work, how and in which direction the reader's eye will move along the page from one panel to the next, etc.

Poetry and Comics both appeal to the senses in that drawing or writing a word or image helps the reader recall color, smell, touch, and taste, as when recalling a memory.

What is "PoetryComics"?

Poetry Comics is a term coined by Dave Morice in 1978. A friend of his said, "Great poems should paint pictures in the mind." He replied, "Great poems would make great cartoons." ⁴ Morice wondered how 'Prufrock' and Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy' would look as comics, so he drew them. Poetry Comics are the merging of the two genres that will give my students a skill set in understanding and interpreting words and images. I will focus on finding the story or narrative voice in this art form. The structure of a Poetry Comic is self-explanatory. The words of the poems are placed in cartoon balloons and panels in a comic book format.

By taking a poem, which is essentially "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm" ⁵, and pairing it with a comic, which is "a juxtaposed pictorial in a deliberate sequence" ⁶, students will be able to have a rich experience of storytelling and intermediality.

When my students create PoetryComics they will come to understand that in a successful poem every word counts. Words conjure images and comics, like poetry, are about simplifying and paring down. Visual elements are crucial to both. A cartoonist places panels across a page and poets decide on the placement of words.

I want my students to experience what is special and particular to comics. As the cartoonist Seth so eloquently stated in an interview with Carousel Magazine, "The cartoonist is trying to boil down real life experience into an image that is capable of conveying the depth of life by only suggesting it" ⁷ When endowed with narrative devices in images and words, a piece of art can tell a very colorful story that appeals to the reader's emotions and senses. My students will learn visual and textual examples of how to depict those things that enhance feeling in a piece of art for the viewer. The cartoonist Chris Ware stated, "Comics are a sort of piano roll, or sheet music, of the rhythm of life, flattened out on a page 'played' with one's eyes." ⁸

PoetryComics are important to what I want to teach in giving students a skill set that will allow them to understand how images and texts function together. The skills they would obtain from creating and analyzing PoetryComics will be varied and allow them a more creative dimension through intermediality or combination of media. My students will have to look at the decision making in an existing piece of art and consider how those choices of specific artistic and literary devices inform the finished piece. My students will also have the opportunity to make a PoetryComic that will take the learning process a step further and have them be the decision maker. This fulfills my goals of wanting my students to be active participants in creating and interpreting images throughout their lives.

What is Animated Poetry?

Animated poetry occurs when poems are joined to moving images through digital means. I suppose that puppets or objects could also be used in the place of animation, so for this purpose let's define it as when a poem is illustrated through a medium that employs movement. There is also usually an audio that accompanies the animated images and most often text is superimposed on the screen. Billy Collins' poems are known to be some of the finest pieces in this genre. My students will explore this art form by first looking at music videos with rich images and text. A video that comes to mind is Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," which shows rich visuals that reference surrealist artists and impressionist painters but also reflects the direct influence of word and image relationships, while being a great example of intermediality and of cross references to other modes of art. Another video that comes to mind is "Right now" by Van Halen. This video has text that relates directly to the image instead of the song lyrics, as is the case in Gabriel's video. Another example is David Byrne's "And She was" and "Burning Down the House." These videos also have images describing the lyrics, with little text.

What is Tableau Vivant?

Tableau vivant is a theatrical device that is used to bring paintings and sculptures to life by giving voices through actors that are stand-ins for the original piece of art. Often time these performances are slap-stick, with wry humor that pokes fun at the original art piece or adds an interesting layer of commentary for the viewer to enjoy. An example of this is an improvisational troupe called Killing My Lobster. They had a show called Patronizing the Arts, in which the Mona Lisa had a moving mouth, the David was a live naked man, and the scream painting of Munch interacted with the other two. In these ways it gave readings of the works in question and created a third space that would have never been there for the viewer to think of the original piece in a comical light, and thus take a piece of high art down from its pedestal. This play was a success due to some very interesting choices by the writers and the artists concerning how these art pieces could interconnect with an understanding of the needs of the human characters in the respective paintings. They wanted love, admiration, affection, and sometimes very simple things like food or someone to scratch their back. This personified characterization of famous art pieces is enjoyable to most people because of the famous artwork's icon status. Most people understand that Michelangelo's David is a masterpiece put on a pedestal in the history of art, as the Mona Lisa is also. To have these works of art portrayed as people, or talking and down to earth objects, is quite amusing and I am sure that my students will like it. The text that is formed is purely in the hands of the writer, and any concept or idea can be created to pair along with the actors in their roles as art subjects and the ways in which they carry out the play. This freedom results in creating very interesting pieces of theater and interpretation.